Welcome to post 1001 on this blog. Originally I'd planned to do some navel gazing about the state of the blog, model making in general etc. You'll be pleased to know I changed my mind and instead decided to look at one of the biggest issues any modeller faces.
Why do we do this ? No mater how much work space any modeller has, he or she always ends up working in a tiny area surrounded by a sea of tools.
There I was putting the finishing touches to a chassis and suddenly realised that despite having an A4 sized cutting block to operate on and this sitting on a 4 by 2 workbench I was still fiddling around on the corner of the board. I aspire to being tidy and putting each tool back in it's place every time I finish using it but despite my best intentions this never quite happens. OK the tools go back eventually but it seems an inordinate number are in operation so often their residence on the bench is semi-permanent.
In the picture you see wire cutters, side cutters, 3 pairs of pliers, 2 pairs of tweezers, screwdrivers, needle files, flux, flux brush and a lolly stick used for holding things while soldering. That's in addition to a Peco loco cradle and the chassis I'm working on.
Perhaps I'm the only one who suffers this way. When you see work areas in books and magazine they are always a lot more organised than this. I'm sure they aren't just tided up for the picture...
I was on a road trip with four other modellers from Ottawa, Ontario to Maryland in the USA. One of the many conversations we had there and back had to do with this topic.
ReplyDeleteWe came to the conclusion that every modeller, no matter how large or well conceived his workspace is, only has two square inches of useable space once a project gets going. Furthermore, we concluded that tidying as you go is a sign of a deep rooted mental illness.
That is very true. Thank goodness I work in 009, at least the whole model fits in that space. How people manage to build a model in O gauge is quite beyond me!
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