Olfaction

The picture's just there because I hate posting without a picture these days - what, just a big hunk of text??? That's what my other blog is for! (Verlinden 200mm bust, if you're curious.)

I just got home from a long day at work. I'm tired, and I had a splitting headache. But I just wanted to say this - I really love the smell of Bondo. In fact, I enjoy most of the smells associated with modeling. Not so much MEK or lacquer thinner, but the old Testors tube glue is pretty nice, and even better is the citrus scent of the non-toxic stuff (am I the only person who ever, however briefly, considering actually tasting the citrus-scented non-toxic glue?). And I have a few ancient Pactra enamels that I keep around, just so I can open them now and then and have a nice nostalgic sniff.

(Mind you, I'm not a tremendous fan of Bondo, I just like the way it smells. I find that I have trouble getting it to stick to plastic, and I only use it in cases where giant quantities of putty are required and a mass of Squadron white putty, my normal poison, would take about 38 years to dry. I bring this up because lately I'm converting an X-15A2 to an X-15A5, which involves adding a plug to the fuselage, which involves Bondo.)

And for those Nervous Nellies out there who are likely to accuse me of actually encouraging the deliberate concentration and inhalation of solvents, get over yourselves. Sometimes model glue is just model glue.

Getting Back To The Bench

I've been so busy lately I really haven't had a chance to build anything. About the only model-related thing I've done in the last week is spray some black paint on an Anigrand 1/72nd X-20 Dyna-Soar, but because I'd failed to clean the resin well enough, the paint promptly developed a bunch of nasty fish-eyes. Bad ones too - it looks like I rubbed the model with a slab of chicken fried steak. And who wants to see that mess? Certainly not I.

And meantime I've been busy getting ready for Christmas, and my wife's cousin was here visiting for a while... But in the words of the old guy in the Monty Python movie, "I'm not dead yet." So I decided to post an old photograph of the Monogram 1/48th "First Lunar Landing" while I go about the business of trying to remember what I was working on and where I put my super glue.

But first, I have to do something proactive about that X-20. I'm no psychic, but I foresee that I'll be getting the oven cleaner out of the cabinet in the near future.

The Knights Who Say Ni

I'm sort of addicted to those soft polyethylene 1/72nd scale figures that Airfix, Revell, Italeri, Hat and other offer. I buy a lot of them and I have big plans for them, but I rarely seem to do anything with them (I have enough Romans to put an entire cohort in the field at 1:1 scale, it seems, but unanswered is the question of why I'd ever want to).

This was an idea I had while watching The Return of the King, namely, "Wouldn't it be cool to make a small diorama with a whole bunch of knights or heavy cavalry charging at the viewer?" So this is the result - a boxful of Italeri Teutonic Knights charging across a snowy field, presumably toward thin ice on a Russian river.

I left the horses on their bases and sort of submerged the bases in a layer of drywall compound, then later sifted baking soda over the whole works and tacked it down with Dullcote.

I'm glad I got that out of my system.

But - oh no - I have the Italeri "Medieval Tournament" set, and now THAT is calling to me!