The Northward Contrail

Creation stories

I'm about to get back into the decal design business.  I've done it before, on a small scale, but one project I labored on for years, only to not see it come to fruition (at least yet), pretty much drained my enthusiasm -- as did another, in a non-aviation realm, that ended up being done sooner (and less thoroughly) by someone else.  Between those two, it's been difficult to find the enthusiasm I once had for sitting in front of Illustrator for hours on end, the way I once did. 

But a few months ago, some wheels started to turn in my head, and a friend of mine who's done some rough artwork for some schemes I'm interested in has pledged his support.  In fact, he sent me some of his artwork the other day, and it's going to make things a lot easier.  His efforts have saved me some of the intricacies, so now it's just more a matter of sizing those elements to the subject kit.

On the other hand, I'm left with designing the stripes for this project.  They're not simple stripes, either; they conform to the fuselage, and are along the bottom half.  They stay straight around the nose, which looks great in three dimensions...but must be drawn in two dimensions.  Interesting curves, with no room for error.  Around back, they not only curve up to meet the tail, but they also wrap around the aft end of the fuselage.  And there's two stripes per side.  Yes, it'll be easy to draw the top stripe and bottom stripe and then reverse them, but that first step, she's a lulu.

Long ago I developed a method for this kind of thing: Cover the appropriate area of the model with masking tape and press it down so it wraps around all the contours.  Draw the design or dimensions you need.  Remove the tape, making slits if necessary to preserve things.  Press the tape onto a piece of paper.  Scan the piece of paper as an image file.  Import image file into Illustrator, and draw it off the scanned image.  The sketch you scan in will be rough, but you can refine it as needed.  Once you have something suitable, print it out, cut the design out, and tape it into place on the model.  If it looks right, you're good.  If it doesn't, or if it doesn't fit, you know where to make adjustments.  Easy enough.  But, man, the getting there is something else.

Fortunately, this one will be relatively easy.  But other projects down the road?  Heh.  Stay tuned.

Coffee is for closers

Busy this morning with a work-related real-estate matter.  Good things may be to come.  But all that's in the future.

In the meantime, here's Ferlin Husky.

The art of duplication

I'm still waiting for the magic to come back to the bench -- after a quick start, I lost momentum the other week, and am having trouble getting it going even on the quick slump-buster project I'm working on now.

There are other kits I've recently acquired, but I've held off on starting them because they have certain valuable components, components I want to duplicate for other projects.  Those components are rendered very nicely, in some cases much more so than I'd ever be able to, and it's easier for me just to pour rubber around them and cast them in resin.  I was sitting at the bench last night, not feeling terribly inspired, so I decided to pour some rubber.  How hard could it be?

Actually, it could be difficult.  If you're going to duplicate something, you need to make a rubber mold of it.  And when you make a mold, you need a container in which to make the mold.  For small parts, it's no big deal.  For larger components, you may need to build a mold box.  I still have some larger components that I have to do some homework on.  For these little components, though, I've found few things handier than the little plastic bathroom water cups.  I have a bag of them upstairs, and I use them for just about everything -- to hold brush cleaner, to mix paint, and so on.  So I took the components I wanted to duplicate, sanded the bottom flat, and glued the components to the bottom of the cup. 

The rubber I use is a 1:1 mix, Part A to Part B.  How do I mix it?  Easy.  I take two more cups, pour equal parts A and B into those two cups, and pour one cup into the other, then stir it all up really good.  When I'm satisfied with the mix, I pour it into the cup that holds the master parts.  I don't have a vacuum chamber or a pressure pot, so I use very low-tech methods to de-air my molds; I just bump the bottom of the mold box (or, in this case, plastic cup) against the top of the workbench for a few minutes.  It drives the air bubbles up from the bottom.  It's not foolproof, but it usually does a good job, certainly for the rubber and resin I use.  And when the molds are ready for casting, I do the same thing over again: take two cups, pour equal parts Part A and Part B of the resin into each, then dump one into the other, mix, and pour. 

I experimented a bit with the stuff you could buy in craft stores, but I bought my first real resin casting set in 1993, after reading an ad in the back of a magazine.  It was back when you could order it by mail and have it shipped to you via the Postal Service, back when Priority Mail rates were dirt cheap.  (Now, when I order casting supplies, they have to be shipped via UPS Ground and the shipping rates are a not-insignificant chunk of the grand total.)  It didn't take me long to get the hang of it, of learning how to make molds and of getting the right results for both molds and castings, and it's one of those skills that really helped me become better at this hobby.  There's at least one project I've done that could not have been completed had I not learned how to do this. 

The really nice thing?  It's not really that expensive to get into, nor is it that difficult, but an $80 investment in a starter set that will last you a good while will really pay for itself many times over.  I can't begin to count the hours it's saved me, be it from not having to build the same part a dozen times over, or from being able to duplicate parts from kits that will never see the light of day again, or whatever.  To me, it's a skill I couldn't afford to be without.  And when I get these parts duplicated, it's going to make a lot of future projects a lot easier.

Retrieval

On Saturday we drove over to see my family.  It's birthday season again, so we had the usual get-together for these things.  It was fun getting together again, even if I was reminded at times of why I left the small town in which I grew up (the dinner table conversations tended heavily towards other people's business, which reminded me all the more why I play my own doings so close to the vest, to the point of being a cipher, to a certain extent, to my own family).  Still, it was fun and the food was good, and it was worth it all, as these things tend to be.

While I was there, I went through some of my old stuff and found a model I built about 12 years ago.  It was a spectacular project based on an imported vacuform kit.  At the time it was probably the most ambitious project I'd ever done.  But my finishing skills weren't up to the challenge, and you can tell.  Making matters worse, I put the rush on it so it would be ready for a contest (where the model finished third in its category, I recall).  It ain't bad, but it ain't good.  And the custom decals I had made for it don't match the typeface on the real machine, and that's long bothered me too.  There are other things that make me cringe: there's a dried, brown glob where a Future overcoat got too thick and ran, and I gave the bare-metal surfaces what can be charitably described as an amateurish aluminum foil treatment that has since bubbled and wrinkled and torn.  (It's also sustained slight paint damage, with a small but noticeable scrape to one section.)

I figured it was too neat to sit -- it's been sitting on that shelf gathering dust for 11 years, so I brought it home.  And since Saturday evening, I've been of two minds about what to do.  Should I just clean it up and leave it as it is as an artifact of a different time, or do I strip it, fix its flaws and work the magic of which I'm now capable?  I do have to say, fixing it up and making it look rite is seriously tempting.  When I originally built this beast, I got it about 80% there before things started to get weird on it. 

Fixed up, it could be a marvel.  I believe I may do that.  But, first, I have to get other things done.

A slow week

And really nothing to show for it, dang it.  So, instead, here's Roger Miller.

Kick start

I was doing pretty well with the little model factory up until a few days ago.  Then I hit a wall.  For some reason, once I got the 737-400 Combi started in paint, I couldn't get that much farther.  A couple nights ago I started the process of masking, but I didn't get very far on that, either.  The enthusiasm went kaput, and I can't get too worked up about resuming work on it just yet.  It's annoying because right now I have all the time I could want to work on it, too.  But all that masking, and all the care I have to take...it's causing the "ah, screw this, I don't feel like foolin' with it right now" thing to flare up a little too often.

I'm thinking all the complicated paint jobs I've been doing on these commercial aircraft may be the culprit.  And maybe it's time for a diversion, another little "why not?" project using an inexpensive kit.  Something I don't get emotionally invested in; instead, something to build just for the joy of creating, and more practically as something to reprime the pump. 

Fortunately, I think I have just the kit for that.  And maybe today I'll work on it....

Tales of the depressingly recurrent

Less than a week later, it happened again: a big thunderstorm wiped out the power.  Our lights were out from just after 9 last night to about 3:30 this morning.  Since the battery in the laptop is shot (I really need to spring for a new battery soon), no electricity means no computer.  And, of course, no network since there's no power to run the routers. 

I was working on a real Jim Dandy of a post for today, but that's gonna have to wait since I didn't have opportunity last night to get it where I was real happy with it.  It'll keep, though.

Bits and pieces

Yesterday was my annual check-up.  Aside from an iron deficiency (which explains a lot about how I've felt lately) and a little bit of weight gain (which explains the rest), I got a clean bill of health.  Both problems can be corrected fairly easily, so it's no big deal.  To reward myself, I visited the local hobby shop and made off with one of these.  I've built one of the little Orbiter kits before and really liked it, so this should be an interesting diversion if I can keep myself from going overboard.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get more stalled projects cleared out.  I'm hoping to have time tomorrow to continue painting the 737 Combi (and, I hope, get it in decals by the end of the week), and I'm also edging closer to getting one of these finished, too.  I started it seven years ago, did most of the accurizing on it, and then put it aside for some reason.  Even though I now have a much more accurate 727-200 kit in resin, I still want to finish this one because I put too much effort into fixing it, and it really doesn't look that bad.  I'm strongly tempted by this livery, which has the added virtue of being on a decal sheet I already have.  (Though other contenders are this livery and this one, too, all of which are in the upstairs stash.)

Then there's the Hasegawa 767-200 I need to repaint, to wear a set of these markings.  Used to see 'em all the time when we'd go by KMIA back in the day.  I thought they were gorgeous.  I had it near completion years ago but wasn't happy with the paint job.  (Sound like a recurring theme?)

The nice thing is, given the way my workbench goes, I should never run out of projects.

Being wanted

A couple months back a stray tabby came by and spent a couple days with us.  He'd hang out on our back porch.  We took pity on him and put some food out for him.  He was very friendly, desperately wanting human attention.  A few days later, he toddled off.  We didn't see him again.

Then, a couple weeks ago, he was back on our porch.  Since then, he's been showing up more or less regularly.  We have continued to feed him, and he's continued to be very friendly, almost clingy.  I've had to be careful when I go out to feed him, for he'll meet me halfway around the house and ankle-dance with me all the way to the porch.  He will also follow me if I try to go back around the house.  In fact, a few days ago I tried to sneak away, but the cat ran over and wrapped his paws around my ankle, as if to say, "Oh, no, you don't!" And he gave me a gentle little nip on the arm.  I think that means I've officially been claimed.  Every time I go out to see him, he ankle-dances with me, talks to me in his soft little voice, and is ecstatic when I stroke his back. 

Yesterday morning he came back for some breakfast, then disappeared for a day of adventure.  Then in the evening he came back for something to eat, took a bath, and sacked out for a while:

He was still out there that evening, after it got dark:

There's something about having a home in the country, where a cat feels safe to come back, have a bite, and take a nap on your back porch, that makes me feel things are right with the world.  I may not be the best person in the world by a long shot, but scenes like this make me feel I must be doing something decent.

(And before anyone points out the obvious, if he continues to hang around, we're having him checked out by our vet soon.  If he's going to live around us, we're going to get him his shots and the other necessities.)

Backlog

If there's been a recurring theme to this summer's builds, it's been trying to clear out a number of projects that have just hung around half-completed.  The SB2C and F6F were among the first, and in the weeks that followed so did a couple of airliners (well, one of them is awaiting a set of decals to arrive, but it's at least painted with most of its decals in place and standing on its own landing gear).  Over the weekend I built a car kit that's just been in a sort of limbo for several years, since an experiment I tried with which I wasn't completely certain of results.  (It turned out just fine.)  Getting the half-completed stuff finished helps my conscience a little.  It makes me feel good to complete things, to put a project behind me for good and move on to a new one.

The current project at center stage upstairs is one of these kits, to be completed as one of these.  I started it a year or two ago, and it's just sort of sat there.  While it's a splendid kit, I did encounter a couple of complications along the way, small problems that I just didn't feel like working on.  Yet every time I went to Seattle or Anchorage and saw the ever-present sea of 737s in those markings, it would nag at me.  "You know, if you'd just sit down with it for a couple afternoons, you could fix it.  It's about the simplest paint job in the world, and yet you can't get yourself to close the deal." 

So that's, mercifully, seeing some progress.  The little kit-related issues, mostly dealing with a couple of tricky gaps I needed to fix, have pretty much been cured.  As, thankfully, has the issue of the Combi conversion; the big door has been scribed into the fuselage, the appropriate panel lines have been filled, and it looks acceptable under a first coat of primer.  So, maybe this weekend, with a little luck, the little beast will finally get paint.  I sure hope so, because the next time I see one of those airplanes, I don't want to be reminded of a poor half-completed model.