Non-toxic Model Building
Some ideas haunt me.
Like the idea that maybe it’s not clear that this blog is about model building in the least toxic way.
No, seriously. That’s what it’s about. I thought that was obvious.
Oh well…
(I just have this awful image in my head of somebody going “Oh…really? It’s ABOUT that? No kidding? Huh. I thought it was about painting with a brush… I guess I have to adjust my thinking here…”).
Okay, here are some links for anybody who’s just now getting it.
My attempt to provide a good, solid list of non-toxic alternative products.
Here’s a link explaining how I create a wash.
Yeah. It’s obvious I’m not really good at making my “main” point and hammering away at it until I’m so tired of it that I know that everybody hears what I’m saying. I suck at that.
My problem is that I assume that everybody is going to see what I’m doing and kinda swerve off into a meta sort of thing where you see “brushpainter” and you think “clever guy–he’s sneaking his sophisticated low-toxicity model building agenda on top of a stylish brush-painting groove.”
I should really run this stuff by a test audience to see if anybody, at all, understands it before I pull the trigger. I should really do this after, oh, five or six years of limited responses…
…might be a problem. Might be a lack of communication. Might be my fault…
I always enjoy your posts Dan. Even though I own (and occasionally use) an airbrush, I still brush paint 80% of the time. The tips and product recommendations are appreciated and welcomed.
Thanks, man. I’m not anti-airbrush. I’m pro-health. There are quite a few people who can’t airbrush safely due to pre-existing health conditions, limited space, cold weather, unreasonable cat, etc.
Oh, Pharoah, let my people build plastic model kits!
See, you are consistent Dan.
Many people will have a shot about me brush painting with enamels (I use acrylics too) and how unhealthy they are, and then talk about how they switched to lacquers….I mean, really?
You just put the boot into all of us 😉
This is a wonderul site, And I have respect for what you have accomplished , it is useful and fun to read. I wonder if you could comment or muse upn the following, The idea of an unproductive versus a productive hobby my wife is in the belief that a hobby should be productive like if I do woodwork and construct cabinets or do engine repair or house fixing. But since I was a child I have love model building and recently got back into the Hobby and I spend. I spend close to 1k in the lat year toget back into the hobby, and i want to spend more, i go to sleep thinking about models, and watch Youtube videos on model building. Could this be loweing my testorone? Could you comment on productive vs unproductive hobbies.
Ozymandias
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
A man in China had his purse stolen, so he got a wooden strongbox and kept his money in there. Then a thief broke into his house and took the strongbox, so he invested in a metal box, and kept it hidden, but one day another thief saw him hide it, and later went back, picked the lock and took the money.
Eventually, we bought a safe, and put his money in there, but then a gang of bandits came to the town, and forced the man at gunpoint to give over the contents of the safe.
Finally, having been successful and business and having kept his money in multiple hiding places, he built an office building, and buried a huge steel safe in the basement. “Here,” he said, “my wealth cannot be stolen.” Then, an enemy army conquered the city, blew up the building, pulled the safe out of the basement with a tank and lifted it up onto a truck and hauled it away.
The man consulted a sage, and asked him what he had done wrong. The sage answered “Nothing, but I can see that you were only saving up for a stronger thief.”
Ok, sort of got it something about impermanence, anything else?
I provide invaluable droplets of wisdom, but I can’t control what happens to them after they leave the shop. One last, final bit of advice would be to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, and if you have already read it, go BACK and read it again, especially the parts about gumption.
Beautiful, thank you. One most impress the dichotomy of romantic and practical, yet it seems that the a society is more rewarding of the rational and the practical. I will read the art of motorcycle maintenance with the hope of finding an answer that minimizes my gumption trap effect. Maybe as i age i wonder about legacies, and it feels that maybe my hobbies are not legacies, but what is a legacy? Thank you back to brush painting practice with spoons with all the vallejo model color i got for Christmas.
Good luck with the Vallejo Model Color. I haven’t been able to get it to work, but some people swear by it (I prefer to swear at it). Life is an epic mystery. The only really practical thing I ever learned was that old-fashioned positive thinking works like magic. (It may BE magic). Other than that, I know nothing.