Continuing on from last week. Here are some more tools that I’ve recently acquired or made.
Tool roundup – Part one
Hi all.
A bit of a long break but now just getting back to normal. I took a couple of days off and drove around the northwestern part of Nevada tracing some of the route of the abandoned Modoc railroad. I have a post coming up about that trip. I also got a little sick and have been out of modeling action for a couple of weeks and only now am I getting back to normal.
In the meantime wanted to post something about tools. I like to make tools and I like to collect tools. Some tools get plenty of use while others not so much. Some tools are purchased and then sit in their boxes for years before I can find a use for them.
Calibration weights
One of the most useful tools I’ve purchased recently are calibration weights. I briefly mentioned them on the Railroad Line Forum but want to give a little more info about them here. Up till now I’ve been weighing things down using whatever I can lay my hands on around the workspace. Not only is it inconvenient, it is dangerous and time consuming. Inconvenient because often I need a weight right in front of me to grab, dangerous because I ended up using whatever I can lay my hands on without thinking how stable the objects might be, and time consuming because it takes time to find the right combination of paint pots, metal objects, and glass jars.
Scenery scratch pads
On a trip to the UK over the holidays I finally managed to purchase some Gordon Gravett books on grass and trees. I’ll say more about Gordon Gravett another time but in the meantime I’ve been wanting to get hold of these books for a while now. Unfortunately to have them sent to the States puts them in the $70 a piece range whereas I got them for about $30 a piece in the UK – affordable and well worth the price.
Peco Static Grass Applicator
My Peco Static Grass Applicator arrived over the weekend. This is my first branded applicator as opposed to my hand-made (not by me) applicator.
The original Noch applicator (that introduced the static grass method a few years ago) is nearly $200 which is a crazy amount of money to spend on such a small and simple tool. Even though I could afford it I could never justify spending that kind of money and therefore via Ebay (and Australia and $30) I bought my hand-made flour-sifter version. It has served me well for several years now.