Good evening Shop Dwellers! It's 73*F and calm under partly cloudy skies in my region. Thanks to all who "liked" and/or commented on my latest post, which is probably long forgotten by now.
Karl - so sorry to learn that Bud has relapsed! I hope there will be some way to restore him to health, but I agree that you can't just watch the poor guy suffer...☹
Hughie - I
hear ya on the generator! You might remember my own postings on here back in late February/early March about the portable one that I got. While not as elaborate as the one you're installing, it does provide peace of mind that IF we should lose our power in the dead of winter, we'll still be able to run our furnace, well pump, refrigerators and and other essential items. I was having serious anxiety whenever Accuweather predicted major ice storms for our area.
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I know it's been a good 5 days since the last time I posted anything in here (other than leaving "likes"). I've been hunkering down trying to get this Ford plant pseudo-structure completely painted - and window panes and other details added where needed. But naturally, Murphy just HAD to intrude on my plans!
The first incident was on Monday evening while I was working on connecting two sections straddled by a loading dock. I was using [Plastruct] PlasticWeld, and in a moment of clumsiness, I knocked over the open jar - which was ~4" away from one of the secitions. So a corner of one of the brick panels had glue spilled on it. Luckily I was able to grab the piece immediately and shake-off most of the glue before the bricks melted, but it still left a glossy stain:
I spent the remainder of the evening trying to redo the brick mortar lines, but I just couldn't get rid of the sharp boundary line between the stained and un-stained bricks. Hopefully nobody will be noticing that defect when they're 3 feet away and focusing mainly on the train:
...but if I can figure out some plausible reason for a large sign or poster to cover that spot, I'd like to do that. Problem is, I just can't think of why the prototype Ford Motor Co. would even put a sign in a spot that's usually hidden when a hi-cube boxcar is spotted there.
Tuesday, it took me much longer to scratch-build the pieces to frame the loading dock openings, since I not only had to cut them to sizes that fit together perfectly, but to
paint them as well - I was still working on completing those dock openings all the way thru Wednesday evening. And on Thursday, I was cementing pieces of .040"-thick styrene strips on the undersides to prop-up some of the thinner wall sections, so they would line up evenly where they adjoined the neighboring thicker sections.
Finally by this afternoon, I was ready to cement the wall sections onto the Lexan backing. On the advice of a friend, I used clear silicone caulking gel for this - since that takes 24 hours to cure and would leave me plenty time to do any last-minute repositioning or alignments. Now I just need to wait until 5pm Saturday before I try to pick up the finished facade. I still have to do a few corrugated metal facades, but at least those will be much quicker to paint since they are a solid color and very few windows. Hopefully that will leave me enough time in the evenings to participate more frequently in here...
Good Night, and have a Pleasant Tomorrow!