1st Cook

 1st day of holiday and I stripped down the old mangle, scrubbed and washed it. Then setup some parts in the first cook. Good old electrolysis doing the hard work for me.

Summer holiday projects

 Well I managed to pickup another 1900's mangle, this time a smaller version to do a restore on over the summer and convert it into a printing press. With over 50 meters of 1.8 meter fencing to paint and 100 meters or so of post and rail, i'll need something to break up the job and hide from the mid day sun. 

The pile of shame also needs some attention, but that can always wait, its summer after all. But I really do need to get some paint on the Shatter Point terrain and the many boxes of legion I have stacked in the corner. 

Broken

 

Yep, almost broke my finger the other day, thankfully the fan gave way and broke first. I was adjusting the position of my resin printer in the cabinet after doing a bit of cleaning and managed to accidentally put my finger to close to the fan, which clipped my index fingernail. After a lot of cursing and swearing I checked the fan, it had broken off a few blades along with a good chunk of my finger nail. To my surprise no blood, just a nice black and blue finger tip a day later.

New fan ordered and installed… with a guard this time. …my wife calls it experiential learning

I just call it was it is …. “ F@#$%ing idot”

Paint Rack for AK, Army Painter and Vallejo dropper paints

 With the addition of AK paints to my collection I found that storage has become an issue, since my existing storage rack didn’t fit them, thanks to the large cap on the AK bottles. After a bit of searching around online there wasn’t a lot of options, so I started designing my own to take all three brand that I use, Army Painter, Vallejo and AK paints. After printing off a few squares with different diameters I figured out the best diameter for the front and back support. Did a couple of test prints of a holder for one bottle then used the scale to a whole row of 10.  Still needs a little adjustment as I keep forgetting about the PLA expansion and end up sanding parts back a bit to make them fit. Overall, I’m happy with the diameters and the slight drop from front to back to help keep the paints in the rack for when you bump the desk etc. Last thing I need is paints falling onto freshly painted resin miniatures. So one more test print before I expand out to printing a rack of for 50 paints.

Front View

Back View

Clos up of Front and back 

Switch box

 I finally got around to making a proper switch box for my painting desk light that I made. I designed the cady for the power converter and switch in tinkercad ... easy to use online app. After the first design and print was a bit to small and some tweaks it came out nice and works well. Still need to tidy up the LED mounting and cable, but eh light is so much brighter and even that have two lamps.

Mangle restore

 After a lot of elbow grease, electricity, washing crystals and a good drop or two of my blood the old washing mangle is restored. The metal parts anyway, still got the wooden guide boards front and back to make up. Pretty pleased with the outcome, so really really hoping she will work well for printing my lino-cuts and etchings.

Beforehand

Restored

One down one to go.

 Tonight I managed to completely strip down one leg of the Mangle with quite a bit of elbow grease, power drill and Dremel. That original layer of green enamel paint was well and truly stuck on. Still got a bit of light sanding to remove the rust off the wider parts of the legs which I'll hit with the multi-tool and sanding head tomorrow, then onto the final leg. 

Hoping for some more fine weather tomorrow so I can maybe get the other parts sprayed with the first enamel coat.

Primed and ready to paint

 Got the mangle parts mostly done, all bar the legs paint striped and cleaned and now undercoated with CRC rust converter ready for a test assemble before I apply a epoxy paint coat. Still got some sanding of the rollers to complete, but they are getting close to finishing.

Very happy with the outcome so far, really looking forward to getting the legs finished and it put back together. 

Foliage : part 2

After soaking the leaves in the AK mix for 20 odd hours, took them out and placed them on some paper towels and dabbed them dry, then placed a few more paper towels on top and left them for a few hours, then I added a weighty box to the top of half of the leaves so I could compare what happens to them. Overall it only used about 1/5 of the bottle if that.

 

The ones under the weight flattened out really nicely and were easy to use with the leaf punch. The other were way more natural looking so that will work for stuff I'm not going to punch out like small fern fonds and actual sicks and branches.

It didn’t take long to punch a good amount of leaves out and the different colours so will now have to glue some onto my Lecky model. 

Tree of life : yggdrasil

Something a little different for me, a drawing and ink of the tree of life - yggdrasil.

It's drawn on some of my early handmade paper, recycling various papers from A4 used office paper, old magazines and the like. It's pretty rough paper and I've improved a lot since making this paper. The earlier prints I did on teh weekend workshops are on my newer paper.

Foliage

 While looking for some model leaves to add to my Leachy model I found this AK product to preserve natural plants so I thought I'd give it a try, at $21 from the local store it's not breaking the bank and if it works well, I have an entire forest behind my place to source materials from so it could turn out to save some money. So on my evening walk tonight I collected a bunch of autumn maple leaves of various colours, along with a few varied petals from some flowers. Soaking them in the liquid for 24hr in an old takeaway container.

Will see what happens in a few days after I dry them, and try using my leave punch.

Diorama : Friction Garage

 Once I started on Amanda Pistons and watching a few videos online I got enthusiastic and thought I try out a full-on diorama and get away from painting war gaming minis for a bit. The plan which has morphed a few times as I build it. Basic idea was to have a cyberpunk style garage.  First up was some oil barrels. Again upscaled off some models from 3D Printable Oil Drums by Marián Corvis Kronauer (myminifactory.com) 

Second, I found some concreate mix from Ak Interactive in the local store, so gave that a go, following along with their YouTube video which gave me the idea for the floor stripes. Still got alot to tidy up on it after trying out a few different things. it's actually really good product and easy to use.

At last

At last they finally arrived. After my initial order 3 months ago failed..e.g. got canceled due to no stock. I found some online in Aussie and within a week I have them. 

Also mounted some led lights into my spray booth and did a quick test wire up and all things going. So now I just have to solder up the wires and insulate then properly so I don't zap myself. 

Spray booth

 This evening I finally got some time to try out my new table saw and started work on my spray booth. Used some salvaged building plywood from the rubbish skip next door. It's by no means perfect, but not bad for my first time on a table saw.

The extraction fan plate is from a server rack cabinet that I don't use, so just need to add some lights and wire it all up safely. Then figure out the best way to build the top and extraction tubes to go out the window.

Scotch and a Spray booth.

 An odd mix, Scotch and a Spay booth ... sounds dangerous if I think about it. :-) 

Since my last bottle seemed to evaporate all by itself, I needed ...yes NEEDED something for the long weekend. A little sweet warmth and easy drinking, very nice drop and a good price.

 

Started doing the first coat on some terrain this evening, and very quickly realized I really need a spray booth especially with winter comping on and my new hobby room defiantly deserves it.

 

I remembered I had an old extractor fan from my computer rack that I don't use, that, along with the plywood I picked out of the neighbors rubbish skip, I should be able to make up a nice solid unit with the fans. I'll be able to make up a window mount for the tube out the window to hold it in place. Lots to think about and plan, electric wiring, air flow, storage when not in use, lighting, dimensions. 

So the planning begins.