Dave Burgess My first model from the newly opened BC Shaver Shop. Store re-opened on Mon, June 24; model completed June 30.

Chris Greathouse That turned out well! I have a ZZ on my shelf that wants to be built at some point. and I'm glad your shop reopened... Someone else was worried about it, new owers I believe right? Did it stay the same or get totally redone?

Dave Burgess New owners. The previous owner (a good friend of mine) retired. The new owners re-located from downtown on Fort St. into the Hillside Mall. About the only thing they took from the old shop were the paint racks. Virtually everything else is new stock. I purchased all of the vacuform & resin kits from the previous store before it closed.

Chris Greathouse Is it the same kind of hobby shop? or did they change their hobby interests and product focus?

Dave Burgess No, it's pretty much the same. They sell and repair shavers, plastic models (aircraft, ships, tanks & military vehicles, cars, science fiction); they have a large selection of Gundam (doesn't interest me), and still have their RC cars & aircraft. Maybe a little less in the model trains (didn't look for them). Plus, a good selection of tools, paint & paint brushes, plastic and balsa stock. The shelves aren't nearly as full as the downtown store, but in fairness, they're still receiving inventory, and I suspect they'll gradually increase their inventory as they earn profits from current sales. Garnet's shop took YEARS to get to the level of inventory he had when he retired!

Dave Burgess Also, they retained most of the staff from the downtown store when it closed.

Chris Greathouse Well, I'm glad they didn't just uproot the theme and become yet another one of those generic hobby shops... Cheers mate!

Dave Burgess I decided to do the prototype version of the X-4 early in the program, when it was painted International Orange with black stripes and still sported US Air Force markings (before NACA). A much more interesting paint scheme than the boring white, but I couldn't find any pics of it painted this way on the internet. I relied on the reference drawings and description provided by Airmodel.

Dave Burgess Given the complexity of the stripe pattern, I chose to mask and paint it in 7 stages: wing stripes; upper body stripes; lower body stripes; vertical stab stripes; intake stripe; nose scallop; and anti-glare panel. That allowed me to do a minimum of finicky masking, and just cover the rest of the a/c with a quick paper mask. Photo album details the progress. For the nose scallop, I taped some yellow Tamiya tape on a piece of thin styrene sheet, and ran it through a 3-hole punch a few times. I took the tape off 4 of the punched out circles and formed the mask for the scallop.

Nathan Dempsey Interesting subject. I like the choice of the orange coloring.

Glenn . Great project will take a while!

Holger Kranich Dave, you wanna build the whole Tower? Ambitious Project!!!

Dave Burgess Already been working on it for 5+ years (interspersed between other projects...)

Sybar Watching