Size isn't everything!

 

I normally do things big! 'Make it large' as the fast food chains like to entice you. Its the same with models. put a 1/76th scale kit and a 1/35th or even a 1/25th in front of me and its almost certain I will go for the biggest scale. Why? I don't know. Maybe its the cost thing in that for not a lot more with some kits you get a model four times the size with more parts, more detail and a big presence. 

However, I have been known to build small kits and on looking back through some of my models I remember enjoying making them as they were relatively quick to build and to be frank although my eyes are not as good as they were, there is still a fair amount of detail. The model pictured at the start of this post is the Revell 1/76 Panzer II Ausf. F complete with a basic diorama setting. Back in about 2015 it cost me £5 from Hobby Craft (there was a branch near my office and after a bad morning I would walk there and see if there were any bargains - very stress relieving!) I recall I built, painted and weathered it in about four or five evenings and it was very enjoyable and it looks good - or I think it does! Size isn't always the most important thing!

On other fronts, work on damaging my back continues as the garden revamp continues but hopefully the end is in sight! Wall building at the moment dodging the belated April showers that have arrived in May!

When all this is finished it will hopefully be back to some full on model making!

Turning my back on model making or just getting a bad back?

More about the model in the picture above in a moment. I thought I needed to start with a image of a model just to prove that this blog is mainly about model making! The model may have turned its back to me but I haven't turned my back on modelling although the back does ache! 

The lack of any posts to this blog over the last week however does mean that model making activities are on the back burner at the moment. My life at the moment appears to be centered around a major garden revamp and cycling. I am up to 1762 miles this year which is good going for me. Garden wise, its not the biggest out their but big enough for me and Mrs W's needs and still provides a shed load of work at the moment. Yesterdays escapades in involved moving 7 Yorke stone slabs about 4 foot long, one foot wide and 4 inches deep. No way of weighing them but I guess somewhere about 75 to 100 kg. Move those around for a while and no need for a gym session! The day before digging a 25 foot long, 18 inch deep trench through clay to put a power cable into the Room of Doom. There is probably another 2 to 4 weeks of work left depending on weather, what hidden problems I find and how my back stands up to it all!

Now back to the model! It is a Italeri R620 Scania Atelier that I built back in 2010. The kit was probably the start of Italeri producing various customised versions of their Scania kit. The kit is inaccurate in a number of areas including having the wrong rear hubs but as there are a lot of Scania fans in Europe it has always been a good seller despite its short comings. 

I built the kit out of the box apart from putting a couple of airlines on. The bodywork was sprayed Humbrol metallic green with silver mixed into it. The issues with the kit were that some of the decals broke up on wetting so I ended up having to make do with what stayed intact. Whilst Italeri decals are nice and thin this does mean that they are prone to breaking up when they are wetted to separate them from the backing sheet. There are solutions that you can get to cover the decal before wetting it to strengthen it but I did not expect an issue with a kit that was only a year or so old. The other issue was trying to get the pivot pins in to connect the cab to chassis. I failed! I do remember it seeming to be an impossible task and I gave up before I damaged the model. At least the cab can be lifted straight off the chassis to see the engine! 

Pictures below taking me back to 2010 when my back didn't ache as much! Oh well back to more digging but I have not turned my back on model making!

Projects of Joy and Woe!

 A bit thin on blog entries at the moment. Not because things are not busy for me but more that not a lot of the business has included model making. There are times like that and I am lucky this year so far in that I have spent more time on model making in the first four months of the year than probably in the previous four years!

At the moment there is a large project of redoing the garden. I am not a highly skilled creative gardener and my results are more likely to feature in a guide on how not to do your garden rather than be showcased at the Chelsea Flower Show. However I enjoy it and that is what that matters and hence the Project of Joy! At the moment work is centered around some hard landscaping and laying paving blocks is taking much time up. I do find this sort of thing very therapeutic. There is something about bringing mortar and blocks together that fascinates me! I can understand why Winston Churchill enjoyed brick laying as a hobby and there is a lot of information about this aspect of his life here.. My work is probably a shadow of his but progress is being made. As an aside getting materials, especially cement is proving a problem. I am told that there was a fire at a large cement works which has caused major issues. I had to travel 60 plus miles to actually get a couple of bags!

Moving onto the Project Of Woe or as I will call it the POW, this is a tale that typifies my modelling! Back in 2016 I bought a Bachmann Baldwin in 009 gauge in War Department grey as used in World War 1. Great model so a couple of wagons to match were bought. 

Then the idea that being the time of the Centenary of WW1 it would be good to build a small layout with a WW1 theme. By about August 2018 I finally got round to starting the layout! No worries - a couple of months will see it done! Wind on to the present and there is the start of the layout and a series of problems that have dogged its progress.

First off I decided to build the baseboard out of foam board. Several sheets of foam board from The Range and a hot glue gun built a reasonable baseboard and WOW was it light in weight! Great! I started to lay the track and out came my stock of second hand 009 gauge points bought probably 20 years ago. Not sure if they were Peco or not but after a short while the sleeper bases just broke up. Having replaced them landscaping then commenced and with a coat of brown base paint the whole thing looked like this.

A nice simple layout with a passing loop and siding along with a slight hill to give some interest to the landscape. It was at this point that I suddenly became aware that foam board was not as stable as I thought and hot glue gun joints were not structurally very strong. What came about is that landscaping the top surface with plaster meant that as the plaster dried out and slightly shrunk it warped the baseboard - Oh Woe! I ended up with a banana shaped baseboard! I thought that I had a photo but can not find it. To cut a long story short two attempts with adding a wooden frame to which the base board was glued and bent back flat with some rather large G clamps were required to rectify the problem. Talking to someone who has success in using foam board baseboards has revealed that there are different qualities of foam board and you can get a much better and stronger joint between the foam board parts if you use the special cutter that gives a stepped joint. There are also a number of other tool s that are useful and some can be seen here 

Having got a flat baseboard again some scenic work has been undertaken and in an earlier series of posts I dealt with the various Shelf Queens that I finished and they are for this layout. At present it all looks very stark and apologies for the picture quality but it was not the best light to take photos when I did these.

It is going to be some time before I get back to this project but there is a basis of an interesting layout there so hopefully it will become a Project of Joy one day. In the meantime I have to go back to my garden work and today is moving some large Yorke paving slabs - Oh Joy!!!!!!

The never ending tale of wood butchery!

Not much to report on model making but here at WMD HQ the last few weeks have certainly seen some woodworking going on. As this is all connected with the Man Cave AKA the Room of Gloom (the garage is the Room of Doom) where my Last Great Project will reside I see it almost a model making activity. There are three major tasks to carry out in the Room of Gloom. In no order, the baseboard for the Last Great Project, a laminate floor  and a set of bookcases to house a 40 or so year collection of modelling magazines and books. 

If I were organised, if I had thought about it, if I had a plan, then the laminate floor would have gone in whilst the room was empty, then the bookcases would have been built and then the baseboard. Instead today I have a half finished baseboard in a room with a half laid laminate floor on which now stand some half finished bookcases! However it sometimes just happens like that and as the magazines and books are already in the room and will have to be moved to allow the second half of the floor to be laid it made sense (to me at least) that I make the bookcases so that I would only need to move the magazines and books once. I'm not yet at the stage of calling DIY SOS and hopefully some real progress will present itself by the end of the week. This is what things look like at the moment.

The bookcases are built from B&Q furniture board and eventually there will be five of these to fit along the back wall of the room where the laminate flooring buts up to in the above picture.

The photo above makes it look as though the whole bookcase leans but I can confirm it is true and straight - strange what my photography can do to even the simplest of objects!

One of things I am very lucky to have is a chop saw in the picture above. Bought it about three years ago and although a fair amount of cash it has been invaluable and paid for itself probably just in the savings in wasted material as a result of poorly cut joints. I can now get straight right angle or other angle cuts with no fuss and it makes cutting wood a pleasure! As with all tools you get some experience as you use them and one of the lessons I have learnt is to let the blade get up to full speed before starting to cut the wood and cut slowly across the timber. If you push the blade fast through the wood you might complete the cut in a second but you will probably end up with a splintered piece of wood instead of a nice sharp cut. Spend a few more seconds on the cut and you get a much better finish. As with all powered tools read the manual and take note and act on the safety advice!

Something a little cheaper but just as invaluable are the pair of right angle jointers I have had for over 30 years. They allow you to hold two pieces of wood together at a true right angle and once set you have your hands free to drill holes, put screws or nails in or whatever else you need to do. One of the jointers is in the picture below.

Much as I do enjoy the better weather we are now having it does bring about that time sapping commitment to gardening! Just before Easter I treat my lawn (probably better described as arid rough grass land) to a 'Feed and Weed' treatment. One of the results is that the grass is growing like crazy - along with the weeds! Well at least the feed part of the treatment worked! However I am going to have to get that cut this week at some time before Mrs Woody makes comment! 

Its all go here at WMD HQ!

Easter break.

Well a somewhat different April the First and Easter again due to the current pandemic and a wild variation of weather with everything from frost and snow to T-shirt heat! 

April the First did actually see me finish the last of the end baseboards - no joke! As you can see from the picture my wood butchery required the use of several ever handy G-clamps which form an integral part of my tool kit along with mallet, hammer, lump hammer and sledge hammer.  

The arrival of Easter saw me take a bit of a break from model making although I did finish painting the end two boards and then put all four baseboards together in my Man Cave/Room of Gloom and......they actually fitted together without having to resort to any of the aforementioned hitting implements!

Sizes have slightly changed with the two end boards now being 2 foot 6 inches rather than 3 foot as originally planned. It was one of those moments at looking at things in the Man Cave with a tape measure and an inquisitive mind that led me to realise that by shortening the baseboard by a foot I could, because of the 'curved' ends, turn the whole layout round in the room and place it either along the backwall or the side wall. Made sense to me to have this versatility so that is what happened. It may have an adverse impact on my envisaged track plan but I think I will be able to get away with this change. As you can probably tell from my posts whereas any competent railway modeler would have used one of the many available track planning programmes to draw up their ideas into a fully detailed technical drawing my plans exist in my mind! Not always the best way of doing things but it usually works for me.

With some good weather other interests in my life have also been progressing. My cycling adventures saw me on the First of April complete 1005 miles this year so far. Gardening wise despite my total inabilities in this area the green house has suddenly come to life and that too needs a tidy up especially as the trays of seedlings and potted up plants are rapidly expanding. 

That together with the dreaded weeding seem to have taken a fair amount of time up this Easter but hopefully the next few days will see progress on other model based projects. As they say on TV - Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible!