A somewhat unusual title to commence a blog entry even by my corny standards. However there is a story about this that does lead onto modelling matters!. Friday morning saw me take a break from butchering wood having achieved something that even Mrs Woody thought was 'nice'! I have got to the point where the floor and bookcases in Man Cave AKA The Room of Gloom are nearly finished. Much to my amazement the bookcases actually are of the same height, stand straight and stunningly have not collapsed once loaded with modelling magazines! More on this in another post but here are a couple of pictures of things so far.
Getting back to Friday, I do cycle most days and cycling on my own has always been that opportunity to unwind and think things through. A lot of problems have seen a solution created after a bike ride. However I do on occasions have the fortune to take a ride out with some company. Friday saw Mr Beecham arrive as my company for my ride. Mr Beecham is the artist who drew the various locomotives and T34 tank that featured in a post earlier this year. He is a very talented modeler and its a pleasure to see some of his models that he brings along to show me. I do take inspiration from his creations and it is always good to see and learn from other modelers approaches to building a kit. Annoyingly he is not only a talented modeler but a fairly quick cyclists too. I have cycled seriously for many years time trialing and road racing in my younger years and have about 200,000 miles on my legs which, if I were a car, I would probably have been scrapped by now! However getting old has meant I have slowed down and hills, especially these days, always seem steeper than they did 10 years ago. My hill climbing ability is perhaps also not assisted by the fact that I am a bit heavier, OK a fair amount heavier, than I was in my prime racing days. This leads to Mr Beecham leaving me behind on the hills. However not all is lost as although both our bikes are of a very similar equipment spec I can leave him behind on the descent where I am free wheeling and he is having to pedal to keep up. Gravity can indeed be your friend on occasions!
Moving onto getting this story back towards modelling matters we stopped for a bite to eat at a local place we know and ordered sausage breakfast cobs - ideal for the weight conscious cyclist but they are tasty! Whilst waiting for our drinks I spied that they had for sale various reproduction metal signs including the one at the head of this post - Get your Woody serviced here. Well being known as Woody made the decision to buy easy but there is a modelling connection which the sign suddenly brought back fond memories of.
On a trip to the USA some years ago I happened to be in a Walmart or Target store and I saw the Revell 1/25 scale 48 Ford Woody kit in amongst their range of kits they stocked. That had to come home with me even though I do not build car kits. Prior to the Revell kit I have only built the Airfix 1/32 scale VW Beatle and the Tamiya 1/24 VW Karman Giah. Anyway once home in sat in my pile of unmade kits for several years and then for no reason that I remember I built it. It was probably 10 or so years ago as I was still using enamel paints in stead of acrylics. I do recall it was a bit of a pig to mask up for spraying and that the green was a Humbrol green with a small amount of silver mixed in to give a slight metallic finish. However it is safe on a shelf and I dusted it off and became re-acquainted with an old build and the history behind it. Looking at it closely again there are some parts that could be improved but its a record of my model making skills at the time so its a bit of my history! I still like it and that is all that matters and what's more the memories it brought flooding back are priceless! Strange how a set of circumstances comes together and gives a nice result!
As I am still dealing with The Room of Gloom other modelling activities are on a bit of a back burner at the moment. However I have managed to be creative in the green house which is slowly becoming green! Usually my gardening and planting of seeds ends up as a scale model of a desert or lunar landscape but this year things seem to be going right!
Not sure whether I will get some more done on the Room of Gloom tomorrow (Sunday) and on Monday I have to go and collect something model related but more on that once collection has been made!
