More of the same 2!

Yes it was another day of more of the same for me! More hedge/shrub/tree cutting at WMD HQ. In particular there is a conifer tree which is about 15 foot high and I normally trim it twice a year. However this was its first cut this year and it had certainly bushed out. Not the easiest of trees to trim either given I have to climb on a shed roof to get to the back of it and then use a ladder to get to the top of it at the front. I have always been cautious with ladders but the older I get the more cautious I become!

The before!

The after!

Tomorrow will see this lot go to the recycling center where it will begin its journey to become the compost for next year. As I said yesterday it is amazing just how much stuff is generated when you start cutting things back.

Having satisfied myself that Mrs. Woody must see the work  have done (yesterday she did not notice that her drive onto the driveway was tree branch free following my work until I told her!) I ventured off into the Man Cave where the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit awaited more painting. The deck and everything apart from the cabin needed to be painted light grey so some masking was done.

The cabin was masked by using a piece of card held against it as I sprayed. There was a little overspray but that was touched in with a brush and some of the dark grey paint that I had sprayed.

It is beginning to look interesting.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit different to the last few days as I am shattered and need a rest but try telling Mrs. W that!

More of the same!

You would think that after a day of vegetational butchery at the Rocks by Rail Museum yesterday that the last thing I would do would be to carry on with more of the same but back at WMD HQ! However that is exactly what I have been doing! Hedge, shrub and tree cutting has been carried out and there is more to do but Mrs. Woody should be happy as the tree that overhung the drive and blocked her view as she drove on to the drive is now cut back. Once you start hacking away at a tree it is amazing just how much space the cuttings take up as they are packed in sacks to go to the recycling center.

Continuing on the theme of more of the same the Dragon Panzer Ferry kit got some more paint treatment. This time a darkish grey for the hull and cabin. According to what I can find on the internet there is conflicting information as to what it was painted in real life so I have relied upon the instructions. Whilst the hull and cabin are a darkish grey the rest of the hull will be a light grey. Given that none of these vehicles survive as far as I know and there are no colour photos of it I don't think anyone can prove my choice as wrong.

I will leave the dark grey to dry overnight and then after tomorrows further adventures in vegetational butchery at WMD HQ I will be painting the other parts light grey. So it will be another day of more of the same! Oh joy!

A green day!

It is all about the colours in the past few days. Grey, red and now green. The green in this case refers to two things. Firstly the cab parts of the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck are now in green. The paint job needs further attention as I made the mistake of washing the cab which was in grey undercoat and although it was dry it was not really dry! The paint had absorbed moisture which really needed a day to dry off again. Oh well lesson learnt!. I will leave this a day or so before giving another coat which will hopefully dry glossy.

Meanwhile the cab interior is progressing. The right hand drive dashboard has been glued in place with super glue and the pedals and gear leaver added - on the right! 

Strange thing is that although Italeri make this kit as a left hand drive I noticed that on the floor pan there are location points on both sides for the pedals - most strange but very welcome!

The second part of the green day was a further day of planting out the flower beds. The other side of the garden is now done. 

With the space created in the greenhouse as the plants have come out I was able to pot up my home grown tomato plants that I am proud of!

It will be a red day once they hopefully start producing!

Starting the watering season!

A day of gardening here at WMD HQ taking advantage of the warm weather. Today saw the main flower bed planted out which was a task and a half as despite all the recent rain the ground is rock hard. A combination of watering, compost and sheer determination saw about ten trays of home grown plants set out, planted and watered. No idea how it will all look if they survive. I am no Alan Titchmarsh in gardening knowledge but if it all comes out green with some coloured flowers I will be happy and I am sure Mrs. woody will be - especially since she did not have to plant them!

Of course this now means that I have additional watering duties every day!

I did take the occasional break - important when it is hot outside as I have informed Mrs. W to justify the breaks - and managed to undercoat the cab parts to the Italeri DAF 95 Canvas Truck. The same grey that I used for the chassis was used and will be ideal for the green top coat.

It certainly looks a little less plastic and toy like with the grey applied. Hopefully with the warm weather it will dry fairly quickly. At least I don't need to water it!

Hiding the evidence!

In case Mrs. Woody is reading this I will start off with the fact that I did some more in-depth cleaning today and then got out into the garden which is more like a muddy field as described yesterday. Today I cleared up the fallen leaves. I tend to leave the leaves on the flower beds. They give some cover and protection to plants and it is amazing what can survive over the Winter and re-emerge in the Spring. They also provide the wildlife with a source of bugs. What is on the grass - I won't call it lawn as it is far from pristine - gets swept up. With the recent wind there are a lot about.

Usually the bags I fill get taken off to the recycling center but with builders on site who did not turn up today and their skip on my drive the leaves got put in there - all five big  bags worth!

Now you may say, that's all well and good Woody but if the wind blows tonight they will all blow out again! Thought of that and with my philosophy of working smarter not harder as I get older I pushed some of the skips contents over to cover the leaves! Not only that but the evidence of my leaves was hidden! The perfect crime! Knowing my luck though, the bottom of the skip will fall out when it gets lifted revealing my activity!

Hopefully Mrs. W satisfied that I have been working hard will not read as far as this so I can say that with a feeling of wellbeing after my days work  I took a well deserved, to me anyway, hour off to work some more on the Airfix Dodge 1 1/2 Ton Personnel Carrier. The front bumpers needed reattaching and when they were broken off at some point before I bought the kit they took some of the chassis with them. The winch that was attached to them was also in pieces.

The missing chassis was replaced with two pieces of square section plastic strip which conveniently filled the gap and once the glue set it was filed to shape.

I also strengthened the chassis on both sides with some plastic strip which will be mostly hidden when the body is fitted. Either that or I can argue that it was a field repair following the activity of a reckless driver.

The winch was also rebuilt. Strangely enough the drum had no representation of a cable so a raid on Mrs. W's sewing kit (I really do hope she has not read this far) saw some black cotton liberated and wound round the drum. I just need to fashion a hook of some sorts to go on the end.

In my inevitable way I temporarily put the chassis, load bed and cab together to see what it looks like so here are some picture of that. 

It is coming on! Just wish my rebuild of the conservatory was! Hopefully the builders are back tomorrow unaware of the hidden evidence in the skip!

Mixed up World.

I had to remind myself that today is the 13th November as I did some work in the garden today. Normally at this time of year the flowering bedding plants are dead and the other plants have gone into their Winter hibernation. I have more colour in the way of flowers now then I had in the Summer drought. These flower beds should be barren by now.

Yes, it is a mixed up World at the moment! However I can isolate myself, unless Mrs. Woody decides other wise, to the World of my Man Cave where although things are mixed up it is me doing the mixing!

Following on from yesterday when I had completed the landscape profiles for the valley sides around the viaducts I spent today dismantling most of it so that I could fully glue it all together. 

However it all comes together with the middle part now having a flat base for a road/lane and canal/river.

The viaducts slot into the gaps which at the moment makes the next stage of covering the polystyrene with paper towel soaked in plaster a lot easier. That will come in the next few days - hopefully!

Despite my previous success at keeping the mess of working with polystyrene to a minimum today in my mixed up World, there was a lot of mess!

 Oh well, it will clean up! Just a good job it is in my Man Cave and not the house!

End of the month so lots of things need to be done.

I had my Covid booster on Saturday and yesterday I felt terrible. Mrs. Woody was unaffected but that seems to be the way it goes with these things. If I am bad she is OK and vice versa. Anyway I woke up today feeling relatively well which was good as this week I need to get on top of preparing the garden for its Winter hibernation. However a 20 mile bike ride first brought my total for this year up to 5461 miles. 

Back at WMD HQ there are some things which should have been done earlier in the year like hedge cutting and tree pruning but with the drought affecting them during the summer I have left them to recover until now. Well with the amount of rain and warmish weather we have had over the last few weeks they have certainly recovered. I should have taken a 'before' picture of this tree but in my haste to get jobs done (please note that Mrs. W) I just went straight in but you get some idea of the fact that about 6 inches of growth all round was cut back from the various bags full of the debris now awaiting to go to the recycling center.

The tree certainly looks more manicured then it did before .

Having done that job I felt I ought to reward myself with a bit of model making. The two Metcalfe viaducts still need finishing - like a lot of things I do! As an aside Metcalfe have sent me the missing part which is great service from them. However because as I have discovered my kit, although bought this year, dates from 2006 the parts references have changed so the sheet sent is the wrong one. However an email to Metcalfe was answered within 30 minutes and the right part is on its way. Apparantly sheet references were changed when the kit was updated a few years ago. Again I have to say great service from this company.

I am building the parapets at the moment and although small parts there is a fair amount of preparation work to do on them. This is the sheet with one of the parapets which is made up of two main parts.

The core of the parts requires bending in half and although the part is partly cut through at the factory to get a neat fold requires scoring the back of the bend.

The core is then overlaid with another part that provides some relief  with inset brick work. All those cut outs required crayoning in to hide the card edge and that took some time but is worth it.

I have been using UHU glue for the substructure but I have bought some DeLuxe Materials card glue which most of the modelling magazines have recommended. Although a little costly I have to admit it is good! It has an instant grip which holds parts together and means I can move the build on quickly - well as quick as I go!

In my usual manner I have temporarily put the two parts I have semi completed so far in place on the main viaduct to see how they look.

Certainly adds to the structure and I only have another 14 sections to make!

Rain starts play!

That is right in my case - rain did start play for me. Let me explain. 

The last few weeks has been somewhat busy with other non modelling activities. At the beginning of June I had a Cataract operation which was a consequence of the treatment for my my detached retina which happened last April. My admiration and gratitude to the NHS here in the UK is overwhelming. Their care and treatment, especially at a time when covid has made things much more complex for the NHS, was superb and they saved mine as well as countless other peoples sight.

The good weather and light evenings of the last few weeks has also meant that I have spent a great deal of time continuing to landscape the garden and sort out the accumulated junk that I have horded over the past decades. Two trips to the scrap yard this week saw me take 450 kg of scrap metal to weigh in and a bewilderment as to why I had kept such junk for so long! Anyway the landscaping is done (mostly) and I now have an easier to maintain garden and hopefully something that looks better!

Hmmm! You could build a garden railway along that wall! 

Smudge the cat seems to be surveying the possibility!

One of those things that I had to do with landscaping the garden was to level off the lawn to the same level as the edging blocks that I laid. Mostly this involved lowering the lawn. If like me trying to cut a turf to a consistent depth turns out to be impossible with what emerges on the end of the spade being more cheese wedge shaped then flat bread, you will understand the problems of having to relay turfs which all have different depths to them. years ago I would have re-laid the turf and belted hell out of it with the back of the spade to get it to some resemblance of  level and then wonder why it died! As I get older such energetic activities are now beyond sensibility so with a bit of thought I created a turf cutting plank. I had an off cut of laminate flooring to which I nailed three pieces of inch and a half batten. The picture below shows it as well as the general idea of how to get consistent level turfs using an old and expendable saw riding along the top of the battens to cut off the surplus soil. You won't be using the saw for any form of woodworking again but it certainly made relaying the turfs much easier! The laminate floor is about the same width as my small spade which made cutting the turfs to the right width easy as well. Working smarter not harder as I get older! 

The good weather has now however broken and as with all UK summers the rain has arrived! This however has given me the chance to move myself into the dry of The Room of Gloom and make some progress on the Last Great Project which is my 00 gauge model railway and in effect start to play! The four segments of the baseboard are now bolted together with some M12 bolts and large penny washers to spread the load.

If I were organised or had some common sense I would have a hard copy track plan of what I was going to do. However I don't have hard copy but I do have in my mind the basic concept. As with most of my projects I know the basic concept I then work out the details as I go along. It may not be the best way but it works for me! So at the moment I have pieces of track laid out in roughly the layout I want it and it is now a case moving pieces about until the optimal layout appears. 

Apparently its going to be raining for a few days yet so rather than stop my play more progress may actually be made!