A Pane-ful Job Made Easier

Yes, you read that correctly.  Pane-ful instead of painful.  Regular readers of this blog may know my disdain for installing window glass.  I have reached the point in the Trail Drive challenge where I'm installing window glass in the cabeeses.  There are sixteen windows on each caboose.  Fortunately the Tichy windows I used in the cupolas come with pre-cut clear styrene that drops perfectly into the window.  But that's only six windows per car.  The remaining ten in the body will need to be cut from clear styrene sheet.  Thankfully the cuts on these don't need to be precise and they're all the same size.  

However the real challenge isn't the fit of things; rather, getting the little buggers into place without smudging glue all over and having to curse and try again.  Enter blue-tack.

A tiny blob on the end of a dental tool allows me to pick up a pane and set it precisely into place deep inside the caboose body, just where I want it.  Once the glue has grabbed I can gently roll the tool to release it from the pane.  No swearing, weeping, gnashing of teeth or rending garments.  Why didn't I think of this before now?

Paint Pot?

I recently worked a crossword that had to have been written by a Brit.  Answers included "have at it", "anorak" and "paint pot".  Nobody I know on this side of the pond says paint pot.  Whether the lid screws on or flips up, we say bottle.  If it comes in a tube, we say tube.  If we're not sure what to call it we say container.  Say pot, at least in Northern California, and folks certainly don't think of a paint container.

So what do you call this?

For those unfamiliar with such a thing, what you are looking at is a contact lens case.  This one has lids that screw on and off.  The older kind used to have lids that were attached and snapped into place.  They wore out, leaked, and had the potential to send your precious lens flying if opened incorrectly.  

This version shown here makes a great little temporary storage for paint.  I have mixed a custom color of three drops white to one drop "Butter Cream" and a drop of matte medium thinner to match the aging sides of the MDT freezer, in order to paint the ends.  When you just need a tiny little container to keep a custom color fresh long enough to give the object you are painting multiple coats, this fits the bill nicely.

Whether you call it a pot, container, vessel, or whatever, I call it really useful!

Flash Tip

The classic Woodland Scenics metal kits are (in)famous for their quality - both positively for the wonderful amount of detail included in the parts, and negatively for all the flash and general cleanup involved in making them look their best.*  I enjoy them and have spent many happy hours painting them.  Recently I began preparing the parts of the Diamond T Flatbed Truck kit.  It will feature prominently in the "streetcar track deconstruction" scene planned for Pine Branch Park.

So here's the tip:  Leave the wheels on the sprue to clean out the flash from the spokes and around the tires.  THEN cut the wheel from the sprue and dress the remaining flash/sprue remnant.  I use Xurons to get a clean flush cut without damaging the tire but if you cut too deep into the tire, just dress it with a file and make that the part of the wheel that sits on the road.  I removed and cleaned two wheels before realizing how much easier it would be to leave the wheels on the sprue and do this work.


*Granted, there are some early runs that don't have nearly as much flash to trim as more recent runs.  I think - this is just my hypothesis - that the older castings are cleaner because the molds are newer.  Is this the case?  Regardless, I tend to look for older kits for this reason and find them to have less flash to remove and fewer casting defects.