Originally published at: Meticulous restoration of filthy model Ferrari | Boing Boing
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I salute the ability of the restorer, and the supreme silliness to which his tools and time were consecrated (objects can speak, and tools are always whispering “Use me!”: their call did not go unanswered).
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Hmmm… all the toys in his YouTube channel seem to have exactly the same type and extent of “wear.” I call shenanigans.
(Which is not to say that the restoration isn’t amazing.)
ETA: After watching the whole thing, I’m not convinced that the shenanigans don’t extend to the “restoration”… Looks like there might be some clever editing going on…
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I’d like to send them my 1974 Dodge D200 pickup, the ole boy ain’t what he used to be cosmetically.
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Maybe it’s a “union” of sorts, or a “shenanigans union”, I’d join.
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If that union put their colors on a leather jacket I’d wear one!
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Yeah but it will never handle the same.
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Where exactly was the 3D printer? I didn’t see a single printed part.
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Looks like we have a new member.
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There’s a good article in how the corner-cutters on YouTube are driving out the industrious folks: people who aren’t complete fakers (they have the skills and the tools) but the work is fudged, rushed, contrived, deceptively edited, helped, etc., and generally reality TV’d. See also: survivalist videos, especially ones where “primitive” dwellings and such are built.
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Yeah, there’s definitely some shenanigans going on - the metal body of the toy shown at the beginning is seriously bent up. But all he does is clean and strip it, not re-shape it (besides filling in a few dings), and it’s suddenly fine, so they’re clearly not the same parts. The plastic parts are a lot more damaged than the repairs he does, too. I don’t think it’s the same toy, even - I think two toys got dipped in the same dirt to make them look similar, but one was a lot more bashed up.
It’s unnecessary, because the restoration was pretty nice.
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No thanks. I watched a video review of a knife sharpener by one of these guys, and for months my youtube feed was inundated with prepper videos.
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I watched more of that video than I intended but he did indeed straighten the base of the model. Not to preclude shenanegans but the restoration certainly looked pretty legit, if forced.
What is that plastic stuff that is hardened in boiling water?
Did someone just mention, knife sharpening?
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I don’t mean the plastic base, but the metal body parts - they’re bent to hell and missing bits in the “before” views, but all he does is strip them down and add a little filler to dings. Some of the “before” plastic parts show a lot more damage than what he repairs, too.
The restoration is legit, but appears to have been done on a model that’s not quite as damaged as the one in the “before” views.
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100% there is. I’m a YouTuber in a genre adjacent to this and can share a few things about how these videos are made. Certain genres make very big money, and “restoration” is one of them. Most videos in this genre are…not exactly fake, but not real in the way you are meant to see it either. Kinda like reality TV.
First, things in this genre are usually made to look worse than they are to start. Easily fixed “damage” is added, like mud, rust, and chipped paint. Second, the repair process is massively edited to enhance appearance of success. It might take ten attempts to fix something, and the best one is shown. It’s also not that hard to make things look good on camera that don’t look that great in real life. Careful lighting, oblique angles, the right depth of field, and you can make anything look 50% better than it is.
The money shot that gets the clicks is the “transformation” from very bad to very good. The more dramatic the transformation, the more clicks, so they make the start look worse than it was, and make the end look better than it was. These people also want to look like superheroes, so mistakes are edited out, and projects that fail are never published.
My channel is not in this “restoration” genre, but know I people who are. It’s basically an entire genre that exists because most people don’t know about modern rust converters like EvapoRust and how good they are. 
Anyways, videos like this are about 60% skill and 40% shenanigans to create an impression of greater success.
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Nice restoration, but I thought the original looked pretty realistic…
Bonus for trying to put out a car fire with a garden hose.
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I figured it was a type of Sculpey. I Googled the numbers on the back of the packaging in one of the shots and came up with Cernit Number One. A different brand of polymer clay that seems to be popular in Europe. I had never heard of boiling it, but it makes sense for small parts.
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