I have been sporadically modeling. On last post I had caught the paper modeling bug. Upon returning, inspired, from the Paper Modelers Convention I went at it full bore, literally. There is a plethora of free paper models online that can be downloaded an printed out. I only have ink jet printers so the prints need to be sealed with a spray varnish prior to working with them otherwise the glue could potentially cause the glue to bleed. The paper kits (all German, Polish, or Russian) that I purchased at the convention have very high quality paper and printing - well worth the $15 or so. Back to the "full bore" comment - my first model, a free download, was a 1:1 scale model of a Heckler and Koch 45 caliber submachine gun. Looked interesting and challenging and free (sans cost of ink and paper) I got about 16 hours into the project and realized just how time consuming it was going to be to build. For a second I considered giving up, but paper modeling can be very obsessive and so long as a movie is playing on tv, not a bad way to spend some time. I pushed on, and probably at least 120 hours later, I had a gun, abet, made out of printer paper.
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| DEFENDING MY TRAINS WITH MY PAPER GUN - NOTICE ANGRY OLDER WHITE MAN LOOK |
A funny aside, its one of those things that once I built, I didn't really no what to do, so I leaned it up against a bookshelf in my parlor/man cave. Was proud of my work, but also there was a certain "shock" value for friends that stopped by. If it was real, in New Jersey, with a folding stock, silencer, large magazine, and short barrel, I'd probably be looking at 20 years. I forgot it was even there and during the local NMRA January Division meet layout tour, I brought a few model railroaders up to the parlor to show them my z-scale coffee table layout. They seemed interested, but all suddenly had "to get going". Later I realized the paper gun was right behind me, next to the z-scale layout!
I followed up the gun, with a 1:200 scale model of a container ship. Again, very high quality paper and printing. I'm about half way, and probably at least 100 hours into this build, but I had to put it aside temporarily, as I was getting a little fried from the paper modeling, and after the aforementioned January layout tour I was inspired to get back to some trains. I'm determined to finish up the blast furnace precipitator complex. I'm adding additional piping that crosses the tracks to a non-modeled third (or fourth since we have the ferro furnace also) blast furnace. And this piping also extends to a convenient stopping point where the clean gas lines for the blowing engine house, the boiler house, and B-Furnace stoves will branch off. My dilemma with the piping is where do I break it. It's a bit harder, and doesn't look as good with separations. The result is a fair majority of the larger dirty and clean gas piping will be permanently glued together and when it's time to finally paint the precipitator assembly, it will probably be a two person job to move it from the basement, our to garage to paint.
I will try to update more frequently as time allows - a few event we went to lately I'll cover in separate posts - Cabin Fever, a model engineering show in Lebanon, PA, and our yearly Battle of the Bulge reenactment at Ft Indiantown Gap, PA. Also, as of yesterday I finished building a 3d Printer with the help of my son Jimmy. We are printing out 1/100 war-game miniatures for him as I write this and expect to make some model railroad items on it soon. This will also be covered in an upcoming post. Also some book reviews.
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| 3d Printer kit - Future post |
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