Welded to the toilet!

After yesterdays post regarding repairs to the toilets at the Rocks By Rail Museum involving welding,I did not think anything more about it until about 1.30 this morning when I became welded to the toilet with a stomach bug. I know, far too much information but it knocked me for six, so today was a day of slowly doing things.

With the brickwork for the step done it was time to clean up the rubbish and there was a lot of that.

The soil got sieved and the hardcore broken down to form an internal base within the step. I could have finished sorting it all today but I was taking things slowly - just in case Mrs. Woody wonders why it is not finished!

I even have a step now with the wood board in place! Just need the slabs to put on top.

After the clear up I retired to my Man Cave where some ballasting on Chalkdon my 009 narrow gauge layout features in my latest YouTube insomnia curing video!

I usually do ballasting in short sections to avoid the job becoming boring so todays length of track was at the front of the layout around the newly installed bridge. I used kiln dried sand for the ballast and that was laid in place. Makes it look better already if you saw the picture in my post two days ago of what it looked like without the ballast.

Dilute PVA glue was applied with a syringe to glue the ballast in postion.

Having used a hair drier (sorry Mrs. W!) to warm up the ballast, the glue was already beginning to harden a few minutes after application.

How I managed to turn that simple job into a 22 minute video is a mystery but there are some hints and tips in it which may make ballasting easier if anyone reading this is about to do their layout.

Hope I have a more peaceful night - maybe I should watch my video to send me to sleep!

Finishing!

Today I can actually say I have finished three things! Yes, I know that sounds very unlike me and to be honest these are small things I have finished but never the less finished they are!

Firstly, the bridge on my 009 narrow gauge layout is painted, weathered, varnished and now glued in place.

With that done I can now get on with ballasting the track.

Secondly, the last of the decals on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier has been applied. Given the saga of these and the measures I have taken to maintain the integrity of 50 year old decals and the awkwardness of getting them off their backing sheet I am pleased that is a job finished.

Unfortunately I have remembered by means of look at the parts left over, that I still need to make the tool rack for the rear tailgate. Not a big job and it will add interest to the rear end of the truck but it is strange how you can forget about such things. Must be my age as I tell Mrs. Woody when I tell her I forgot about that urgent job she wanted done

Thirdly the brick laying on my step construction is finished! 

Despite the rain I decided I needed to get that job finished so I could get on with what follows on from it. So although I got wet I am happy!

Although the brick work is done I do still need to backfill and concrete the inside of what Mrs. W commented on when she saw it as 'my coffin'! I knew those murder mystery TV shows were a bad influence on her!

More bricks!

A day free of model making activities - unfortunately! However I need to progress this brick laying for the step so having got some more sand it was time to mix a barrow of 'gobbo', as mortar is referred to in the trade! Then down to getting some bricks down. It is fortunate that I am not a bricklayer by trade as I would never have made any money at the rate I lay bricks. Anyway it is not about how quick you do the work but the quality of what you do as I tell Mrs. Woody in a vain attempt to explain the slow progress. Strange that she is not so interested in me finishing my model making projects!

As you can tell from the darkness of the photo I am making use of the longer daylight hours. That reminds me that next weekend the clocks go forward to Summer Time - hopefully I will be able to 'step' into Summer Time if I have finished the bricklaying! Just hope the weather remembers it is Summer Time. 

Another brick in the wall!

 Another brick in the wall by Pink Floyd was the ear worm song in my head as I started to lay bricks for my step up into the rebuilt conservatory. 

It may not seem as though many bricks have gone down but I have sorted out the levels and the squareness. Even experienced brick layers say the worse part of any build is the setting out so whilst I am sure they would still be much quicker then me at least I have something in common with them! I quite enjoy brick laying as well for some reason. Probably because you can lose yourself in the work and you do see something developing as you go along. Apparently Winston Churchill laid bricks as a hobby to unwind from the World of politics. I can understand that.

Before I go any further I need to get some more sand and hopefully the weather will stay dry and reasonably warm. The only thing about a job like this is I find my model making time limited but it keeps Mrs. Woody happy that a job on her chore list is actually getting done. As I will point out its just another brick in the wall!

Foundation time.

It is another day of back ache! It was another reasonable day so having drained myself yesterday moving the drain to enable me to put the foundation in for a step into the rebuilt conservatory I did actually put that foundation in. My back is again aching! Mrs. Woody tells me I am over doing things! I think it is more that I am getting older and my back just isn't as hardy as it used to be! Anyway the foundation is a two step one which means one side will have three courses of bricks to bring it up to the level where the step needs to be whilst the other side will have two courses. The ends will be a mix! It makes sense in my mind but how that equates to a workable solution is as usual open to debate! The foundation had to be dug out and concrete hand mixed which is probably why my back is somewhat aching.

I was hoping that the base left from the lifted slabs would be a suitable foundation but unfortunately it was very thick in the first place I tested but very flimsy in all the other areas so it had to come up!

The rear of the foundation in and three couses of bricks will go on that.

The front and ends are at a higher level.

A smaller cat audience today and Matty was probably wondering why I was out in the rain which came during the last hour of work.

I did manage a half hour or so continuing to paint my model people from the Dapol Platform Figures. It is one of those jobs which if you just have a half hour or hour every so often is quite therapeutic and more importantly back friendly! They are almost at the point where I will varnish them and then cut them from the sprue to paint hair/hats and shoes. Leaving them on the sprue makes it easier to paint and avoiding handling them means the risk of rubbing the paint off with fingers is minimised. Once the varnish is on they will be more robust to being handled. 

You may notice the plastic pot lid that is my paint pallet - very handy and once it is too messy it can be washed clean and looking like new. Wish I could look like new when I wash!

The drain has drained me!

I am well and truly drained today. The cause - a drain! Going back to the conservatory rebuild at the beginning of this year, a drain was installed to take one half of the roof water. The other part went into an existing drain. When the guy installed the new drain it was a horrible wet and cold day and I guess it was not conductive to doing much digging. The result was that the drains position was such that I did not have room to put a foundation in for a step to the doors.

I have been planning to move it for some time but with this continued winter weather I guess I felt like the ground worker did when he put the drain in - I just wanted to be in the warm and dry! However until the drain was moved just about all the other jobs to sort the WMD HQ garden out could not get done. So this morning it was dry and warmish so I decided today was the day. However the job was bigger than I thought it would be. Where the pipe goes through the lawn it only had about 3 inches of cover. I could easily have put a fork through it and in a dry summer the grass above the pipe would just die. 

So the whole pipe was exposed, removed and the trench dug down another 9 inches. That doesn't sound much but it will be enough and it was a tough dig in clay so I think that its is about as much as my back can stand! Anyway my back lasted long enough to put the pipe back into its new deeper home and backfill. 

I did have a bit of an audience who were probably bemused by what I was doing just as Mrs. Woody was when I told her what I was doing!

The foundation for the step will need a bit more digging out but that can wait for another day and a better back!

Back in the comfort of my Man Cave I was able to remove the various weights that I had placed on the sub-assembly for the gardens to the thatched cottage and shop on my OO9 narrow gauge layout that I glued down last night. I have used PVA and whilst it gives a good bond once dry it does take its time to go off and during that period it is best to weigh down the surfaces.

Everyuthing apart from the kitchen sink weighing the car base down!

The sub-assembly now well and truly flat and stuck down!

At least I won't have to dig any drains for the 4mm scale houses on the layout!

Even the simplest jobs take time!

Sometimes even the simplest jobs take time as I tell Mrs. Woody on a regular basis. One of those jobs is weathering a model tank. Using my favorite method of an initial pin wash of diluted black paint which I started yesterday and continued today at intervals between a hard labour job, but more on that later, the Italeri SU-100 assault gun is progressing well. The seven track links in grey in the photo fit to the front of the tank. I was sure I had built this when I built the main model but I just cannot find it! No doubt it will turn up as I finish the model. Luckily there were enough spare parts in the kit to make another one which I will now have to paint.

It is amazing how such a simple technique can really make a difference to how a model looks. The details begin to 'pop' as they say. Those exhausts will be getting a coating of soot - the engines were not that clean in burning diesel and certainly would not meet todays emission standards!

The tracks take several washes of the diluted black paint to add some relief to the links. They will be treated to some weathering powders as well when I do the same to the tank. As I said even the simplest jobs take time.

My hard labour today was a session of gardening cutting back trees. I then moved onto the issue of access into the rebuilt conservatory. At the moment this is it!

Not exactly a long term solution! So a step is required which I will build in bricks with slabs on top. Should be a simple job - so I thought! Under the wooden board was the usual builders rubble.

Cleared that and found the drain pipe slightly higher than I thought it would be!

Basically it is too high to build a foundation to lay bricks on. It needs lowering! Hmmm this simple job is becoming a major project! Something to work up to whilst I think about alternatives! It all takes time Mrs. W!

Tires or just tired?

Starting off with an update on the Italeri SU-100 assault gun. The tyres on the wheels are now painted in grey. They are rubber in real life but unless you have a brand new tyre or you have treated the tyre with some of those tyre dressing products that seem so popular and make them look as though they are a gloss black, tyres once worn begin to turn grey. I also gloss varnished the areas where the decals are to be applied. If you do not do this there is a danger that the decals with 'silver' once applied. This is where air trapped under the decal on a matt surface looks as though it is frosted. The gloss varnish should provide a smooth surface that does bot trap air - that is the theory! It usually works for me but not always. The kit itself is some years old and decals over a couple of years old tend to degenerate. The outcome is that when you soak them in water to release them from the backing paper the decal can literally break up into many small buts. To try to combat that I also sprayed some varnish on the decal sheet which will hopefully keep the decals together. Again another 'that's the theory' but I will soon find out!

Having got into the swing of clearing up yesterday at the Rocks By Rail Museum I continued closer to home in the WMD HQ garden. The rebuilt conservatory needs a step to be built which means that I have to clear the area of the rubble left and then probably lower the drainage pipe before putting a foundation in for the step.

I have also started trying to claim my lawn back but that is a long job!

Although it does not look much I have been able to a lot of the compacted mud top surface off the grass level. I am guessing I willl be reseeding it at some stage.

Just to prove to Mrs. Woody that I have been busy I lined the 10 bags of rubble up in a spot where she can see them! I am, after all that, just tired now! Strange that - didn't I start this blog taking about tires?

Escape to the Man Cave!

Yesterday I did say I hoped to clean the cat sofa and then escape out into the man cave and do some model making activities. Well I was successful! I even managed to get a bike ride in to build on the 207 miles I did last month. I was hoping for 300 but the sub zero temperatures made the roads I venture onto ice rinks for about 10 days in January. I don't bounce very well these days so rather than risk injury I stayed in!

In the Man Cave I was going to do some more on the Tamiya Puma but got distracted (something that always happens to me) by my narrow gauge 009 layout. Since I reorganised and rebuilt my 00 gauge layout last October the 009 layout has remained stripped of loosed items and un run. I knew there was also an electrical issue on the wharf siding so whilst the layout was stripped of loose items it was opportune to deal with that issue. Tracked down to a loose wire feeding the track on the siding as shown by the red arrow in the picture below. I resoldered it to solve the problem.

 

The rear profile board also required trimming so whilst things were still accessible I did that. It needed to be level with the baseboard itself.

Cutting done and edge painted the profile is now the shape it needs to be.

All this took longer than I anticipated but I had time to clean the track, connect up a controller and have a loco running. Always great to see something running. I need to get the rest of the parts of the layout back on the baseboards but as I am probably heading to Rocks by Rail Museum tomorrow (first time this year to actually do some work) that may take a few days to happen.

Sofa wise I got my ancient but faithful VAX carpet and upholstery washer out of the cupboard. Nearly 30 years old now but it has been reliable. Monty the cat decided to hinder operations...

I am ashamed as to how dirty the sofa had got but you can see the difference a bit of claening makes.

The finished item after 3 hours of cleaning.

Shortly after it was approved as fit for use by part of the feline fleet - just hope they wiped their feet!

Officially finished!

Officially its al finished now. I look forward to the day I can say that about one of my layouts but that is probably years away! However and before going onto other things, I talked about Class 25 locomotives the other day and I did have a few minutes today running another one on my terminus layout. This time it is the Bachmann Class 25 in British Rail blue, No. 25286. Much like its two tone green counterpart the details are in my view still great for a 15 year old model. Running wise it is brilliant with smooth running even at a crawl. If you do get one of these older models try to avoid the very first release where the cab handrails are made of plastic. The handrails on those models are rarely straight and although a small item it is amazing how bad it makes the model look.

Back to the real World now after that model diversion and the conservatory rebuild is now officially finished with the final electrics being done and everything working. There are now operating lights so Mrs. Woody can examine, no matter what the time of day, in detail the painting that I have now also finished in there and no doubt draw up a list of areas requiring my further attention! I can almost see the list now with the last comment being 'Must try harder!'. 

I am somewhat shattered at the moment after the past few weeks of activity so tomorrow I may well just have a go at cleaning up the cat sofa (which is not exactly an easy task but desperately needs doing) so that it looks more at home in its new surrounds and then see if I can find some time in man cave for a restful bit of model making activities.