Morning all,

Let's try this again.  I opened the club house yesterday, but nobody showed up.  I took a shower.  Maybe the breakfast buffet wasn't good enough to entice anyone to come in.

More decaling work today.  That and a movie or two.  I already did my walk.



Have a great one!

Morning all,

Lunch today with former co-workers.  The percentage of retired to those still working for the company is tilting heavily in favor of the retired guys.  We'll show pity towards those still working. 

I was applying more decals yesterday.  There are two sets of shelves, each containing four shelves.  These are 3D printed and have bottles, cans, etc. on them.  Adding labels to the cans proved to be a little tricky.  I'll resume later.  Thankfully there are plenty of extra decals else I'd be in trouble.



Have a great one!

Morning all,

Yard work today.  First, breakfast with friends.  Then the heat/humidity of Florida in July while I mow, trim and edge.  For bonus points I may clean out the gutters in the front if I have any umphf left in me after the yard work.

I take pictures like this one to remind me of the debris that might be found alongside the tracks.


Have a great one!

Morning all,

Wife got me up early to go for a walk.  Two miles is my limit (years of riding an office chair took its toll).  Now I'm stiff and sore.  Next up is a visit to the eye doctor.  This afternoon will likely be a wash, workbench wise, given he'll dilate my pupils.



Have a great one! 

Morning all,

Bagels, smear and tea this morning!  Help yourself.

Think I'll spend time at the workbench this afternoon.  The weather forecast is a 50% chance of rain every day for the coming week.



Have a great one!

Okay.  Time for my next adventure.  Two kits, both from Interaction Hobbies.  The Ventoura Mobile Home and The Meth Lab Detail Kit.  When I showed the latter to my wife (a big Breaking Bad fan), she insisted I buy it (with the optional Walt and Jesse figures of course).  Even though it doesn't fit the era I hope to model I bought it so now I have to build it!

Don't expect frequent updates to this build thread.  As you'll see, there's a lot of 'details' that make up the lab.  I'll be painting (and decaling) those details for quite a while I'm afraid.

The mobile home package.  For what it's worth that's Edward G. Robinson on the TV.  I was watching "Key Largo" while I unpacked this to take pictures.   



The Meth Lab Detail kit.  Okay, the picture is a little blurred but the link I posted above takes you to the web page where you can see a bunch of pictures of this one.



The mobile kit home comes with a nice instruction book, sheets of laser cut parts and templates/part lists.



The Meth Lab Detail Kit comes with a nice instruction book as well along with all kinds of goodies.



In particular a lot of 3D printed parts.  



That's exactly where I'm at right now.  I need to clean up the parts and devise a plan as to how I'm going to approach painting/decaling them.  I may need a trip to the hobby shop as well to pick up some paints.  

Thanks for following along!

Morning all,

Greetings from Deer Lake, PA!  Taking the mother in law out for lunch today and having dinner with friends this evening.  1,000+ miles away from my work bench.  

Have a great one!

Morning all,

It's going to be a scorcher here in sunny Central Florida today.  Expect a high of 97!   Think I'll stay inside and get some workbench time.

I hope you're all prepared for Memorial Day!  Three-day weekends don't mean as much to me anymore. 

Have a great one!

Morning all,

This morning should be yard work, but we had a storm roll thru earlier and everything is wet, so I'll procrastinate on that for a while.  What to do?  What to do?  

Have a great one!

Morning all,

Not much on the agenda today except moving some furniture so the window installation can be finalized this afternoon.  They passed inspection so all that's left if removing stickers and covering up the holes where the screws are.  It'll be nice to finally be able to put the house back in order though.  Some workbench time prior to that.

Have a great one!

Time for a new thread.  This one is the FOS Gorman Sign Company.  It was a gift from my better half this past X-Mas.  

Let's open it up and see what's in the box.



All kinds of interesting things.  Bags of parts, strip wood, a sheet of colorful signs, etc.



In addition to the metal castings there are some really neat, well defined, 3D printed detail parts.



I started cleaning up the 3D parts by removing the little 'legs' from them using a sprue cutter



I also used the sprue cutter to remove the doors and windows from the plastic sprues.  I know some people prefer to paint them first and remove them later and that's fine too.  This is just the way I like to do it.



There are a few 55-gallon oil drums that need to be nipped from their sprue as well but it's too thick for the sprue cutter I have so use an old pair of rail nippers to snip these.



More in a moment....

Morning all,

We're serving ham and cheese omelets (onions optional, just ask the chef to toss some in) with hash browns and toast or a bagel.  Various teas and k-cups of coffee available as well.

The count-down is now at 2 days!  Tomorrow, I turn 66 1/2 years old which happens to the full retirement age for social security (at least for me it is).  That's how I came to settle on tomorrow as my last day of work.  Come Monday I'll have to go into full miser mode.  Maybe Greg can give me some lessons on pinching pennies. 

I foresee lots of workbench time in the future.  I've got a backlog of kits waiting to be built to keep me busy for a long, long time.

Have a great one!

Morning all,

Breakfast bowl being served this morning.  Scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes, sausage gravy and a bit of pepper to top it off.  Hot water for tea and the Keurig is available for coffee drinkers.  Sorry, no fruit this a.m.

First of two days of PI planning so lots of meetings today.  Guess I'll put a DVD in and watch that while they talk about things I won't be here to work on during these meetings.   

Yesterday was a bust.  I had the time, but no the inclination, to pull out the workbench.  No worries though.  I'll have plenty of time soon enough.

Have a great one!  

Morning all,

T.G.I.F!  Looking forward to the weekend and some workbench time.  I'm roughly 70% of the way through painting all the detail castings on the current build (there are a lot).  I hope to finish that task up this weekend though it's becoming a little more challenging.  The old A&I wash after painting has to be abandoned.  It'll just wash off some of the newer paints I'm using.  I'm going to try Dr. Jeff's trick of hitting the castings with a flat finish (DullCoat or similar) and then using an oil paint wash in lieu of the A&I.

Have a great one!

Morning all,

Planning meeting at work this morning.  We'll discuss the projects that are slated for the next PI, how difficult they're going to be, etc.  I'll be here for grand total of two days in the next PI so I hope they don't expect much involvement from me.  

I'm looking forward to getting back to the workbench this weekend.  Maybe I can squeeze a few minutes in tonight or at lunch.  Maybe. 

Have a great one!

Good morning all,

Hump day here.  Lots of meetings today.  None that I give a rip about.  I have to cut out a little early today to go submit our applications for passports.  Once we have those in hand we'll start planning an oversea trip.

Nothing to report on the workbench front.

Have a great one!

Morning all,

Hot water for the morning tea is ready.  We have a selection of English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Earl Gray and a few others.  Scrapple with maple syrup for those so inclined.  

Our new windows are getting inspected today.  Of course, the only thing they can tell me, in terms of what time, is "today".  Hope they pass the inspection.  Then the final trim can be installed to cover up the screw holes.  This has project started back in September.  And not last September.  The one before that.    

I have some photo's ready to go to start a new build thread.  Just need some time on my own PC, not this work PC, to get that going.

Have a great one!

Morning all,

If you haven't filed your income tax return yet (in the US) today is the day!  I already have my refund.  It'll partially replace one of the pays I won't be getting next month while I'm waiting for my first Social Security Deposit to hit my account.  

John asked how many meetings I have left.  Good question.  I'm in my final two weeks of work.  Today I have meetings at 8:30, 9:00, 9:30 and 9:45.  So far.  There are always those last-minute meeting invites.  Next week, my final week, is PI planning week.  A whole slew of really boring meetings to plan the next 12 weeks' worth of work.  I won't have too much to say during those planning sessions.  Instead, I'll be planning what I'm going to do to get in better shape and which kits I'm going to work on next. 

Have a great one!

Morning all,

No one to open up the club house this morning?

I'm heading to the workbench shortly.  I hope the structure I'm working on can take shape this weekend.  I'm alternating between painting detail castings and working on the walls.

Have a great one!

Morning all,

T.G.I.F!  After this one I only have two more T.G.I.F!'s to go.

I'm giving a training class this morning.  Covering a topic that I get questioned on quite often.  Aside from that it's just another standard day of testing code, answering e-mails and what not.  I sure am looking forward to some workbench time this weekend.

Have a great one!