On the workbench today 12/20/18

A pile of FSM G.Wilikers castings.

FOS Dead Horse Bay kit.

J.Keen Supply by Railroad Kits

This is an open letter for you, dear eBay sellers. Please make it easier for us buyers to spot your kit by not spilling the guts of it and using that as your main picture. Several years back eBay had a dedicated category for the craftsman kits with usually several hundred items in it. There used to be about 3 pages of new items every day. There was also the time when you had to pay a fee to have a picture displayed next to your auction title in the list. Even without the pictures it wasn't too difficult to scan through 150 or so auction titles. Then eBay made pictures free and consolidated several structure categories into one broader which now days has close to 40k auctions with 20+ pages of new items every day. It takes considerable amount of time to scan them through . By scan I mean to take a quick glance at the pictures while scrolling at pretty high pace. In this situation the eye can catch only certain shapes or colors like yellow FSM box, red Southriver box, a picture FOS built structure, since FOS doesn't have uniform way of packaging their kits, etc. Even the picture of a kit built by someone else other than manufacturer is detrimental no matter how good the build is. In case of FSM I would more likely miss it if a picture of the same structure on Georges layout or add from a magazine is used instead of the yellow box. What chances are of me spotting the spilled guts?
If you checked some of  my "On the workbench today..." posts you may know that I have been working on J.Keen Supply kit for some time. Now, it is finished and all it is left is to wrapped it up. It was more less out of the box build with the exception of the roof top sign. I cut it with the help of Cricut cutting machine. It took me two attempts to do it. First time I used a sheet of cardstock straight from the package. Due to the thickness and small size of the letters the machine made a bit of mess. Removing the sign off the sticky pad proved to be impossible. Then I applied a wood hardener to another sheet of the same cardstock and let it dry. Second time  it worked much better although I still had hard time removing the sign off the pad. If I remember correctly there are pads of different stickiness available, so this issue may be easily addressed. The quality of the cut was acceptable but far from great. It looks like it is the limit of what the machine can do given the material and the size of the graphics. I might try thin styrene instead next time. Overall I am OK with how did the structure turn out. Without the sign it probably would have looked better, but you would never know without trying.

FOS Winger Paper Bag Co. Pt. 2

There is one thing that has been bugging me for some time. I hat is off to everyone who takes time to make a video of their favorite technique, a video tutorial, etc. I watch those now and then. Now, my problem is if someone no matter how talented posts an hour and half video of a build. Does everyone else in the world besides me have way too much time on their hands? I can only spare perhaps 30 minutes while eating dinner and thus I prefer up to ten minutes concentrated videos on a single topic. Of all people who I am following I think Luke Towan has it nailed perfectly. He has some half an hour or so videos, but his technique videos are some 7-8 minutes long.
Let's get to the topic of this post...
The Winger's wasn't at the top of the list of the started projects that intended to finish in the nearest future, but here we are. There was so little left to be done, but the motivation was nowhere to be found. I think the spark that re-ignited it was all scenery work I did on Chippy's and Gusano Loco dioramas. Now, if I could just sell it quickly...

On the workbench today 12/01/18

The landscapers visited Gusano Loco for the last time and unfortunately left some trash.

Then they stopped by Wingers Paper Co.

J.Keen loves old signs.

On the workbench today 11/27/18

The landscapers visited Gusano Loco today.

On the workbench today 11/25/18

Packing up Chippy's for shipping.

On the workbench today 11/21/18

 I applied the plastic wood on the corners to hide the plywood edges. It might be total overkill...

The mat board building from the Garment District definitely needs putty applied to hide the joints.

The Packard truck from the Chippy Hollow is getting there.

The Gusano Loco got new signs and the road patches today.

"Muddied up" castings I picked up at the EXPO and some of the parts from the Dead Horse Bay kit.

 Painted and weathered windows and doors from the Dead Horse Bay kit.

On the workbench today 11/14/18

I am gluing ITLA York Industries walls together. While the walls were flat I sprayed backs with black paint since I am going to install the lighting,

On the workbench today 11/10/18

Making my first mold.

Working on the Jordan Packard 1922 truck.

On the workbench today 11/8/18

I said I wasn't going to write anything, but sometimes it would be hard to make sense of what I am trying show. From now on I will provide a caption.

Preparing ITLA York Industries for painting.

On the workbench today 11/7/18

I have not been updating my blog for the past couple of years as I should have. The biggest challenge for me has always been writing something up. Now, if I eliminated write up would it these kind of posts be of interest to anyone? It is hard to tell without trying, isn't it? Therefore, I am launching "On the workbench today". I'll try to do at least 2 posts per week and if there is any interest I'll continue. I am thinking I might start separate blog though. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here is the first picture. From this point forward OTWT posts will be mostly silent.

Edited: The caption was an afterthought.

Glued the 'painted sign' on one of the FOS Dead Horse Bay kit walls.

The spray can cap info for my EXPO clinic attendees

I found the source of my spray can caps. They are from Art Primo. There are others out there like Spray Planet, etc.

Building Chippys Hollow Hardware Co by Fine Scale Miniatures Pt.3

Two years ago after seeing a MRH TV episode on Cricut cutting machine I decided I had to have one. I was going to use it to cut many things and then I even didn't take it out of the shipping box. At first I just didn't want to go through the learning process. Later I learned that it wasn't as good as it was being portrayed. So it sat on a shelf until few days ago.
The reason for this change of heart was that I needed to paint the tires for the truck that was included with the Chippys. I could have done it with a paintbrush, but those wheels are small and painting just the tires on them without messing up entire wheel isn't very easy task. I thought I would do a better job if I could use a mask and an airbrush. However, cutting the mask by hand with such accuracy is nearly impossible and very time consuming. Using a liquid mask is pretty much the same as painting the tires with a paintbrush. Then I remembered the Cricut and decided to bite the bullet and at least try it. After several hours I had my wheel masks cut out. I have yet to see how well the masks did the job since I did airbrushing late last night. If everything went well I will have the truck done in a week or so. The rest is already finished.