warlordgarou

Forgot all about this a the beginning of the year. Rather than make a pledge to paint X many models, or to paint a specific army/unit/whatever, my goal for 2022 is simply to make my hobby time a habit. So, any day where I am home and awake more than a couple of hours, I plan to spend at least 20 minutes of productive hobby time, whether it is assembly, trimming, priming, painting, basing, etc. (I am not going to give myself credit for cleaning my desk or planning armies, because the first really should be part of the housecleaning pledge I made, and the second is just an excuse to not paint.) I am also playing "Shame Golf" each quarter (saw it on YouTube somewhere, basic idea is you gain a point for each model you buy, lose a point for each model you paint, sell or give away. Scored like golf, goal is to be as close to 0 as possible, if not negative.) I'm currently well into negative territory, but AdeptiCon is in the first quarter, so I need to get cracking so I stay that way once the vendor hall opens.

Oh, that's lovely. I bookmarked it for future reference, but I think next year (circumstances permitting), I will be starting on either Nappies or ACW in a serious way, but I would like to wargame that period at some point in the future.

Special order (the crossovers) came in the other day, so when the son and I went to pick them up, something else dropped into the cart. Now he has a current locomotive (instead of one being made in the late 1990s, or earlier). It's DCC equipped, with sound, lights, and more functions than we can use (until we get the DCC controller, but those are rarer than hen's teeth right now). And my wife (and I) thought gaming stuff was expensive. . . .

Turkeys. I can shoo wild turkeys away, and I'm probably not in any major legal trouble if I accidentally injure one. Canadian Geese are federally protected, and I swear that they are aware of, and gladly abuse, this status. I don't worry about too much when I am out running, but there are paths & trails I avoid for two months every spring because the cobra chickens have taken them over, and will defend their turf.

Getting very frustrated with my Ender3. The BLTouch crashed and died, and I was having problems upgrading the firmware on the board (because the firmware kept killing prints because it was looking for info from the BLTouch). Upgraded the board, new firmware, and now the nozzle jumps up almost a full centimeter from the board when it starts printing.

It has some expansion opportunities, but it’s mainly limited to that space (but includes the center). The other half of that room is my gaming area, and includes the shelves I had made for my gaming stuff. We thought about a helix to the lower level, but this is the first real layout past our 4x8 oval

HO. I finished assembling the rest of the basic benchwork this morning, adding another 13 feet long on that open wall. It something like a 50 foot loop if you go around the perimeter, ignoring that first box, which is going to be used as the fiddle yard. HO scale should look pretty good, N scale would have looked amazing, but we'd been accumulating HO stuff since the son's first layout when he was about 5, so changing at this point would be expensive.

Every time that pile of 1x4s gets too small, it seems like I have to buy more. Fortunately, I think I now have everything cut (after buying still yet more 1x4s, screws, clamps to replace the one that broke, and nails), and it's finally starting to look like something. (But I still have to buy plywood and 1" foam, and probably more track, and trains, and a power supply for a DCC loco, and . . . . )

Been promising my son to build a larger train layout for too many years now, so today I bought some of the lumber and assorted bits to make a start on it. (This is all I’ve made so far, but there is a largish pile of 1x4s that aren’t pictured.). And I finally broke down and picked this box set up for myself

I’m using electrical tape now (which I’ve been told is adequate, if less than ideal). Changing the screen took maybe 45 minutes, but a lot of that was either dealing with the old tape residue or applying the new tape. When I have to do it again, I think it will only be 30 minutes at most.

Near as I can tell, I managed to get a small spill of resin under the resin tank. It wicked along the edge, and then cured (without affecting the print). When I pulled the resin tank to change resins, the LCD came with it. You live, you learn, you add tape just in case. ;)

Well, this happened a few days ago. Got the replacement part Saturday, and it was back up and running Saturday night.

Looks good! My printer is down until sometime tomorrow - I put a pinprick hole in the FEP yesterday or today, and found out only when I went to switch resins. So, got to take apart tank and clean the cured resin off it, and decided I would just move the printer tomorrow across the room to where I really wanted to put it when I got it.

Most of the ones I have been printing were designed to be printed without supports, or with minimal ones. One of his previous KS require supports, but the weight of the raft and supports is still pretty negligible compared to the miniatures, though I concede that, over a year or so, it is definitely going to add up. It's still well under $.50 per mini, if I ignore the cost of the printer itself.

I'm amazed at how many minis I can get out of a liter of resin. There are another dozen or so not pictured here (because they are on my painting table), and there was still some resin left.