When writing this blog I have often put forth my theory that the average American can pretty much figure anything out on his own and do it themself. This is what allowed us to do all the neat things we have done over the years, like invent a time and matter displacement device all the way back in 1943. (see Philadelphia experiment)
Given an exacto knife, a Wikipedia diagram and enough time I am certain I could locate and remove my appendix in only a few tries. And who needs fancy radiation treatments when I have a perfectly good micro-wave right in the kitchen? Remove the door and over ride the saftey switch, and just that easy I am curing my ailments, saving money, AND making a Hot Pocket.
However, this does not always work. Recently I was trying to make some better alignment, support and ejector pins. The cheap metal from Lowes was bending and getting the ends mushroomed from the force. So I picked up some drill rod blanks, a really nice, smooth and straight type of metal. Only the web-site said they had to be heat treated by slowly heating them to 1700 degrees and quenching them in oil. How hard can that be? I have a cutting torch and it gets really hot. I do not know how hot, but if 1700 degrees is good, 17,000 degrees must be 10 times better. What could go wrong?
Well......it turns out that super heated oil is REALLY flammable. And the science of metal working is a bit more complex than all that. I ruined most of the pieces by making them so brittle I can snap them by holding them in my hand and pressing with my thumb. I guess what I am trying to say is that maybe sometimes it pays to have the right tools for the job.
But things are getting done around here. I am going to be playing around with some new ideas, like this little model.
I was looking at the gothic building and realized the only thing on the back was a couple of shelves to glue floors to. So I was wondering if it would be possible to make a one sided building and simply have little squares to glue in for floor supports. This is the result of my little experiment. It is still 15mm in scale, the front entrance door is 20mm tall. The back loading dock doors are pretty large and I guess you could use a lot of them and make a shipping terminal.
I am packing 2 of the door sprues and one window sprue per pack. I will also make an all window pack available in case you want to add a second story to your building. The back side of these is simply a flat plate and this makes things a lot easier for me. There are no alignment pins to worry about and that cuts down on a lot of time needed to set up and run as well as making the mold itself. If you can think of anything else for a flat plate building design let me know. I was thinking maybe an air conditioner or vent might be cool.
I have to apologize for the delay in getting any new things done, but it has been a bit busy doing some custom things and getting the full range of bases done. There are a few things not in the store anymore. This means I only have a few left and have not had time to make some more yet. If you want something you know used to be there send me an e-mail and I will let you know how many I have left. There are some things I want to re-do and make better, like the bill board and some others. But time is always a limiting factor.
And finally, it seems a squad of rabbits set up a listening post about 4 feet from where I am setting at my PC at this very moment. One morning one of them was be-headed and laying outside my door. The next day another suffered the same fate, so I had to take the survivors into custody for their own safety. I know that they will someday grow up to eat my blue berries, (which I am currently heavily entrenching for the upcoming hostilities) but it is against the Geneva convention for non-combatants to be treated this way. So now we are feeding the little guys with an eye dropper and waiting for them to get big enough to elude whatever merciless killer is stalking them.
Have a great weekend.
