We all knew another Level 4 Covid 19 lockdown was coming across New Zealand and each lock down brings out new or past hobbies to help pass the time. No matter how much the news told us it was coming, I guess it was always a matter of time as the whole world seems to be going through similar madness from a Covid perspective as well as racial, political and climate change topics. The world has gone mad and we now live in a “new normal”.
Lockdown can be frustrating for many and there only so many times you can mow the lawns trim your hedges or go for a run. I like many am in a fortunate position where I can work from home during the day building hot rods for customers. But at night I have been carrying on building them but in a smaller scale, 1/25 to be precise. As I grew up in hot rodding, I collected model cars from a young age so the big kid in me today has a reasonable collection of plastic kit set models. Friends like Jack Martin and Bruce Swallow, take model kitset building to a whole new level while I just build what I can with the kits I have got.
I think it was the first night of our recent lockdown where I thought, “what the heck, who knows how long this will go on for?” as I went through my model car collection to see what I could build at nights after work. Interestingly I found a few half finished kit sets from previous lockdowns but for now I decided to build a replica of my 1922 Ford Model T roadster. This took two kits as I harvested the Model A engine, gearbox, diff and wheels from an AMT kit to put into the AMT 1923 Model T roadster kit. The beauty of these kits is most of them are 2 in 1 kits managing you could build two versions so effectively you aren’t robbing too much out of multiple kits. The build time of my real Model T took ten days and for this Mode it took one day – keeping things in scale somewhat I guess!
Next up was a model from a previous lockdown which replicated my Model A pickup I buit around 15 years ago. That was a fun car and the model of it is a fun build, which photographed well with the models of my first hot rod, an old Model A roadster, my current yellow 32 roadster and also the aforementioned Model T roadster. Next up was a half-finished (from a previous lockdown) replica of my good friend Ian Taylor’s candy red '32 roadster which I will gift to him. Then a replica of Ian’s red '32 coupe which he will also end up with. Interestingly to build these replicas of existing cars, the wheels come from one kit, the engine from another and so on. Sometimes you can have up to five kits to make one replica model.
But like most things the addiction is very real. I am finding myself thinking about all the next builds I can make of various cars. So depending on how long lockdown runs for I have plenty to keep me busy during the day or night. If you have any old model kit sets please do not hesitate to contact me at gregstokes1932@gmail.com. For now I am busy in the shed and then busy at the model desk. Stay safe and well.