Earlier in this page I said 35 years since my last model, but it's more like 40, and having a beer on my build bench instead of lemonade is a comfortable footnote to growing young. :-)
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Airbrushing was unheard of, we learned custom paint by happy accident with spray cans (and the fury of fathers seeing overspray on garage and basement floors).
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Ain't that the truth!! I also remember painting and repainting a few car kits so many times I'd lose all the body lines and finally just trash the kit! And then there was the years where I'd shovel snow in the winter and mow lawns in the summer for kit & paint money.
I have a bright yellow (in this incarnation) '55 Bel Air; still not completed but painted so many times the door handles are tiny little mounds in the paint. It has a place of honor in my bookshelves.