Capital Area Modelers Society

Fishstick and Chris Klaver enjoy doing buddy builds together. Our first one was the 1970 ½  Camaro kit from AMT/Round2 that we got on the Hobby Lobby 40% off sale. The kits were terrible and both of us had many issues that challenged our building skills. As a friendly competition among two friends, we decided to bet lunch on it and have them separately judged at a local model show.

Both Chris and I really enjoyed the build and had decided to do another buddy build. ….. THEEEEEN the good idea department went into overdrive.  I proposed that we do a buddy build for the Facebook Annual 24-Hour Build Challenge. Chris did ask if I was nuts (seemed rhetorical to me). We agreed to build the AMT 63 Corvette kit. Chris had picked up a pair from an unremembered source.

On a cold Saturday in January, Chris shows up to my house and we set up for the build. We log onto the group zoom meeting that ran all 24 hours and were able to talk other builders across the nation. We started our build at noon on Saturday. Little did we know how much work we were in for.  Seven hours into the challenge, we had just finished all the body sanding and paint prep. These kits were in bad shape.

Chris decided on a light blue color using acrylic paint. I had decided on trying to pull off a candy blue color using chrome paint as my base.  Once the paint process started, problems began, between paint not laying properly to airbrushes not wanting to play nice and the paint booth not pushing paint out the window like it should. Yup, my house smelled awesome and my dehydrator oven worked overtime. But we got the paint on and the bodies looked pretty good.

The engines painted up and assembled as well as one could ask. We decided on different intake set ups. Chris decided on a triangular air cleaner intake (and discovered too late that the instructions had him put it on backward for his setup so the distributor wouldn’t fit) and I decided on the Weber carb intake.

Now to the next issue: Chris’s intake didn’t fit properly under any of the hoods provided in the kit (go figure). His plan to have the air cleaner above one of the cut-out hoods failed because the engine, fully installed, didn’t sit where it had in the test fit. He overcame this by displaying the car with the hood open. Wheel and tire mounting was sketchy at best. The parts were not sturdy and again ill fitting. We both overcame that issue with good ole CA glue in copious amounts, hidden gracefully.

We are now in hour 15 of the 24 hours, engines are on the chassis, wheels and tires are mounted and level, interiors are painted and ready to be placed in the bodies. Now come the clear plastic parts. You guessed it … they’re jacked up, too. We go back to the sandpaper and sand the scratches out, polish them up, then coat them with Future floor shine. That made the glass look brand new but killed another hour and a half of valuable time.

At this time, we are questioning if we can get done in time, and possibly our life’s decisions. We were both at our wits’ ends and tired of dealing with problems. It seemed like these kits were fighting us every step of the way. At hour 16, frustration was palpable. Both of us were starting to wonder about the effectiveness of my firecracker stash, but it was the wee hours of the morning and waking my wife and dogs up with loud bangs would have been devastating to both of us, so we pushed on.

With some tea and coffee, we assembled the bodies and interiors. Then we married the bodies to the chassis. At hour 18, we started our final detailing of the models. This is the point we should have stopped. We had painted assembled models that would pass for complete. BUT NO…. we gotta make them cool. And of course the Bare Metal Foil pulls my color and clear coats off on the hood. So I spend another 45 mins fixing that. I then switch to Molotow pens, of course a mess to deal with. Chris is dealing with very similar detail issues and finding out his hood doesn’t fit.

Needless to say, we were both emotionally and physically bent out of shape. Foul language has ensued inside my model room. Yet we have another coffee and tea and press on. We fix everything we can and accept the mistakes we made that can’t be fixed without a complete disassembly.  We know our cars aren’t perfect, but overall the end results show themselves as pretty good. At hour 19 and 20, respectively, we call them done and post the final pics on Facebook. At around 9 a.m. on Sunday, we lay our heads to rest for a couple of hours. Oddly enough…. We decided to do this again in January 2026.