Mirroring yesterday!

Today was a bit of a mirror of yesterday with the second curtain pole and curtains fitted. Bonus points for me from Mrs. Woody then! 

Add to that, the mirror that has laid in its packaging in the hall for the last three years has finally been unpacked and mounted on the wall. Much to my amazement I managed to put the hidden fixing screws in the right place first time! The swear jar feels neglected recently!

I should be truly basking in Mrs. W's admiration after this. However these positives probably only go someway to the countering the negatives that I have in abundance!

Modelling time has been limited and for no reason in particular the T80 tank has emerged back on the work bench. Maybe it is because it is manufactured by MiniArt a Ukrainian company who we all hope will somehow survive intact and safe as with everything else there and come back to the market in the future once the World gets to its senses and returns to some normality. I did manage to do a few bits of the photo etch parts and the large grill is bent to shape awaiting gluing in place.

Curtains for me!

Hopefully not curtains for me in a bad way but I have done a job on Mrs. Woody's 'To do list'! One new curtain pole and curtains are up! I might of got the other pole and curtains up if it had not been for a few problems! However problems always seem to go hand in hand with any project I do! Getting the old curtains down and the curtain rail were not a problem. Neither was marking out the position of the new fixings. However I should have taken note of my gut feeling that the supplied screws and raw plugs were not up to the job especially when I put a pair of heavy curtains on them. I therefore had to go back and undo what I had already done and then redo the fixings again with some heavier duty screws and raw plugs from the WMD HQ stores. However we got there so hopefully Mrs. W will be half impressed today and hopefully fully impressed tomorrow when the other pole and curtains go up. Hopefully the creases will fall out - I don't do ironing!

Hopefully now I know the weakness of the fixings, have my tools out and know what I am doing (really???) tomorrow should see the job complete in half the time!

Prior to the curtain escapades I did do a 22 mile bike ride which saw me pass over the bridge above Elton and Orston railway station. You may wonder what the significance of this station is? Well it is actually the second least used station in the Country with an average of 1.3 exits/entries a week and it only has two scheduled trains that stop a day! More details of that by clicking here and some history of the station by clicking here. I obviously passed at a special moment as two trains passed each other and I just managed to get a few of pictures of this and one of the trains disappearing towards Grantham. It would certainly make an interesting and simple model to build with no buildings and lots of trees. Do I have a glimmer of an idea for another project???? However it could well be curtains for me if Mrs. W suspects another of my projects in the making!

A blast from the past!

Having only managed to gloss varnish the cab of the Scania 143H to protect the decals today I thought it might be interesting to look at one of my earlier truck models. This a Revell kit of a Mercedes tractor unit that I built back in 2007. I painted it in a 'in ya face' colour scheme and even put a number plate in the windscreen saying that! I added the air lines and the chrome lady on the front grill as well as some chains on the back of the chassis. I still like the colour scheme and I do have a fondness for this model for some reason I even don't know of! Maybe its like me - In ya Face - as Mrs. W would say!

 

Has Spring Sprung?

A great day! Clocked just over 1,000 miles cycling this year after my ride today and had a fantastic time at the Rocks by Rail Museum. Today I was clearing lineside vegetation which I enjoy as there is a quick visual impact. It also needed a bonfire which I was put in charge of - maybe this is preparation for me to be allowed loose on a steam train? Probably not! This is all part of the preparations for the start of this years season and the Museum opens this Easter so not long now. Given the weather it really does feel as though spring is here so here is hoping for a great summer although if Mrs. W finds out about my start on horticultural matters there will no doubt be a list of gardening activities to be undertaken back at WMD HQ coming my way!

Back at WMD HQ the other side of the Scania 143H has now received its complment of decals and I am hoping that it all dries OK. Just have to wait and see.

Decal delight!

A wonderful 23 mile bike ride helped me forget about the current World situation but did make me appreciate even more the local environment and doing things others no longer have a chance of doing for the foreseeable future. An hour in the Man Cave AKA whisked me away into the delightful world of applying decals to the Italeri Scania 143 model. I have applied the decals to one side today. A complicated job with 12 separate decals, many of which had to line up with others to look right. There was also a need to trim some and try to get them to conform to the various contours of the cab shell. That latter issue is taken care of a decal softening solution which in this case is Micro Sol. This is supposed to soften the decal material so that gravity lets it drop into the dips of the model. When you first apply it the decals wrinkle up as in the photo below and it looks like a disaster which is typical of my work anyway! However leave it a few hours and hopefully all dries to a wrinkle free and contour hugging finish. That is the theory anyway! I will take a look later complete with a ' just in case' contribution for the swear jar! Hope I will be delighted though!

Spoiler alert!

This is not a spoiler alert for Mrs Woody that her car has been washed, waxed and the tyres polished up as she knows it has as she instructed it to be done! In my model World however the spoiler alert is all about the side spoilers on the cab of the Scania 143H. Yesterday I glued some angle plastic strip to the two spoilers and today I mounted them to the cab. Not a massive job but I needed to be alert to get them in the right position and securely glued. I am letting the glue harden over night as I want to make sure they are really secure before adding decals. 

I also had a bit of watching the trains go round my 009 narrow gauge layout where my little model World is at peace with itself and fuel prices are somewhat more affordable - the delights of the escapism of making models!

From a different angle.

Slowly the cab of the Italeri Scania 143H model truck kit is coming together. Most of the construction of the cab has involved ensuring good parts fit and fettling where there is a need for adjustment. Doing that gives a good strong join between parts. One area however that has concerned me is the mounting of the two aerodynamic side spoilers at the end of each side of the cab. The instructions just show a mounting bracket attaching to the cab top spoiler and the rest of the spoiler somehow magically attached to the cab side with thin air. I real life there would be brackets but non are included in the kit. I had to get creative and think of a different angle to solve this problem. Angle! Yes the very thing! I have therefore used some plastic angle from my stock of useful junk parts to create some brackets. I needed to create a few cut outs to avoid parts of the spoilers but the angle has been glued to both spoilers and I am leaving them over night to dry off before doing anything else. How successful this will be I don't know but sometimes you just need to take that different angle on a problem.

I have also painted the rubber surround to the windscreen on the front panel. I used some masking tape as most of the sections were straight and free handed the curved parts. Not my favorite job though but had to be done.

From a different angle, windscreen surround painted and plastic angle glued to the side spoilers.

Fettling the cab!

Sounds odd to be fettling but before I go any further with the decals on the Italeri Scania 143H I need to start putting the cab together. The fit of the parts overall is reasonable but to get a model that looks reasonable there is sometimes a need to trial fit parts and adjust and alter as necessary. In other words time for some fettling. Sounds relatively easy but if you are dealing with painted parts it can get a bit tricky. I already managed to get some finger marks in the paint due to some glue on my fingers but luckily having the sense ( most unusual for me as Mrs. W would confirm) to let the glue dry, I was able to use some model polish to remove them. In visual form not a lot of progress but sometimes the time taken to do the fettling pays dividends later.

Growing and cutting grass.

Today saw the WMD lawn mower withdrawn from its winter quarters. A check of the oil, some fresh petrol and the engine primed saw it start on the third attempt! Not bad and with the cutting blade set high the lawn looks a lot better. Mrs. W will be pleased - hopefully!

That was the cutting grass part and once completed meant I had the opportunity for an hour on the 009 narrow gauge layout where todays task was to grow some grass. I had previously 'graveled' the service station forecourt and last night I had given it a wash of some dilute greyish paint to tone it down a bit. Today I glued the chapel in place and used some card that I had given a wash of the same paint that I used on the gravel to manufacture some concrete slabs. Slab sized pieces were cut and then laid around the chapel to give an effect that they had been in place for a long time and had moved and vegetation was finding its way into the gaps.

With those in place it was time to get the grass growing with some static grass. Around the chapel I used some Peco 2mm Spring grass to give a representation of grass that got mown on occasions. At the back of the service station I used the same mix as around the river bank to give the impression of unkempt grass left to its own devices. I need to clean off the stray fibers from the chapel once the glue has fully dried and then add some further vegetation but the basics are there and I think looking good! I particularly like the grass in the joints between the slabs.

Using a sub-base means I can work on these at the comfort of my work bench which does make life easier.

Back on the layout and it is beginning to come to life.

Getting a face!

A couple of hours to put on a few decals on a model may seem a bit over the top. However the decals on the front cab panel of the Scania 143H have been difficult. Partly this is because they don't fit particularly well and I have had in some cases to trim and cut parts out and secondly they need to line up properly or they will look terrible. I cant claim that they are perfect but its the best I can do under the circumstances so here is where I have got up to getting the Scania its face.