Rust reference

Today I am sitting here feeling sorry for myself as both Sue and I are suffering from a stinking cold. It always seems to happen to us as soon as we get a chance to relax. In the past, it would be because we would work all year and as soon as we took the foot off the pedal, to wind down for Christmas and new year, we would catch something. Last year we had a busy year and we also hosted a family gathering on the 30th of December, so we had been full on for a few weeks. On new years eve, I sat down and said to Sue that we can now relax for a bit before getting on with the new workshop. That was it, almost immediately the nose was running and the coughing started. I think we are over the worst now, and work will continue with the garden buildings next week, weather permitting.

For now, I have been keeping busy doing my second favourite thing, research. For a while now I have been thinking about doing a spot of plastic scale modelling. Years ago, as a teenager, I was very keen. In fact my first job, after leaving college, was working for a publisher who published a model magazine. 

Looking at the the current model scene, things are very different now compared to my active days, fifty years ago! Today it is more about the painting than the modelling. There is a kit available for most subjects and with the mass of after-market accessories available, most things are catered for. Take a look on Youtube to see some remarkable creations in paint. Some of the rust effects look fantastic, but there seems to be one thing missing to me - they are flat. Take a look at the picture of a container below. The paint is flaking around the the rust and leaving a raised edge.      

Real rust!

An old-school method of doing this is to use salt as a mask. The model is painted in a rust colour first, and then the salt is applied damp in mounds. This is left to dry before spraying with the final finish, building it up around the salt. Once dry the salt can be carefully removed leaving the topcoat gently lifting around the rusted area. Today's chipping and weathering effects can be added to enhance the look. I intend to explore the art of 'grot' modelling soon. I will post the results here.

Ralph.  

Time to revive this old blog...

The past few years have been nothing like I had expected them to be, when we left London, nearly five years ago, but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Very soon the new workshop will be up and the journey can continue. 

Where does the time go? Does it really go faster the older you get? These are not questions of fact, merely questions based on conjecture. I am sitting here on the North Kent coast just short of five years after leaving the house we lived in for over 40 years, in an area I had lived in since I was born, 63 years earlier. That time seems to have meandered along from one year to the next in a sedate orderly fashion, punctuated with one Christmas after the other. 

We moved here to Herne Bay in June 2019. Two months later, my mother joined us. This had always been the intention, but just not so soon after moving in. She had injured her hand rather badly in the infamous hand blender incident, giving a whole new, and unintended, interpretation of the machine's name.

As it turned out, it was just as well she had decided to stay with us, as a few months later we were in the grips of the first Covid-19 lock-down. Since then the world, well at least my world, has completely changed. Sue and I are now retired, and yes, the fast cars have even given way to a Volvo estate, our second one! We are now officially a couple of old fuds. We have even been known to fall asleep on one of the benches for 'old people' to sit on and look out to sea. The problem is, my brain still has me down as a thirty-something.

I can't believe I have not had a workshop for over four years. The old one is still in bits and will be used for other things as we managed to acquire a very nice log cabin that will make an excellent workshop, albeit slightly smaller than the one we had in London. This is not a problem as we have built another shed that will be used as a store for all the stuff that used to clutter up the old workshop. Another building will be a machine shop and house a couple of new-to-us machines we picked up just before Christmas, last year when we got involved in a house clearance - we only went there to collect a few bricks... But that is another story.

With no workshop to house the tools and stock, stuff has been in storage all over the place, some of it is miles away. I can't wait to get my stuff back in one place. At the moment I can't find half of the tools I want and the rest are buried in awkward places. Their retrieval usually resulting in a cascade of boxes and some expression of frustration along the lines of "Oh dear, what a nuisance" or words to that effect. 

Remote working has been all that has been possible. Most of that has been mending things rather than creating anything.     

Ralph.