More prep work

Recipe for Moehne lakeshore hills: foam hills from Bloody Omaha, one pack Gaugemaster fir trees, one bag large headed felt nails, one bottle superglue....

Hrm. Runny superglue doesn't stick the nail heads to the trees' bases very well. Time to try superglue gel...

And fail because the gel superglue runs out after three trees....

And I'm out of hot glue sticks. 

Guess I'm going shopping tomorrow.  ;)

Learning more about Archaeology

Just popped up on Facebook via the Dig Village folks is this - "Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets", a course via Coursera taught by Sue Alcock of Brown University. Truth to tell, I've always been kind of tempted, if I ever had the time and the money, to do a second degree in archaeology or history - this is particularly tempting living as we do on the edge of the Fens, with Flag Fen but a few miles away, and the local college does in fact do one. I am, however, perhaps getting a bit old to make much practical use of it :D

Anyway, the Coursera course looks kind of fun - it's 8 weeks from the beginning of June, and here's the introductory video. It's free, and entirely online, so...



Watch this space - I'll keep folks updated on any interesting titbits.

Into the Woods part 8 - magic!

I did manage to get out into the workshop today as it was, for once, warm enough, which allowed me to do the messy stuff that I'd be a dead man if I tried on the dining table.

I put together a couple more of the Woodland Scenics tree armatures + rubberised horsehair + flock trees, in addition to the willow - I'd have done more, but managed to tweak my back shifting things to make space to set up more trees to dry, so decided to call it a day after two. Not been a good weekend so far.

On the good side, I've now had a lazy afternoon stretched out on the bed watching various YouTube scenery how-to videos!

Anyway - the magic stuff is that mythical substance, Johnson's Klear. It isn't actually available in the UK as Klear at present: it's now called 'Pledge Multi-Surface Wax', but it appears to do the same thing, namely dry to a clear almost-sealant type coat. Big thanks to Matthias Darrow, who pointed out its usefulness to me in the comments on a previous post. It's not that easy to come by (there are rumours Morrison's stock it but I failed to find any), but I managed to score a decently cheap supplier on Amazon.

Basically, I poured about an inch or so neat into an ice-cream tub, liberally dunked the trees in it and am now leaving them to dry. The previous time I did this, I diluted it about 50/50 with water: it did work (producing a clear coat on the trees that you can shake pretty vigorously without the foliage dropping off) but it does take a good few days to dry. This time, therefore, I'm trying it neat to see if it dries faster: I've sealed the container, so hopefully I can reuse it for the rest of the trees.

As you can see, it's messy, and you do need to leave it to dry someplace it's not going to get knocked, etc.