Hobbying In Place INTERMISSION: Hobby Room Secrets

I finished a model today and felt so good about it that I decided to give myself (and the audience) a break from nit-picking, scratching panel lines, drilling holes and huffing solvent. Somewhere someone was doing a "hashtag modelers room challenge" and thought it would be a good time to give a tour of my hobby room. So, follow me go down into the basement which used to be my domain until Caleb needed the space to set up his Vive. We used to have people over to play Crypts-N-Creepies. It's also a pantry. Watch your head.

I live in an old house and the placement of the furnace, water heater and various upper supports dictate that the layout be serpentine and barely logical at best. Take for instance these two doors which are side by side and both open into the same tiny space for the furnace.

Packed in here with the furnace are kits, building supplies and other mundane essentials. This area is just big enough to get a concussion in. Suitable only as storage and thus a dead end. Ah, the life of a model builder, sometime's it feels like a sad dirty secret that must be hidden. I have always been a denizen of the basement, in fact my wife calls me "Basement Leader" for a good reason.

Did I just imply that modeling is a dead end? Here is a closer look at all those modeling goodies. The larger containers are from "The Container Store" and sold to people who like to organize their shoes. I only own two fancy pairs: A pair of very orange cowboy boots from high school and a white pair of Po-Zu cos-play storm trooper boots. Smaller parts bins hold Tamiya and Gunze paint. The side rack is for paints currently being sorted to use on a particular build.

I have saved anything that I think I might need, lead foil from wine bottles, Clear and colored plastic sprue and all types and sizes of wire, string and flexible tubing. You never know when you will need a strand from a graduation tassel for example.

Another bin is filled with various thicknesses of papers, tissues, felt, faux leathers, lace, nylon and used tea bag papers to fashion miniature stowage for military vehicles. In the other you will find tree roots, cork, dyed twine and birch bark. If it was meant to be thrown away at some point, I found it and saved it.

But wait, if you push on the shelves full of kits you will discover it is just a facade.

 

I don't use the term "bunker", it reminds me too much of Eva Braun. Office? Studio? The family calls it "Ro's room". It's 12 by 13 and tucked away under the front of the house. The walls are sponge painted blue. Everyone told me the walls must be white or the coloring of my models would be completely thrown off. (I do recall one judge who commented that my entry seemed as if it had been painted in a swimming pool). My work table is now 25 years+ old. It's from a bakery that I helped gut to turn into an art gallery. I collect a lot of stuff, on the wall is a Type 1 Target Kite. Most of these kites have a silhouette of a Focke Wulf, a few were made as Zeros. I used to to have lot more dolls, but I have been thinning the herd as my interests change.

Now sitting, looking back towards the door. As of late I have been using Ebay to transform the stuff from my stash into movie posters. The newest is  "Ghost In The Shell" and replaces an old Petty pin up. The Gamma World poster is an original from 1978, I was very lucky to find it folded up in a GW game I bought at a thrift store. TSR also made D&D posters like this as well which were hung in stores back in the day. The image on the poster was done by David Trampier when he was 24 years old. I know just how lazy we are as humans, so I make sure that the tools I use are all within reach. Under the table (in a hold-out) is a drill and Dremel. I use all sorts of blades, files and pliers, which are handy. I tend to modify things a lot, so on my left (out of frame) are bins of round and square stock. If the thing I need is within reach, I am more likely to use it.

One of the few pin-ups to survive the purge is a 1940's Varga (when Hawaii was really hot). Varga created his images directly from a posed model. The Tiger 1 is a Solido die-cast model bought on my honeymoon. Funny, my wife and I are now watching tank chats together (we just watched Tank Chats #102 about the Crossley Armoured Car). Recently I got a taste for "Thomas the Tank Engine" again, my favorite character is Percy (the cheeky engine). I was going to build a studio replica of him, but found this very good representation of him in G scale from Bachmann. Thank god I didn't start researching and building that.

Another pin-up found at a yard sale on our block about ten years ago. It's an original done by some one in the family who were moving away.

I like Soviet things a lot. I got the orange rover toy with 8 wheels at a flea market ages ago. The battery inside was hand made from Russia and the engineering is spectacularly Orwellian. On the right is a Russian tin toy from the 70's, a "Lunokhod". Turns out the the real "Lunokhod" inspired the tin toy and hundreds of similar versions, including the orange one.

Here is a Russian resin kit of the Lunokhod (which is still on the moon). Red Iron also makes a wonderful "Vostok 1".

Here is my airbrush set up. On the upper right you can make out a rectangular box that sits in front of a vent. The vent leads to a blower (which was army surplus that I traded for a unicycle). When the basement was framed out the blower was installed to draw air through these vents and out side. On the floor at the lower left, is the portable hood I made from MDF sheet.

The portable hood can be pulled out easily. While we are here you can see my computer set up, I forced myself to use the same Chromebook the kids were using in school so I could wrap my head round the cloud. I have a Samsung Galaxy pad which is way cheaper than an Apple device. A lot gets done on that. I listen to a lot of music. In the olden times I had a tape/CD player, now I have Alexa/Pandora/You Tube all streaming through Bluetooth to an old Harman/Kardon HK695 speaker system. I listen to a lot of OST, lately this. Try the mini series.

Back to the airbrush set up. The hood is set on the table and pushed up to match the rectangular opening of the blower vent. I use all acrylics, so this works great. It also means I can set up to paint in less than a minute. The top of the hood was an accident, I put a clear top on it and discovered that this let light in. At the back of the table is the bump out on the wall for the various tool boxes that have the stuff of miniatures building in them. In the back is another art work, by a friend I went to art school with.

I called the nice people at Silent Aire and got a good price on one of their fancy but discontinued air compressors. I'm not a kid any more, so it's OK to have some expensive tools, especially if you use them. I really use only one airbrush, an Iwata top loader Hi-Line with the pressure adjustment. On occasion I use a Paasche VL. I was sorely tempted to drill a hole in the body last week to see if I could turn it into a top feeder. I screwed the Harmon/Kardon sub-woofer upside down directly to the bottom of the table (upper left).

It's important that where I work (and spend a lot of my time) should be stimulating. I started out as an Artist and in school always has my own studio space. A studio space is more than just a place to do work, it's where you draw inspiration, show off what you are doing (to start a dialogue with others) and crash after drinking to much "Country Kwencher". And what could be more inspiring than a defunct brand of rotgut? Why the fear of failing your inner master, of course!

There is a lot of art packed into the room. It's like a clown car for hoarders. I have been pulling stuff out of it for a decade, selling and buying something else and then doing it all over again. Here is a print by Jim Griffiths (a fellow Sprue member). He holds some sort of record for the biggest under water commemorative stamp. He said if I put a link to his site that he would give you 10% off a purchase. My wife was kind enough to point out that a bug had gotten in under the glass and is now permanently preserved for all to see. Or maybe Jim broke into my house and painted it there. Unlikely, I have not gotten a bill yet. In the upper right is a work by D. Kidd of Sy Borg.

A very interesting piece of history. Taken from a Japanese plane that had crashed onto a ship, the sailor folded it up and saved it in his footlocker. The color of the Aotake is pristine. I can still recall when Bill Bosworth looked at it and saying it was the wrong color.

My shelving is a little unorthodox. Essentially designed on the fly by the contractor. They are all dry wall berths about 3 feet deep. I need to enclose them against the menace of dust. Dust abatement is what's going on here, I have been moving stuff around and using a make-up brush to remove the tiny particles. Two models here (Kamakiras and  Wadatsumi) are kits made by Bill Gudmundson, yet another fellow Sprue.

This is the small part of the stash that is visible above the water. As of late I have been prioritizing and selling things I will never be able to build even if I pull a Hermione Granger. Lots of T-34's, Japanese aircraft, the Good Smile Soyuz and Erector, 1/32 Henschel Hs 123 and a 250th scale Soya.

There are a few shelves dedicated to reference. This all soviet, surprisingly there is very little in english about modern Russian aircraft. The TU-95 is on my short list and trying to do an accurate current one is tricky. Books are less valuable now with the internet being on computers. I frequent a lot of Russian sites, this can be a little scary sometimes from a virus or now I'm on a government list point of view. They have got to update those bride pictures more often. Some of those women have got to be in their 40's now.

This is hanging on the wall. I had the pleasure to meet the master himself. Turns out he lived only 3 blocks from my in-laws next to Wright College. His house was a strange place, I regret not taking any pictures of all the mannequins wearing Napoleonic uniforms. As a young builder I was inspired by his inserts in Monogram model kits. This is one of my faves, I intend to take the 1/32 HK Fortress and recreate this diorama. I will need a lot of grass. I think I'll go down right now, open up the box and sniff the sprues.

That's it, hope you enjoyed! Happy Mother's Day!