It's a sign!

Decided to take it easy tonight and edit a few billboard for various locations. Feel free to use them, just copy paste and put them in a Word doc, so you can scale them to the desired size for your table.

Feeling a bit fenced in - 3 metres of WIP

As I didn't have much time tonight, I went for the do just one or 2 things and in bulk. So, 15 strips of cardboard and 15 20cm cut down BBQ matches later.....

Yes, rather.......unimpressive.

When done, it is 3 metres of metal sheeting fence, so there. Tomorrow the rest of the framework will be done, again little time, and Friday I'll base them all up and start cutting corners again.

And in other news, guess what I found in a 2nd hand store in thge next village.

Weirdest thing is that I found the first column in a DIFFERENT store then where I went today......and I still don't know what they are! Also a very handy Thingamajig that will come in handy. All of this for the princely sum of 30 cents for the lot.

Now, off to bed, internship again tomorrow and a review by my mentor and my jobcoach. I hope I'm doing well. I haven't FUBARed my way around or burned the building down or anything....yet, so I have that going for me :D.

Feeling a bit fenced in - cutting corners

After a full day of internship I'm a bit beat, so not that much today.

1 90 degree inner corner, 1 90 degree outer corner and 1 very angled 30 degree corner just to see if I could make one without throwing it in the bin in frustration. Well, it worked. Well, apart from my shitty math then, one of the legs is 1 cm too short. Ah well.....

+29 cm.

194 cm's in total. Not too bad for a couple of evenings work. I'll do some more straights tomorrow and a backdoor I think. Maybe an extra corner.

Feeling a bit fenced in +70cm

3 strips of 20 cm and 1 strip of 10 cm fence added today. Kinda overlooked the amount of time it takes to build these, so I've set my goal a bit lower, to +50cm's each day till I hit 6 metres.

And as luck would have it, when barbed wire has been added on top, it will make  a fine 28mm scaled fence as well. So there's that.

I'm now at 165 cm's of fence. Depending on how I use my time, I should have the basics done in a week or so.

Feeling a bit fenced in

Spent a enjoyable sundaymorning with the girls, and a enjoyable afternoon with the guys at the dinnertable, everyone working on their own projects. Made a very enjoyable dinner for all of us, and came to the conclusion it maight be handy to make those portable worktrays if we want to do this more often, to clear the table for dinner. After that, we all exhausted the girls by tossing various footballs and what not around. After that a bit more building and swapping of ideas, and the idea in our heads that we really should do this more often

Anyhoo, as I'm still acting like a fruitfly on Red Bull, I decided to test out something I had a seen a Youtuber do, and started out making iron sheet fencing. Thx to the trusty Lego box and The Chopper with a little sanding block, making everything properly was a breeze, even if the first part took me nearly 3 hours. After that it just went quicker and quicker.

 The first 95 cm's are now done. I need to sand and trim the bases, and some smoothing here and there, but basically these are ready and can go on with the next lot. I reckon I could use about 3 metres of the stuff, so taking my own advice to heart, I doubled that to 6 metres. If I can make more then half a metre wach evening I'm more then happy.

The fences are really simple btw, scrap plastic stuck together for the bases, matchsticks of various sizes and  a small sized wavey cardboard that I picked up 1 or 2 years ago in bulk for exactly such a project as this. I think I will make a quick tutorial on them at a later date. To ease setting up, this time I'm opting for a lot more 20cm sections of fence. I will do a lot more of those, plus corners, inverted corners, short bits, damaged bits and I'll make the sure the gate(s) will be a seperate piece flanked by concrete pillars. That way I can make a African gate, a Vietnamese gate, a UN Compound gate, a Russian base gate, a German company gate and anything else really. With some of the larger BBQ matches I should be able to make a covered area to park trucks and tanks and supplies and stuff.

I think I will spend the rest of the evenings this week with the radio on, churning out sections of fence with a few damaged and oddball panels in between. It's amazing that again I'm having the most fun scratchbuilding stuff with just wood, glue and paper. Well, not that amazing if you know me, but hey.

Oh, and the top of the fence will be topped off with some barbed wire, will make a small groove for that later and just epoxy it in place.....no rush to do all that now.

Yup, today was a good day.

Every little step I take...

...brings me further in the right direction. Tonight, I cleared the desk, cleared most of the battletable (finally), moved all of the For Sale stuff on said table, listed more stuff online for sale and blimey, look at tthe time.

 Just trying to make sense of it all and avoid clutter on the table. Rehung 2 whiteboards as the sticky tape perished on both of them mere days apart, very odd.

Updated myself on some of the bigger items I'm working on (post-it so I know what's going on with it. Most are waiting for trade parts or magnets). Also started sorting unbuilt stuff into project boxes...keeps things a bit simpler.

Tomorrow I'm having a build day with some gaming friends, so all sunday building and chatting will be nice. The girls can join in with their colouring as well. I'm making dinner for everyone and after that we'll go on till people want to leave. Should be a nice day.

Tutorial: How to make neon signs, by Andy M

Copied for safekeeping off of the Lead Adventure Forum, as I had it bookmarked but the Great Photobucket Disaster of 2017 left it without pictures. It has now been restored: How to make Neon signs

Following text is all Andy M's

 So how to do neon signs....

Well....you don't need much. The making of the sign is just a bit of plastic card and some solder. You'll need superglue to stick the solder down and a knife to cut it.

 1. Cut the plastic card and draw out your sign. Having a template to cut the solder really helps get the size of the bits right.

 2. Glue your bits on with superglue.

 3. Now for the neon to work it needs to be on a dark background. Its the contrast between light/dark that should fool the viewer into believing its real. I've started here with GW Leadbeltcher Metal.

 4. I've then mixed a heavy wash. 1 part GW Nuln oil, 2 parts GW Abaddon Black to 3 parts water. Then allow it to dry.

 5. Here I've used GW Mephiston Red and an old brush. The idea here is to drybrush into the cracks around the solder and drybrush a 'halo' around the letters.

6. Use the same colour as the last step but paint the letters a solid colour this time with a decent brush.

 7. The next stage is just to add some white, GW Ceramic White, 1 part red to 1 part white. Don't paint the whole letter this time, but try and make each successful highlight a smaller line than the one before.

 8. Add more white to your mix 1 part red to 2 parts white. Apply some of your whitest highlights at the start and end of the letters.

Edit: I forgot to mention the other colours that seem to work for me....

Blue Neon: replace GW Mephiston Red with GW Sotek Green.

Green Neon: drybrush GW Warboss Green to create the 'halo' effect around the solder letters, then use GW Moot Green to paint the letters. Add more and more white to the Moot Green to highlight the letters.