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Y'all are 'way too kind...believe me I'm a mere mortal myself, just ask my sweetheart or anyone who works with me! Not sure about Hoss though... The red paint on the wrecker was going to be critical. It isn't regular red. Not only is it sort of a brick red color, but it's also stained and heavily sunbleached, giving a chalky appearance. You know, like playground equipment that gets sunbleached and then when you touch it you get white chalky residue on your hand? That's what it looks like. So. How to do sunbleached off-red without making it look straight pink? I started with a mixture of dark red, flat red and rust brown and sprayed everything in a base color. Then I used a mixture I came up with years ago that I call "Brick Red" and went over everything carefully, again. It's slightly lighter than the first color mix. Then I went back over it again with a VERY thinned mixture of light gray/off-white (36622 Camouflage Gray in military parlance, the color of the undersides of US warplanes in Vietnam). Then I went back with a wash of watercolor sludge (after this pic) and the result was almost perfect! Now to add the taillights. I made them using acrylic rhinestones/gemstones. Don't use glass ones, because the acrylic ones can be sanded to remove the facets and make them smooth once polished. Two were done in clear red, the other two left clear.

Toyota swept the weekend's races at the Daytona road course winning all three races. The truck race was the only controversial finish with a phantom caution thrown on the last lap which also gave Toyota it's 200th truck series win . Joe Gibbs grandson Ty Gibbs won his first Xfinity race which was also his first Xfinity series start. Christopher Bell won the Cup series race after the favorites to win were taken out of contention with bad pitstops or part failures or incidents. Denny Hamlin took out Chase Elliot with a handful of laps to go when they were battling to pass Brad Keselowski. Here's the top 10 1 Christopher Bell 2 Joey Logano 3 Denny Hamlin 4 Kurt Busch 5 Brad Keselowski 6 Kevin Harvick 7 AJ Allmendinger 8 Michael McDowell 9 Ryan Preece 10 Alex Bowman

Basically what I was thinking. These guys are very good! ( and here I had to go to college and take a course just to learn how to draw a straight line! )

Home and Garden Magazine ( In Hazzard it's called Down Home and Garden!)

When two talented artists like this are talking, mere mortals like me just listen in awe.

Now for some of the lights. First the two rounded-rectangular rear-facing lights on the sides of the crane structure. I used acrylic gemstones, cut to shape, then the facets sanded out then polished smooth. Then the amber lights on top of the cab. I wouldn't mind cutting/sanding to shape some clear sprue for one or two, but there are FIVE of them. Trying to make five all identical that way is too much. So, I made one with scrap styrene, and used it to make a mold. From that I cast several identical in clear resin. Once cured they were cleaned up and painted with clear orange, with flat black at the bottom. Then, mounted on the cab.

Thanks y'all! Hoss, I commented on your thread, you've got some fantastic work going there yourself! Next was scratchbuilding the sling/cradle structures. Absolutely the best views of this came from the episode "Play It Again Luke."

Great start, Andrew. I went through some of the same processes when I drew my Fan Art version of Cooter's GMC truck nearly 10 years ago. I probably even used some of the same words when my computer wouldn't let me reopen the file as you did when you found you had to lengthen the chassis.

The real nightmare of this project was the wrecker. I knew almost nothing about tow trucks, and there are no tow truck models or conversion sets for anything even close to this type. I was told it was a Holmes wrecker, in the 400 series....but amazingly, Google searches with that info yielded nothing! So I went the hard route. I went through countless Dukes episodes on DVD, pausing them to photograph any good views of the unit. Yep, that's right, I photographed the TV screen, and had photo prints made. The dozens of photos I took gave just enough reference material to build this. Although dozens of episodes provided good material, by far the most useful episodes were "Play It Again Luke" (S6 E15) and "The Fortune Tellers" (S6 E21). I was able to find sheet styrene with Diamond Tread pattern molded in. It was shockingly brittle, but I was able to fabricate the bulkheads and decking. I also used photoetched metal Diamond Tread for the curved wheel well tops and other details. Also detailed the rear with openings for the tail lights and more.

I just got done watching "Happy Birthday General Lee" and noticed that the actor who sold the boys the black Charger (and wrongly called it a 1968) was named Will Hare. He was born in 1919 in Elkins West Virginia and starting acting at 15 years old. He died 20 years ago (8-31-97) of a heart attack while rehearsing. I was amazed at all the acting jobs he had in his long career. I suppose the same could be said about many of the senior citizens who were on the show.

The two shows that are not available are for very different reasons. One was hosted by an actor who has since been convicted and jailed for certain material he downloaded, while the other is because of music rights issues. Apparently, one of the "offensive" issues we need to be warned about is Johnny Cash singing in front of a Confederate flag. The version of the story I read was on the BBC News site.

Disney just deemed The Muppet Show offensive . A couple of episodes have been completely removed from the Disney+ streaming service while others have an "offensive" disclaimer. If you liked the show best get it on dvd while you can before Disney "cancels" it and stops making the dvd sets.