fifteen minute modeller

fighting procrastination fifteen minutes at a time

Author: 15minutemodeller (Page 9 of 10)

Stock take

18th February 2014 / / 3 Comments

Just a quick post and I took the decision to see what I actually have inventory wise. I kinda feel this pic is a bit like the images of fighter jets with there full payload laid out in front of them and something I use to take great interest when I was in my teens but now I am going to take each box and lay out and inventory everything that I have. I am then going to sell all the stuff I am not going to use and hope to get enough to fund a new lathe, or airbrush or maybe if I am really lucky both.

I think it may give me the opportunity to sort all of it out as at the moment I have no idea what is where and I keep thinking ‘oh where’s so and so’ and not finding it/them and then going out and buying another. So there are many duplicates and although this is a good thing at the moment I really want to stop slapdash purchasing. Case in point (pun intended) I was hoping to start my 2mmfs wagon kit, but like hell can I find the broaches I brought for similar process. So before I hit the buy online button I am going to make sure I can’t find them first.

As you will see there is quite an eclectic selection of 00 – early BR loco and wagons; N – BR Blue and mixture of everything between that and big four; N – US all North Eastern; Z – Swiss (my fav box set), and US – CP; NG in the form of HOm and 009 and lots of other bits such as point motors and my SPROG. Anyway enough for tonight.

Box Inventory 1

Temporary Tinkerings

16th February 2014 / / 0 Comments

With this new found surge of mojo inducing activity and following on from last nights post I have set up a temporary little work bench that I can leave set up and not have to remove myself from the kitchen table every time I want to do some modelling. Although not shown here I came across a number of points/switches in the boxes that I had completely forgotten I had, but that’s for a future post. But back to the workbench, I also found a small vice cheap and cheerful, well so cheap that the jaws are almost at 45degs so is it worth trying remedial work on it or to bin and look for a new quality item. Well in these days of austerity it may have to be the former.

Also I think a little tray for banging and bashing might be a good idea and also a good mounting point for the vice. In fact I would quite like to build a tool box for my modelling tools and whilst going through my back catalogue of Railway Modellers there are some good articles to inspiration and ideas from. I fact I would love to set some time aside to sit back in the afternoon with a cuppa in a sunny corner and refresh and relive those happy teenage years, so long ago 🙂

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Second up is a pic of an LNER horse box that I will be using on my 2mmFS layout of Leyburn when I start to build it though I think this may be the last big project due to the rate of knots I am currently working at. This was used to take racehorses from Middleham where the racing community had grown and to this day thrives, to Leyburn for transport on to Ripon, York and all points to Newmarket. An Oxford Diecast model that I hadn’t realised I had brought and was thinking that this might be an ideal first 3D printing project but then out of Aladdin’s cave this came chugging and smoking, well at least in my mind. I think that a dusting of Tamiya powders will offset the glossiness. One thing I do think detracts a bit from the model are the wheels. But a small matter to paint some detail in and also dirty up. I don’t think that I will be going to the effort of making it more finescale.

And lastly is a 2mmFS wagon kit brought at an exhibition somewhere. I think I must have about 10 of these as I pretty much brought one every time I saw the 2mil stand at shows. But this is an easy to start and finish project and if all completed will give me a nice little rack of mineral wagons.

As part of the tool shop I have been thinking about getting an airbrush and from all I have read and heard that iawata is the way to go, but this is quite a big ticket item with all the necessary compressor etc but again that’s further down the road.

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Stock Take

15th February 2014 / / 2 Comments

Having finally got through sorting out my boxes from last move I thought I would actually inventory the stock I have and see what if anything could be rationalised. However after a radical purging a number of years ago which after I kinda regretted getting rid of the things I did I now am more careful about what I plan to liquidate and what is to keep in the inventory. I wasn’t so surprised at most of what I found although the biggest was how much N Scale stuff I have accumulated over the years this being both UK and US stock. In my last purge I got rid of a lot of UK N and am now wishing I hadn’t. Although the main thrust of my interest is to be 2mmFS and not some much 2mm. Ok so what you ask is the point of this post, well the thought occurs that maybe hoarding an rubber gauging is fun for looking at the swag but not necessarily a good thing for actually achieving.

With this in mind I am going to downsize (sell actually) the HO and Z US stuff as I see no future for this as I have enough stock for a small N scale New England layout and I like the train moving through the landscape model that 2mm gives you. The other scales and gauges are there for flitting around when my attention wanders and or the mojo wains. Thankfully plans for huge basement filling inventories are not possible due to a) lack of space, b) lack of money and c) lack of desire to have said huge estate. Shunting a few wagons around for an hour or so is my idea of fun and although the idea of watching express trains whizz by might be appealing in order to do it properly you need large amounts of space. I really do realise that in order to actually create something I need to keep it small.

So I really need to concentrate and focus. I have been listening to a tech podcast talking about managing ones time and setting time aside to work on certain things. Right so I’m off to ‘do’ rather than talk 🙂

Inventory stats

Micro manna

14th February 2014 / / 0 Comments

Mentioned here before in a previous thread I stumbled across a Facebook group a short while ago that has some great pictures on it and yet more opportunity for flights of fancy. I think this and this picture leads me to think that there are loads of micro layout opportunities to be had and the rolling stock is just so diverse. I specially like the fact that railcars can pull along wagons and are also used to shunt them around. I am slowly storing up ideas for various plans but as usual all scrap paper doodlings.

Still getting to grips with CAD and have been temped to use Autodesk’s Fusion 360. This is a year of free use for personal hobbyist use after that I am not too sure about licensing as I haven’t read up in too much detail, yet. I have to say that the interface is much cleaner that Fusion for Mac and I really should plug a mouse in to the laptop but for my needs it seems to fit the bill. I have had quite a few crashes but I think this is more likely due to having base memory of 4Gb in the Laptop. Things seems to run a bit more smoothly when all other apps are quitted but there are still some beach ball of doom spinning moments. I am starting to go through the vidorials and just messing around myself.

As for physical modelling I seem to have hit a bit of modellers block and sit and stare at the #9 point I am building but don’t seem to be able to move on from the basic build.. tomorrow is another day.. well in eight minutes it is 🙂

Virtual builds

11th February 2014 / / 0 Comments

Having messed around with Sketchup for more time than I care to remember in fact before Google got its hands on it I have found that the limitations were starting to hinder my learning of CAD. Don’t get me wrong there are many things that Sketchup is great for but for 3D Product modelling it is not, guess one has to remember that originally it was designed for Architectural work and probably never envisaged the proliferation of the types of uses that it gets now. Also the libraries and add-ons have exploded the potential of this humble app.

However going back to the reason for this post and my niggles at not being able to create curves easily I have been sussing out a number of CAD packages that best fit my methods of use. Now there are millions of people that use CAD that could tell me the best platform to take up but I think it really boils down to how you relate to it. Obviously there are certain process that common across all apps but there are ways of executing them. So looking for something that I would be able to pick up ‘relatively’ easily I had been using Autodesks Sketchbook on my Air and iPhone so when I came across Inventor Fusion for Mac in the App store I thought I would give it a go. The menu system across those apps is the same so learning the workflow on one app will transfer over to the others thus easing the effort to get to grips with the CAD app. Now the benefits to Fusion on the Mac is that it is free, however like with some free software it was a beta and the chances of updates are probably at best unlikely, but they were really using that as a testbed for the Fusion 360. This now available free for students and hobbyists.

Anyway back to the job in hand and below you will see the poking and proddings of a couple of days labour. I will say the help for IFFM is pretty poor and the online presence is limited but having spent some time reading the pdf I am getting the hang of the features. I am modelling at the dimensions of what I am finally going to build and the level of control is far greater than sketchup. So here is my first attempt..

Screen Shot 2014-02-11 at 17.15.21

Cutting lists and baseboards

9th February 2014 / / 2 Comments

I have found that Sketchup is an idea tool for not only reacting a virtual model of planed baseboards and layouts but also a great tool for creating the cutting lists for these projects.

So as a template to my ideas for a T-Trac modular layout gives me the dimensions of an 8ft x 4ft sheet of baltic 6mm ply and then I can work out all the cutting lines before I even turn on the saw. As usual more real progress to follow.

The completed boards and then the cutting list

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Fireside

8th February 2014 / / 2 Comments

Just a quick note to remind my self more than anything about some pages and links I have come across today firstly I have spent quite some time on the Stadler website pawing over the plans for their metre gauge trams and rapid transit trains. As most of these are very box like I think it will not be too difficult to knock up in CAD although I am still getting my hands dirty and trying to learn via a process of break fix also compound curves are proving a tad difficult, well if first you don’t succeed, try try again etc..

Also I saw a link on Facebook for some neat 3D scanning software that might come in use in the future. I am temped to scan my Bemo stock to see if I can down size it or maybe I can photo it and then maybe use Blender to get the skeleton shape for the wagons. But that’s definitely a task for later.

Still plodding along with the point building and trying to get the wing rails to fit correctly with the frog. The template is way out from Templot but I put that down to me not calibrating the printer before printing out. I should know better.

Back to the extrude tool..

To the point

6th February 2014 / / 0 Comments

Just to prove mainly to my self that I am actually doing something and not gas bagging in the armchair whilst waiting for some other pieces to turn up, here is work progression on point 1 of 8 which is a #9.5 LH. Next up is the frog (needs a bit of work and then the wing rails… thats todays job. I am using all pcb sleepers but am looking into having a go at timbering some it’s just getting hold go the supplies. I have long been an admirer of Brian Harrap’s work and had a long conversation with him at a model railway show where he told me you don’t need loads of things to build track you just need confidence. He showed me a selection of very basic tools and said that is what he pretty much used for all his track building including this

Right time to warm up the soldering iron and get fluxing 🙂

Curved LH No9.5 Point

Been around a while..

16th January 2014 / / 1 Comment

Ok so I haven’t been posting too much but things are moving on in the real world and I have got distracted yet again but as stated before this I think is a good thing as it breeds creativity. Well the new focus is an old idea with a new twist. I have always been interested in the metre gauge railways of Switzerland but had never really ventured out of RhB land, it being the biggest and bestest 🙂 But however seeing some pics on a forum of another small metre gauge line got me cogitating. I thought how can I do something that it not to time consuming but interesting to build. Most of these lines served rural villages and ran through towns, so a nice opportunity to do some street running. Also traffic was light and freight was usually pulled along with passenger trains so a nice mix with the possibility of some either steam or diesel tracktor shunting.

TJBplan

So plan B was hatched, well actually project 7 or is it 8 now.. but the idea came from when I was helping my niece to do her geography project which I can now happily report that she got first prize and contrary to what my family thought I didn’t tell her what to do, she had all the ideas her self, well maybe all. Anyway back to the point of this post and the idea that sprang from helping her. So this idea is to have a Nm scale small roundy layout of around two and a half feet square with a up and over loop with passing loop in country section and a bit of a yard in town section.

The reasoning behind the use of Nm is that the scale is well catered for i.e. N scale buildings and trees etc but on the down side I will need to build the stock, but as this is going to be a very limited project I think that this will be an ideal project for 3D printing and the opportunity to get hands dirty with CAD. No more that 4 units would be used and this would be at the maximum as there would be limited space on the layout. I envisage it being more of a moving diorama although the idea of being able to do a little shunting might ge the better of me.

Work goes on @ 15minmodellingworks, more reports to follow…

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State of the nation

2nd January 2014 / / 4 Comments

So 2013 was a bad year and lead to little or no modelling due to circumstances and the loss of modelling mojo, however in 2014 I am hoping to break that trend and start off on a positive foot. I realise that doing 15 mins modelling a day may not be completely attainable for most of us and wanted to start off saying that I am in that category myself. However the principle is to do something railway related every day. In the highs and lows, well to be honest mainly the lows of last year it was particularly hard to keep the mojo motivated, and at some points I thought what the hell am I doing playing with toy trains, just get rid of it all and start another hobby like RC planes or motorcycle maintenance.

Well thankfully things have improved and I feel a bit more positive about my life in my hobby and want to produce something that I can ‘play’ with and also be proud of producing. As you can probably tell from the projects post I do have the tendency to wander off the beaten track (pun intended) and get dazzled by shiny new things. If I was to set new years modelling resolutions (which I am not as I have long realised that metaphorically 2 minutes after I set them I am breaking them again) it would be to stick to one task until its completed. That said I do really like opposing interests and so therefore it is going to be a battle of wits with myself this year to produce.

All the projects from last year still stand and I am looking forward to getting stuck into things. I also wish all ‘you’ out there in modelling land a happy year ahead and look forward posting my progress here and to reading about others modelling endeavours.

..and finally the new found mojo came from a Geography project for me niece, a little bit of hand laid nominal Zn2/3 gauge track solder by both myself and once taught my niece with some realistic wobbles.

Down in the valley

Down in the valley

Happy new year and 2014

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