The devil is in the details

The subtitle for this entry should probably be words to the effect of, “there’s a fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘obsession’”.

I was given a photo of an old race car I had always wanted to replicate in scale, it’s the 1961 Pontiac that Nebraskan Bob Burdick won that year’s Atlanta 500 with. Burdick’s family had built the car Johnny Beauchamp drove to a photo finish for second place in the first Daytona 500 and although Bob Burdick only competed in 15 races he scored one win, three top-5 finishes and nine top-10 finishes in those limited starts. He also was the fastest qualifier for two of those 15 races.

Most of the artwork for decals to replicate this car will be rather easy to create. I was slightly stumped by the partial decal on the top rear of the door, part of it was missing and I didn’t recognize it. I asked the question on my message board, within an hour I had learned it was a Schooler Cams decal and I began searching for an image to create that decal from. My search led me to a retired seaman from Jacksonville, Florida who had known John Schooler and who had an old photograph of a car with that complete decal. He e-mailed me a copy of the photo and the pieces were falling into place.

I spent much of the evening yesterday recreating that decal, the ENTIRE decal, in scale. I even located the original street address for the company. Probably more trouble than 1/3 of an obscure decal on a scale model car deserves, but that kind of stuff is important to me.