2025

JANUARY

...wellll....two months. From Thanksgiving thru New Years, we were out of town, involved in unplanned family events. It was a mix of sorrow and joy.
With the new year, I picked up where I left off, and began vacuforming the intake louvres for the rear deck. I completed the pattern before Thanksgiving. Because this is a short-run, one-off production run, I did not invest the time in producing a vacuformer. So I set up a manual version...a very crude one... and began learning how to make it produce what I wanted. My solution involved placing an old radiant heater under the frame holding the sheet of styrene, and also heating it from above with a hot-air hairdryer-type paint remover. I then quickly transferred it to the pattern and pulled it down over the edges of the mounting box and turned on my shopvac. Often I also needed to continue heating the styrene using the paint remover to allow the suction to pull it down around the pattern. I was able to turn out about four an hour once I got it down.

When I had enough pulls, I cut them out of the styrene sheet and trimmed them to shape with a straight edge on the pattern. They were then cut in half and placed in a louvre location on the foam body rear deck in the grooves I had dug out over a year ago. I marked where they overlapped, and then cut the overlapped half at that point and used the overlap excess piece as a backing when I glued the two halves together.

That all worked and the seam between the glued halves still needed sanding and maybe some filler, so on to the next step.

The next step started by glueing the louvres into place. I decided to use acrylic Gesso, like that used on artist canvases, and then putty the gaps left by the rounded corners. After nearly completing one side, I had to confront the fact that the dividers between the louvres were all of varying widths, and almost none of them the correct width. I started removing the worst offenders, which left the lesser offenders, which then became the new worst offenders. Finally, I admitted that I would have to start anew and remove everything and start with a recessed area and make new dividers and correctly place them. Ugh.

So I began cutting and shaping new dividers plus spacers to use between them when I glued them in place. Meanwhile, inbetween glueing the louvres in place, I cut out the base plates for the nose emblem and the tailpipe exits and glued them to the foam body. Once the louvres are done, I will be ready to do the final shaping of the body. Then my back went out the last week of January.

FEBRUARY

Another irregularity I had to confront while doing the louvres was an inexactitude about left and right side measurements relative to the tip of the nose. I discovered this again when I tried to trace the curved line across the rear deck so I could use that to locate my louvre spacing. I found that my left-to-right line was NOT perpendicular to the centerline - in fact it was off by 1/2"!

So I spent an afternoon reestablishing a correct centerline, matching what I had previously found, and then laid a steel right-angle on the flat area in the cabin opening to determine an exact right angle to the centerline. I then cast a laser level line from the driver side along the perpendicular arm of the rightangle. Then I cast a laser line from the passenger side to align directly to the driver side laser line. Then I could mark where those two lines fell on my tape measures on each side of the foam body on the floor. Then I could measure equally forward and backward along the body to fix my measuring points. Using a bubble level, I established where the nose tip was on the floor, and using my now-aligned tape measures, set where the zero-point was from the front of the car. Remember that I have two datum points along the length that I measure from: the nose tip (0") and the rear axle centerpoint (127" from the nose).

I finished out the month working on the louvres on the rear deck, and adding to the gastank patterns to get as much volume out of their space as I can. I still intend to make a fiberglass mold and parts of them as practice before covering the foam body.

MARCH - APRIL

I got the louvres all glued back into place. I will wait until I reach them again in the next step before I trim them.

I finally decided how to approach the last step, the final shaping and hard surfacing. I have seen areas where I know I will need to build up the surface. I will make a new set of surface contours to check my work and to guide the final surfacing. It will be a two-part process to surface it. First, I will coat it and build out the surfaces to their final shape with joint compound. It was recommended to me to use a type called "topping" that may be more flexible when dry (or drying). It is like plaster, and about as heavy wet, but I think it dries lighter. In any case, it is easy to apply and fairly easy to smooth out, and very easy to sand down. A 150 grit takes things down quickly and controllably. Once I have the final shape in topping, THEN I will apply the single layer of fiberglass and finish that with a skim coat of Bondo material. The question is... how long will it take to get there.

As it turns out, I can only apply a coating of topping about 1/8" thick max, and that takes at least a full day to dry. Some contours will require from 1/4" to 1/2", so this will take some time. On the first pass, at best, I can cover half of the body. You can do the math.

Well, the first thing is to dig out all my contours and decide on the best ones. The most recent are the best, but are they really accurate? It has always been a conundrum that the set of points from my 2016 visit and my 2019 visit differ. I tried to average them out by including all of them in my Photomodeler file. Yet, still, I could see two sets of points. And the 2019 set sits higher (slightly out) from the 2016 set. I surfaced the digital model to the 2019 set, and it did appear much like the actual car. But my older contours are all to the 2016 set. Ergo, I need to create a new set of contours and a new drawing to tack them out from. And so I create a new tacking poster and begin a new set of files. And sure enough, when placed on the car, it shows I need to fill out the body - up to 1/2" in places, especially on the sides.

With new contours to direct me, I breathed deeply and began to apply the topping onto the foam body. To my surprise and pleasure, with a uniform coat of topping covering the foam with all its seams and gouges, the body looks like a real car body! I can see the car REALLY come to life! And with each coat, it looks more and more like the real article!! But this is going to be a time-consuming, tedious process. And the end result will be worth the effort I put into it now.

And if I keep plugging away, a few hours each day, it...will...happen.

MAY - JUNE

I build up enough plaster to do contour checks with the new contour guides. Around the beginning of the rear deck, where the rear cut line of the door will be, the contours are quite close. I then focus on establishing the ridge lines for the rear deck and the rear fenders, as well as the front centerline. It becomes an interative process: Measure and mark the points, sand down to the height of a point, then sand in the point, redraw the points, sand into the point for width, then repeat the process.

I run into the foam base when sanding the rear deck down to the edge of the Kamm outline. I decide to cut away 2 inches of foam and fill it with plaster. This requires about four applications of plaster to build it up. I keep slathering all around the body in preparation for future carving, but decide subsequently to focus of the rear deck and fenders before moving around.

Just the same, I do keep building up the front centerline contour after discovering it is mostly too low. After doing a couple iterations on the rear deck (measure, slather, measure, slather), I discover I have about a 1/16" to 1/8" discrepancy vertically at different places around the body. This is too much of an error, so I identify the problem stemming from having to move my laser all around the body and trusting it all lines up when I cast the midline all around the body. It is off by 1/16" by the time the end meets the beginning, but if it is off, can I trust even that measurement?! In addition, my wooden yardsticks that I use for vertical measurements don't line up when they are placed head to tail next to each other. So I buy two more lasers and a half dozen metal yardsticks that DO line up. I position a laser at the midpoint of the driver side, and the other two at the front and rear-right quarters of the passenger side. When the lasers are lined up, there is no more gap on the midline! I have established the midline plane as my zero-point datum. I glue two yardsticks together so I can read it front and back without turning it around.

The measurements become consistent and trustworthy. But it still takes an hour or two to remark all the points before I can cast laser lines. Another laser that can be moved around first measures the heights of my marks on the vertical yardstick. Another yardstick on top of the body measures how far out the marks are from a laser-cast centerline. Did I say it is tedious?!! But it does work, and as I sand down and build up the rear deck and fenders, the car truly looks more and more like the original, as checked visually against my photos.

JULY - AUGUST

I continue now moving to the rear fender vertical surfaces. Again I sand down to the foam and create more gouges that need filling. I built those up and do the iterative process of measure-sand-slather. Next I begin refining the cabin outline. To avoid more gouges, I decide to dig out the foam behind the outline and fill it with sandable plaster. But one section on the driver side is to thin and crumbles away without the foam backing. It creates a deteriorated section about a foot long. This requires a couple weeks to slather-dry-slather-dry. Meanwhile, the buildup on the front centerline continues and can be sanded to shape, according to a contour guide.

With the cabin outline established, I can now locate the intake vents in front of it. This turns out to be a trial and error procedure. I end up finding a photo that looks at it from the front and another from the side. After laying out what I measure off the photos, I tweak it comparing it to the photos by my eye.

The rear deck is stable dimensionally and only needs to fill some gouges. So I begin on the front top surface and do slather-measure-sand a few times.

The last adventure is to take the plaster powder I have vacuumed up and add water to make it into plaster again. This works and has nearly the same consistency as new plaster. When applied and it dries, the surface has a slight rough texture. But after letting it sit a week in the bucket, I discover it has grown mold on the exposed surface. I simply toss the entire bucket, both bucket and all, and go buy a good new box of topping. I won't do that again.

SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER

Reviewing my photos, I see one that if I can color correct, may give me an idea of the original color of the MonzaSS. This would be circa 1965+ because the car has the rollbar. I correct the color so that the dormant grass looks about the right shade. That is somewhat difficult because of the color shaing due to the multi-colored awining over the car display. Then I try adding increasing amounts of color saturation. The image shows three variations of saturation. All in all, the color looks orange-red, which is the base color of the current paint, only the modern paint (since the early 2000s) has a special metallic pearlescence.

I finish up the rear deck by estashing the mildly curved edge behind the seats. Then I begin working on the sides between the wheels, and the front top surface. Then, at long last, I begin finishing the strakes between the engine intake louvres. I try to make a straight edge along the strakes by inserting a piece of wax paper backed by a piece of foamcore. The wax paper is used because it should pull free fom the plaster and leave the plaster in place. That works for two latherings, but starts failing on the 3rd and 4th. So I remove the inserts and add plaster on top and smooth it with a clay sculpting tool. It appears I will need to fill in the louvres because they are now too deep, in addition to the final shaping.

Check back for more progress!