Laser Cutting for the Hobbyist, with Jake McKee: Episode 129

Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.

Well folks, welcome to episode 129 of Plastic Model Mojo, Kentucky, Dave, how you doing? I'm cold man Got a little cold in Kentucky. Holy moly did it. That didn't take long.

No, it took like two seconds after Thanksgiving and man temperatures went south on us, and not in a good way. We had three inches of snow in Lexington. I know we had about three inches Now. It didn't stick to the roads or anything, but all the non-road surfaces were just absolutely covered with the stuff.

Well, winter's upon us, clearly, yeah. So either it's the dark time or it's great modeling weather, one or the other, or both. Well, my friend, what's up in your model sphere?

Well, I am fighting the dark time. Obviously, thanksgiving's behind us and, oh my God, I ate, and ate, and ate. There is both an upside and a downside to having a nephew who just graduated culinary school and now is a chef. It's the finest Thanksgiving meal I've ever had. But, god, am I full and we're truly into the dark time, that time of year between Thanksgiving and the new year, when there's decorations to put up, there's Christmas gifts to buy, there's all the everything related to the holidays, and that starts pushing out the modeling time, and so I'm kind of fighting that. It's going to be a little bit of a struggle. It's going to be a little bit of a struggle, it's going to be a little bit of a struggle. So my model sphere is conflicted. How about yours?

Well, it's pretty good. A couple of things One will segue into the second one. The first one is I want to extend an apology, just so they know what's up, to the folks we talked to in Chicago, which I'm now referring to as the lost Chicago segments. It was a learning experience. So, barry Biedeger, we're sorry you haven't heard your segment we recorded with you on Plastic Model Mojo and Aaron Skinner, a fine scale modeler. Likewise, we're sorry. The segment you recorded with Plastic Model Mojo has not aired and it's not going to air either. One of because when we do this remote thing, dave, we're going to have to take three microphones with us because we keep forgetting to hand the mic to the other person and we get a bunch of non-sound from the person trying to talk.

Yeah, yeah, it's a learning experience. That's the first time we've actually not only taken the little remote unit, mobile unit, with us, but actually walked around with it.

Well, I did it once in Omaha.

I talked to the folks over at Atlantis, but it was just me and I had two microphones, so this little incongruency didn't rear its ugly head. Well, we live, we learn, learn. So that's going on. It had nothing to do with content. It had everything to do with the, the rank amateurs who were interviewing you. So there you go. But I mentioned aaron skinner because I want to mention I just got my january, february 2025 issue of Fine Scale Modeler, uh-huh, and the cover is absolutely brilliant.

I have not seen it, so you want to go check that out. And basically, in this issue, they're burning through a lot of kind of currently in vogue weathering techniques. Yep, that's kind of the theme of the entire episode. Content-wise, most of it's pretty good. I got to hand it to them. This one, this one is a step up and it looks like they're going to try to making every effort to live up to what they hope to do with fine skill going forward on their new, new ownership. So keep it up, guys. I like man the covers. The covers really cool. That's probably the nicest fine skill cover I've seen.

And I really cool.

That's probably the nicest fine scale cover I've seen, and I don't know how long. Oh, I'll have to. I'll have to check it out. So there you go. Lost chicago segments new fine scale, hot off the press. Like you, I'm a little struggling with the bench time right now, but I'm squeezing some in. We'll get that a little later.

So, yeah, it's not a not a total loss well, since we're recording episode 129, I'm assuming you have a modeling fluid in front of you.

That'd be a good assumption. What do you have? I've got a Russell's Reserve 10-year. Oh, I went out and got a bottle because it was a Christmas tree and outdoor light day and that's my tradition is once we get indoors at the evening and we start doing the tree. I got a pretty good pour and hoping no drama pops up. So we had a successful tree rendering.

Well, good, well, good, well, that's a good choice. You know what Clark Griswold's father said when asked how he got through the holiday season. That's right, a little help from Jack Daniels didn through the holiday season that's right.

A little help from jack daniels didn't hurt either that's right. Well, russell's reserved, but in this case, yeah, and you well, yes, I have a modeling fluid and and art, yeah, okay, and sometimes you buy a bottle of liquor based on the fancy bottle you based on the fancy bottle, or you buy a beer based on the can or the label or the name well, I don't know about beer, but I know for a lot of liquors, and quite often for model kits as well. That's usually not a good plan.

Well, I agree, but in this case I purchased tonight's modeling fluid, which is a beer. Solely based on the name and the packaging, the beer is Lethal Weapon 6 out of Mirror Twin Brewing Company in Lexington, kentucky. Apparently, lexington has now got a microbrewery on every block, because I can't pick up a micro-brewed beer without it being from Lexington.

Well, better yet.

Mirror Twin is literally a four minute walk from work oh, that's great if they have a windy day they have a beer called lethal weapon six. The tagline on the can is I'm too old for this shit and I mean it's just. You know it is a blonde stout and I'm not a stout guy, so this may be the mistake of buying something based on the bottle or the box art, but it's really cool. It's a really great idea. Great packaging and hang on. Okay, that's interesting. I'm not normally a stout guy and this is a blonde stout, so we're going to see how it goes down. But they've got a lot of cute little touches on the can, including they've got a space for enjoy by and they've got the date stamped, in this case April 19, 2025. And below it it says Riggs R-I-G-G-S. It's just really cute. I bought it completely based on the can. I never heard about this, never tried it before, but I've got it and we'll see how it goes.

Working through the episode well, I don't know about your beer, but the listener mailbag is certainly good this time. Good, well, let's get into it, because we got quite a bit to cut for here. A lot of them are discussion topics too. Some aren't, some are, so we got a little bit of everything good. Oh, first up, rock roszak from the tail and scale, dave Our man. They got another new book. Yes, they do.

We got from the Color and Marking Series, volume 8, the F-106 Delta Dart, one of my favorite aircraft of all time, and boy I can tell you they've done a beautiful job on this. This one tickles all the right spots.

You got 127 pages of goodness with 314 color photographs. Can't go wrong there, man. Yep, yep. It's got a chronology of every marking set used by the operational squadrons that flew the f-106, including there's a lot of them 21 adc and eight ad tech squadrons. Six air national guards fighter interceptor squadrons. 6th Air National Guard Fighter Interceptor Squadrons all that stuff.

And also you get the test aircraft, the support aircraft, b-1b chase planes and the NASA birds. And then it gets into the ADC gray paint schemes and general markings used on the F-106 and provides the ADC and higher HQ aircraft markings policies.

Yep.

Yours folks, for $25. 2599 for the print edition. It's a bargain. Yes, it is Absolutely 1699 for Apple books and Amazon Kindle.

Yep.

And you get a little extra with that 191 pages and 328 plus color photos.

Yep, and you got them on a tablet man, you blow up those pictures and those markings, illustrations as big as you want.

so that's what's new from detail and scale. So check out wwwdetailandscalecom and if you like the 106 delta dart, you're going to want to pick one of these up, yes you are well up next is not as good news.

dave, uh-oh, tony from horizon hobbies down in australia. Yeah, they're going to be ceasing production and business, unfortunately because they're. I've been a major player in the real space genre, yeah, the last number of years and just had a few kit releases not that long ago, yep. So I don't know if this stuff might resurface. I don't know what Tony's doing with the business after it's no longer an ongoing concern for him. But we're a little late with this because we got this back mid-November, so I don't know what's left. Folks will have to check it out on their own at horizonmodelscom. But he's offering 25% to 40% off on their kits while supplies last and orders over $75 will get free shipping.

And they do great stuff. You can't go wrong ordering anything in their product line and if you're a real space guy, you're going to want to get them and stock up now.

Well, if he's Dunsville, hopefully they may find their find themselves in other hands. Yeah, It'd be a shame for it to go away forever.

He's got a lot.

He's got a lot of work in that. Yep, yes, he does. That's unfortunate. Hopefully it'll all work out good for Tony. Yes, well, dave, the Skippy's new modeling shed has generated a couple emails.

Okay.

Scott Huber from State College Pennsylvania. He works in a former garden shed oh, does he? His house has no basement. Okay, now he's got a few jokes in here about the bathroom issues that we made before. We won't get into that. But he says, on a serious note, heat and AC are essential, depending on the climate. He's got full-time heat, but he's seasonally limited because he has no AC. He says you're going to need two dryer type hookups, one for the spray booth and one for the AC. Well, it depends on what kind of AC option you choose. Clearly, he says plan on putting in a two-foot wide or bigger spray booth. Bigger is better. I agree with that. I agree with that as well, Depending on what you model, I guess yeah, but if you're like into 350-scale ships or 4-engine, 48-scale planes, you might want a pretty big spray booth. Yeah, plenty of power outlets and allow space for a photo booth, maybe, if you're into that. And then do you plan on displaying your builds in this space or somewhere else?

yeah, probably. I think skippy will will have his built model somewhere else, so that that won't be quite an issue for him I know skippy's build pace and, yeah, that might be as little a problem for him as it is for me there you go.

There you go. Steve anderson from amada midi, minnesota. Okay, well, he's got a question for us, dave. Okay, he wants to know what is our best story of selling or giving away something from the stash?

oh, uh, I've got that.

As an aside, he claims a 3% reduction in his stash this year. Oh, that's great.

Well, tell your story, man. Well, my story is actually one that if you hadn't missed the Louisville show, you would have seen Cutting edge models. Dave Klaus's old business in Virginia did a resin conversion for the TU-95 Bear to a one-off Chinese AWACS version. No, it's not TU-95. I'm sorry, it was the B-29, the TU-4 Bull. The Chinese did a one-off conversion where they converted the aircraft to turboprop engines and it had a big saucer mounted above it like a classic AWACS.

And that was one of the kits that Cutting Edge did right before they went out of business. And I happened to acquire one In fact I might have acquired it at the going out of business and from the sale for when it was going out of business. So I had that in the stash and inch high Jeff Groves and I got talking once and he really, really wanted to do that. He had gotten a lot of reference together on it. The one aircraft that was converted like this is still actually preserved in a museum outside of Beijing. So I had the conversion. I know my build pace, I know Inch's build pace. So I upped and mailed that thing to him and he just recently completed that conversion and actually brought it and entered it at the Louisville show the one that you weren't able to come to due to the flooding and the power outages and, god, he did a beautiful job.

You talk about not having any regrets. You talk about not having any regrets. You know that's a unique kit or unique conversion that I don't think you're ever going to find, just simply because so few of them were made. But I happily gave it up to Jeff because I knew he'd build it and I knew he'd do a beautiful job with it. And he did build it and I knew he'd do a beautiful job with it and he did. And I'm telling you what, like I said, that is one where I willingly, just all I did was I didn't even tell him I was doing it, I just mailed him the kit and it showed up in his mail one day and I am really thrilled about it.

I've got my story along his comments. But to what you're saying I had a similar thing. I was folks listening. No, I've been in, done some railroad modeling in my past and and like most I don't know about most, but many, many railroad hobbyists they at some point kind of start to question the scale they're modeling in, either because, man, if I went smaller in scale at some point kind of start to question the scale they're modeling in, yeah, either because, man, if I went smaller in scale I could get like four times as much stuff in here Stuff like that. So I was.

I'd done a project in N scale that I got through and it involves some rubber molds and resin casting and some stuff. And I was going through my stash area and came across all that stuff and there's a another clinchfield railroad modeler that models an n scale within that hobby. It's it's a fairly well-known model railroad at this point and I reached out to him and said send me your mailing address, I'm going to send you something. And I just boxed that up and sent it to him.

Yeah.

And he ended up putting all the parts together, had somebody custom paint it and it's at least one of those models is on his railroad now, nice, and it would never been on mine, right, because I'd never switched scales and I never had a railroad. So there you go. So it lived on. Yeah, it got into somebody's hands who would appreciate it and would would push it across the finish line, because I was not going to do it.

Yeah, and that's exactly the way I felt with uh, with sending that to jeff, is that I knew that he would a appreciate it because he had a real interest in it, and, b that he would actually finish it getting Getting back to Steve's kind of the heart of his email.

He's kind of downsizing his stash and he went to Nordicon and got a table and set up to sell some of it and he says the best part, something he hadn't thought about was selling to youngsters and teens and they always got a deal Right. You got to see their faces light up because and because he was lower in the price, under what they're expected to pay, and I think I'm gonna give you credit for one of my best stories that are selling or giving away something from the stash. We were at the roscoe turner show a couple years ago and there's a bunch of kids there.

Yes, and somebody came up to the table and you had your pile of antiquated 72nd scale kits there. And this kid comes up and he picks up a kit and I can't remember what he said, something like how much is this? I've only got like a dollar left, or something. And you said that kit is zero dollars and I guess that's kind of a unique way to say it's free. Yep, and he didn't quite know what to think and he questioned it and then then he ended up getting it and the rest is history. He walked away with a free kit and your stash went down a little bit.

So yeah, you know that's listen, particularly for younger modelers. Now you you and I both have heard the joke about somebody hiring a kid and bringing him to model shows so he can go around to tables and show interest in something that some modeler wants to buy. Listen, when I have models at a table. You know, at one of these shows those are things I'm in general liquidating out of the stash that have little or no value to me. So particularly if you've got a younger modeler who comes up to the table and they're really interested in one because either the box art's cool or the airplane looks cool, I've got no problem giving one away in a situation like that.

Well, up next is Robbie Knaffs. We haven't heard from Robbie in a while. No, we haven't. He's from Arrowwood, alberta, canada. Yeah, he's kind of like you. He's not a fan of changing tips and needles. He thinks that burns up some time in your airbrushing session. So he generally has a 0.5 set up for primers and clears and a 0.3 for general painting and he's got a PS270. Who makes that? Don't know. That's a good question For detail painting and modeling. He says the other brushes are cheap-a-wada knockoffs from Amazon but they hold up pretty well over the years. He's only now, after five years, getting some higher-quality brushes. So he's a multiple airbrush guy.

After our discussion last episode, Mm-hmm, and I can see that, even if I think it's a good idea to stick with one particular airbrush because you get to know its feel and how to use it, there's nothing wrong with having multiple airbrushes, because I have a different airbrush that I only use for metallics and clears brush that I only use for metallics and clears. So I can certainly see having two or three air brushes that you use, based on what product you're spraying or what particular effect you're trying to achieve, et cetera.

Well, here's a thought, and I don't know if Robbie's doing this or not but what if your 0.5 and your 0.3 were the same airbrush model, just with different tip and needle setup in them?

Yeah right, that's kind of the best Because the feel in theory, make and model are the same. In theory, in your hand at least, the general feeling should be the same.

So it's interesting. Robby, if you're listening, let us know if your 0.5 and 0.3 are the same model of airbrush. I'd be curious to know. Yep, I would be too. John McAvoy wants to thank you for bringing his attention to the Arma 172nd scale P36.

Yep, now, I cannot wait for it, man, I can't wait.

Oh, he's got an interesting take here. Okay, and mentioning Inge, he wants to do a Jeff Groves style batch build, but instead of them all being the same, he wants to build the monogram, the AZ and smear or Heller kit. Yeah, and then the new one.

Yeah.

And he attached an image from a book Color Treasury of Model Airplanes 1972. And he attached an image from a book Color Treasury of Model Airplanes 1972. And there's a photograph of a P-36 or Hawk 75 in 72nd scale. It's probably the old Heller kit, he says.

I would bet that it probably is too. Oh, there you go. Listen, and Inch actually does that with his batch build. Sometimes his batch build sometimes, Instead of building six of the same kit, he'll build six of the same subject across three or four manufacturers. And it's really interesting to me, when he does that, how well some of the older kits hold up, Like that monogram kit 72nd scale. I mean, that thing's 50 years old but you slap a couple of aftermarket products that are available for it on that model, you can produce a very, very nice looking kit. Up next is Dave Waples, who is not from England.

Up next is Dave Waples, who is not from England. This is another one for the shed-based model shop. Okay, so, skippy, here's another one for you. Man, he says you want to not go with the kind of the window unit things. Uh-huh, they're not real efficient and when it gets at the extremes it's just not going to work out well for you. So he's using one of these mini split systems. My parents bought a new house they downsized last year. Right, there's almost. It's not the same brand, but it's a very similar-looking setup that Dave sent the pictures of the mini split. That's what my father's using on the basement of his new house.

Well, the mini-splits are really popular in China.

Oh, they're on the sides of all. In fact, you can probably get a 3D-printed mini-split AC unit to put on the side of your Middle East building diorama. Yes, yeah.

But the mini-splits are really, really popular in Asia and they are now very, very efficient and can heat or cool a fair size space, at least clearly easily the size of a shed, no matter what size you decide on.

Well, my dad's basement's the footprint of the entire house and it takes care of that. I mean, it's more, if that was my model room it'd be cavernous, so it's working pretty well. I tell you, if we get all this advice in and Skippy takes it, he's going to be the envy of the free world man. That's right. That's right. Will edwards no, no, geography, well, no, it is in the first line of the email. If he's from canberra, australia, okay, okay. He wants to know from the. Oh God, there you go, man Been canonized, all right.

I will tell you my personal thoughts on it.

And William Adair. You know you've seen him doing this stuff in 144 scale.

He's the exception that proves the rule Exactly. I was going to say they're too dang small. They are. I am a 72nd scale purist, absolutely. It is God's one true scale. It's the best for building almost anything 70 second scale.

But World War I aircraft in 70 second scale, particularly highly rigged aircraft, are very, very tough to do. Now there are people out there who do it. I love going to the nationals every year and one of the areas where I spend a lot of time looking at the models is the 72nd scale World War I aircraft, just simply because they're little works of art by people who either have trained spiders to do their rigging for them or have much steadier hands than I do or whatever. I understand the popularity of wingnut wings 32nd scale World War I aircraft because even in 32nd scale they were still relatively small but they were big enough that you could build them and again not require a trained spider to do the rigging. So I understand why there is a devoted group of modelers who are 72nd scale World War I modelers and God love them. They are doing the Lord's work and I really appreciate it. But I understand why if you're interested in World War I, you may not choose 72nd scale.

We've got a good international one next, Dave.

Okay.

And I hope I get the name right. All right, it's Theresa Tillram from Oslo, norway. All right, and it's a Hobby Shop, shout out.

All right, I want to go to Norway, so lay it on me. Hobby M.

Okay Is a store that mainly sells aircraft, tanks, cars and other traditional modeling subjects. They've also gotten a small selection of Gundam in as well. Their paints and other supplies are good, mostly large brands, but not all. They share their space with a model railroad shop that's owned by the same people that run the model shop, so there's something there for just just about everybody. Yeah, and he says the best part. Now, this is kind of cool. So if Brian Bunger at scale reproductions list and maybe this is something he needs to to to try, all right, every Saturday at 10 AM there's coffee and pastries on the table in the back, oh nice, and the group of regulars and randoms meet up and talk the models, real life, whatever, and it kind of becomes a little social event, tends to turn into sales for the hobby shop.

Yep, yep, I'll bet it does. I'll bet it does. That's a great idea, and man, I really. Norway is on my bucket list. I would love to spend some time in Norway, so if I ever get there, I'm definitely going to that hobby shop on a Saturday morning.

Next is Michael Turner and Michael's in the UK I think If not, he can correct me and he's been enjoying the podcast. He discovered it fairly recently, okay, and he wants to know if we've ever seen the BBC show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Oh gosh, yes, and there's a particular episode called Mr Dalliard. We've Been Activated and a character from the show, hugh, walks into a model shop to buy a gift for his son and the set for this hobby shop is stocked full of classic Airfix kits, paints and such, and he thought it was pretty cool. So I was not familiar with this particular show, but I did go out on YouTube and looked up and dug up this episode and, yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yes, it is. Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry were a comedy duo in Britain long before they became popular over here long before they became popular over here. Of course, Hugh Laurie, once starring in the TV show House, he's a really fine actor, but he is also a really, really good comedian and Fry and Laurie were some really great sketch comedy.

Next, Steve Rui, and Steve met us at the Nats and was introduced to us by Mark Copeland. So yeah, I remember that.

Okay, we won't hold that against him.

Well, he also enjoyed cocktails in someone's room that Saturday night. Yeah, that might have been us and Mark and Steve. Yeah, he's from that area, he's in their club. So he's from that area, he's in the, he's in their club. So that's good. Ah, his question is and he says he knows, he knows he's not alone, he wants to know how to, uh, I guess, stop spinning his wheels. He, he's, he's an airline pilot. He says he's got some time on his hands. Yeah, he lives in a great modeling community because Steve and Mark are in his club. He has all these great plans. He bought an Ace K models, a 20 G, with everything to go with it, including some decal sheets. He's hardly cracked the box and now he's sitting on a shelf along with all the other stuff. What should he do? Build something simple, start something from the shelf of doom. He feels like he's wasting his time at night doing nothing.

A couple of things. One there are a number of airline pilots who are modelers Joe Youngerman pops to mind. I've known a number of them, many of them, because, again, if you're an airline pilot, you fly, for you know, seven or eight hours during the day and then you're in a hotel room somewhere in some city. Now, once you've been an airline pilot for a couple of years, you've seen all there is to see in most of the places that you overnight A lot of these airline pilot modelers. They have a little traveling briefcase, whatever you want to call it. That is basically a traveling hobby room and it's with their luggage. They fly with it. Then, when they get to the hotel room at night most hotel rooms you've got a nice table and some good lighting and they go down, have a nice meal, come back to the room.

Depending on how long your overnight is, you've got a good couple of hours to get some modeling in. Now there's some things you have to be at home to do, like airbrushing and some things like that, but you can do 75, 80% of it on the road. So if you're not capturing that time, capture that time. If, more generally, you've got a project that's stalled, there's nothing wrong with breaking out something simple Something simple that you've got an interest in maybe that it's outside of your main genre and take a crack at it, just to try and get yourself jump-started back in, so that you can then dive back in to the project that's stalled once you've made a little progress on something else.

Yeah, I think that's it. He's looking for his mojo. I think it's not how to model on the go, it's how to model when you have time to model.

Yeah.

So, yeah, you're in a hotel room, you got all this stuff with you, but instead you're sitting there watching reruns of magnum pi or something. How do you not do that, right? Right, I, you know it's a it's. It's a age-old problem, I guess, with the the likes of us, and I think a simple project is one approach.

Yeah.

People call it different things palate cleanser, slammer, builds, whatever.

Right.

Just to get something going, and I don't know, because he's asking a couple of guys who aren't real good at this.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, we're not the fastest, but we are not Go ahead. But we are not Go ahead. Go, hey, if you're in the club with Steve, go talk to Steve, because you want to talk about somebody who's prolific and gets things done. There's no finer examples than Steve Hustad. Now Steve's retired and so he has time.

He's got a lot of time to put pressure on you.

Yeah, right. Well, that's right. He does that, which we appreciate, but he is also a very efficient modeler. I joke with him about the fact that he's retired and that's how he gets a lot of stuff done. But that's not all there is to it. But that's not all there is to it. He gets a lot of stuff done because he's very organized and very methodical about approaching any particular project and seeing it through to completion. So if you've got that resource, go sit down and talk with Steve, because if he can't get you moving in the right direction, I'm not sure I've got any advice. That would be sitting and talking with him for 15 minutes.

Yeah, ask him to give you a wellness check once a week. There you go, that might do it actually. Yep, well, dave. The last one on the email side of things is from Will Woods up in Saskatchewan. Yeah, he's working on a Tamiya 72nd scale BF109E3. Okay, good kid.

His question is do you pull out the airbrush and paint the interior or do you just hand paint it with the hairy stick? It seems like a lot of work to get out the airbrush. He uses Tamiya acrylics. Well, I'm going to answer the first part of this. If you're using a to me acrylics and you're thinking about brush painting, yeah, don't do it. Don't do it. Or make sure you've got their paint retarder on hand to slow the drying, because to me, over dried to me is a good way to take off your first layer of paint. This just just doesn't doesn't work too well. I think I know your answer. I'm gonna go and I'm going to break out the airbrush, especially if I'm using Tamiya paints. Yeah, yes, and we say it all the time. Airbrushing is 75, 80, 90%, prep and cleanup yeah, and that's just the way it is. But if you switch paints, maybe I changed my mind. But if you're going to use Tamiya. I'm going to say I'm going to say airbrush it.

That would be exactly my advice In general. I think airbrushing it you get a better finish that you can then weather, dry brush, do the other things you can to make the interior pop out. Parts of the interior pop out. Now, if you're closing the canopy on a 109E, you're not going to see much of anything in there. And if you want to get a paint, an acrylic paint that's not tamiya, something like the ak third gen, and go at it with the hairy stick, I think that you'll be able to do a very nice little finish that gets things done. And then you move on knowing that you're closing the canopy and it's not going to get a detailed examination. But I'm like Mike, I prefer to go ahead and get the airbrush loaded up and especially for a 72nd scale aircraft interior, it's going to be literally at most three or four minutes of actual air brushing and yes, it's going to be 10 minutes of prep and then 15 minutes of cleanup. But 10 minutes of prep and then 15 minutes of cleanup. But you know I like the results.

And then, what else can you do? I'm not a 109 expert, but is the cockpit interior color the same as the wheel wells?

Well, it depends. Early and late the stuff changes over from RLM02 to RLM66. Stuff changes over from RLM02 to RLM66. So you go from if you're doing an early 109 with RLM02, you do the cockpit. You may do the wheel wells, depending on what you're building.

If you're doing something later, yeah, you're just doing the cockpit in rlm 66 because the wheel wells are are a different color so my point would be right, not maybe, not this project, but like if you're doing a us fighter, right, maybe it's all the same and you, you just take care of all that at that point right, right, or you do the inch high approach and you build three of them and you paint three interiors at once.

Well, that's another way to do it. Yep, well, dave, that's all I got from the email side of things.

How's the?

Facebook Messenger been.

I've got a few. On our last shop talk I was talking about modelers trying too hard to use and overuse consumable items instead of throwing them away, and I talked about how I changed the blades in my X-Acto pretty much every modeling session. If I've used the X-Acto at all, I'll go ahead and change out the blade for a brand new, fresh one. Our friend, ian McCauley from up in Ottawa, actually he's got a system that actually makes a lot of sense. He's got two X-Acto handles, different colors red and green, I think, are what he had and what he does is he's got. After a modeling session he takes the blade out of the green handle, puts it in the red handle, throws the blade that was in the red handle away and then puts a fresh blade in the green handle. And then his next modeling session. If he needs to do something where he really really needs that blade sharp, he's using the green handle. If he's just doing some cutting or scraping that you know doesn't require a super sharp blade but still requires an exacto, he uses the other color handle and then at the end of the session he does the same thing. He moves the one blade from the fresh handle to the non-fresh handle, throws the non-fresh handle blade away and puts a new blade in the fresh handle and that way he gets a little more use and it's a little less wasteful than what I described. But that takes a little bit of organization, but it really was a good idea. Yeah, it is, it is you give Ian credit.

I got a message from Dave Goldfinch Digger, dave, who, dave Goldfinch Digger, dave, who, as you may or may not be aware, evan McCallum was recently on the bench. He was on their latest episode and Goldfinch tells me that he assures me that a check is in the mail to us for Evan's appearance fee More on that later to us for Evan's appearance fee More on that later. So I'm going and checking the mail every day to make sure that shows up. Kevin Hedrick from Kitmask DM'd us to tell us that he had gotten his table for HeritageCon. Yeah, I saw that and made his travel arrangements. So he is definitely going to be at HeritageCon in March of 2025, and he's going to have a table and be selling his wear and this will be his first Heritage Con. He's never been before. I'm glad he got a table. Me too, me too.

It's going to be good, yes, meeting him face to face.

Yep. And finally, kyle, you mentioned, when we were talking about airbrushes, using the same airbrush and getting to know its feel and all. You made an offhand comment that if you used a Pache, one of those Pache airbrushes, it'd be like airbrushing with a banana. Well, it turns out that Kyle got his start airbrushing with a Pache H and he wanted to confirm that indeed, it was like airbrushing holding a banana.

Yeah, it's not all of them, but there's a couple of those lower-end ones that are really, really big.

Really big and this was a Pache H and it was exactly that. He doesn't use that anymore, but he wanted to tell you you were absolutely right. It was like airbrushing with a banana.

Well is that it on the direct message side. That's it on the DM side. Man, whoo, folks, that was a lot. Thanks for sticking it out and we appreciate it all. It's our favorite segment. If you want to write in to Plastic Model Mojo, you can do so by sending us an email to plasticmodelmojo at gmailcom or use the Facebook messaging system to send us a direct message and look forward to hearing from you folks. It's a lot of fun. This has been a big one tonight.

Please, when you're done listening to this episode, go and rate us on whatever podcasting app you're listening on. We appreciate it. It helps us become more visible to the community at large. Also, if you know a modeler who isn't listening to this podcast, please recommend us to them. Please show them how to download podcasts and subscribe to this podcast. The best way for us to continue to grow our audience is to have recommendations from current listeners.

And we're done with that. Please check out our fellow podcasts out there in the model sphere and you can do that by going to wwwmodelpodcastscom. That's model podcasts plural. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark from the Scale Model Podcast up in Canada and there you can find all the aggregated banner links to the other podcasts in the model sphere who are participating in this spirit of cross-promotion with us and everyone else. And you know we need to check in on Stu. Stu, if you're listening, touch base with us. Man, when I was going with you. I know you've been taking a hiatus here for the month of November, but November's gone now we're into December and we just want to know how you're doing. Man, absolutely.

In addition to podcasts, there's a lot of other content out there we like to follow and we got a lot of blog and YouTube friends. Folks like Stephen Lee Spru Pie with. He's got a great blog out there long and short form content outlining some of his projects and his thoughts on the hobby. Chris Wallace, model airplane maker, great YouTube channel, great blog. Go check out what Chris has got going on.

Yeah, he just got settled into a brand new hobby room.

Paul Budzik Scale Model Workshop. You're going to want to check out all what Paul's got going on over on Patreon Scale Model Workshop on Patreon. It's worth it. Sign up, join. It is. It's fantastic. And Evan McCallum, panzermeister36 over on YouTube yes, he's got a new video.

Yes, he does the M10 Booker.

But, Dave, we're going to have to have a talk with that boy. What about All these invites from our mates down under? He's getting all chummy with the folks over at the modeling news.

Yeah, well, well, you know. Hey, you can't keep someone that talented down. Yeah, we might have to keep a thumb on him. Hey, as long as Goldfinch sends us the appearance fee check, everything's going to be okay, because I'm sure that he wouldn't be lying to me, and that's three zeros, that's right.

Left of the comma or period, whatever standard you're on.

Yeah, and not those funky Aussie dollars either.

We want real money Well as long as there's enough of them, all in fun. Evan's got some good stuff going on. I'm glad to see him succeeding. And check him out panzer meister 36 over on youtube and check out the modeling news and you can go get straight to his booker build review.

So uh, yes, good stuff, man yeah, I posted a link this morning to his booker video on the dojo so you'll find it there as well. It's a really, really nice build review. If you are not a member of IPMS USA, ipms Canada, ipms Mexico, your local or your national IPMS organization where you live say IPMS Norway, just as a, for instance please join your national IPMS organization. They do a lot to promote modeling and to promote the hobby in the different countries. Also, if you're an armor modeler or post-1900 figure modeler, the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society, amps great organization full of great guys, and I can highly recommend that you join AMPS.

Let's have a word from one of our sponsors.

You got it.

Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder and steam-backed airbrushes, david Union power tools and laboratory-grade mixing, measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints, be they acrylic, enamels or lacquers. Check them out at wwwmodelpaintsolutionscom.

Well, dave, I know I'm a slow builder, but that doesn't mean I don't like to keep up with the times in the hobby. Yep, and our special segment tonight it gets right into that. We got our past guest, jake McKee, back with us one more time to talk about his most recent adventures with his new laser cutter. Really interested in hearing what Jake's got to say and you know I've got a laser cutter at work in the lab I manage and it's got a lot of potential and we're just real curious what Jake's got to say about his experiences. I can't wait to hear. I can't wait to hear.

Well, dave, since becoming an engineer, I've always enjoyed seeing technologies, especially when they go from an industrial level down to something the hobbyist could use. And this started early in my career as an engineer. The first thing I was ever shown in the model shop where I worked as a young engineer was stereolithography, which is kind of the foundation for all the resin 3D printing we're doing now, and at that time it was in the 80s. It was an expensive machine and it wasn't really something a hobbyist could use. And our model shop also had a pretty capable laser cutter too, and since then laser cutting has now gotten to the level where it could be useful to the hobbyist as well. And our guest tonight, jake McKee. Jake, how are you doing? I'm doing great Sitting here with my bullet. There you go. Good choice, yep. Well, we're having you back because we hear you've got a new toy.

I do. Yeah, I was lucky enough to pick up a Glowforge or a laser cutter.

Now, what inspired you to go out and buy? I know you've got a 3D printer right.

Yeah, I've got two. I've got the FDM, the filament and the resin printer.

now Okay, so you've gotten into CAD, 3d modeling, all that stuff. So what made you decide, you know, two hobbies isn't enough, I need to get a third one. No, seriously, what was the inspiration for buying the laser? Was there something particular that you thought this is really going to help me in something I'm going to do or want to do?

Yeah, so it's a good question. I'll rewind the tape quite a while because I've been looking. I've been wanting one of these laser cutters for a long time, but kind of like the you know the printers they were out of reach either technology wise or size wise or cost for a long time, and you know my my buddy, matt McDougall's, got got real tired before I bought my laser cutter. Of me talking about trying to complete the Holy Trinity of of tools that I need, right the, the two different types of printers, and the and the laser cutter. I'd been watching Facebook marketplace for two years trying to see a good deal pop up Right, and I'm always a little hesitant with anything electronic on Marketplace.

Just because, you don't know the history, right, yeah, so I'd gotten close a couple of times on a couple of different laser cutters and they just, I don't know, the vibe didn't seem right or the cost, I couldn't get them down enough. But as is my process with Craigslist or eBay, or not eBay but Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or those sorts of things, I try and negotiate as much as I can. And I saw one of these Glowforge auras pop up on Marketplace some number, I guess, over the summer maybe, and it was listed at 800, but it was like $1,800 worth of stuff, no, 900. And I, I reached out and basically said, look, I got a budget of 400. Can you make it work? I'll pick it up today. And she said no, no, I'd rather just keep it as a second machine for that cost. And I said, okay, no problem, totally understand.

And I waited, I don't know six, eight weeks, and reach back out, saw it was still listed and said, hey, if you're, if you're, interested, I could do 500. And she said, yeah, yeah, no problem, let's, let's make that work. And so you know, I checked out the machine, it was nearly brand new. She said she'd used it less than I think 10 hours or something. And you know she said basically she got a more powerful one because she really realized, for whatever she was doing, that she needed something with a stronger laser, and so it worked out great for me. I got the air filter that goes with it so that I can cut in the garage without a bunch of nasty fumes, and the cutter itself, and, you know, been going nuts trying to find the right materials in the right settings, as we all do.

Had you done any research ahead of time to know what type of laser you were looking for, or did you see the deal and then go research that particular laser?

Yeah, and I just realized too, I didn't answer your core question. What kind of prompted me to do that? Honestly, it was the companies like RT Dioramas, right where you open it up and it's all this laser cut in MDF, that when you put together, it's some pretty cool stuff and watching. Oh God, what is it? Laser World Creation.

Laser Creation World.

Yeah, yeah, that guy, yes, I love that he does such amazing projects and so many of them were coming off the laser cutter, them were coming off the laser cutter. You know he was doing like interior factory, the metal work of the of the ceilings that was all done with MDF, or staircases on the outside of buildings that were laser cut MDF. And I was like man, this is imagine the things I could do, right, and and that really was the impetus for it. And and no, you know, I hadn't, I didn't do a ton of research in advance and you know, hopefully Mike can, can give us some more information on on how things work.

But you know I really I didn't want something huge and expensive that also required a bunch of learning. So I was kind of keeping an eye on the more consumer grade and I have a buddy of mine that's had a was that the X car for years and he he's always loved it, and so I'd been kind of just watching the more consumer grades and glow forge was getting a lot of attention lately, so that that was kind of what I had honed in on. Like it seemed like the right, the right amount of power against the right amount of ease, and so that's that's. You know, that's what I set my Facebook search for. Basically, it's just that.

Well, what I was going to ask is again if you could tell us that the well, the brand and model again, if it's one that's still available or if it's been superseded yet, and then kind of the rough capabilities of this?

Yeah, so it's, it's the Glowforge. Glowforge is the company. One of the things I like about it, versus some of the other ones that I've seen, is that you know a lot of the laser cutters I've run across they they're kind of like they're. They have no container to them, right, it's just kind of the raw parts and a and a cut bed. This one's really nice because it's all enclosed with a nice lid that opens and closes and you know, like I said, I've got the air filter that sits off to the side. That's got a hose that goes straight to the machine and sucks out all those vapors of whatever you're cutting.

The model that I have, I believe, is there. I think it's the low end one that they have. It's the Aura A-U-R-A and it's, you know, it's a good laser for all the stuff I've tried to do so far. Some of the materials take, you know, three or four or five passes but before it'll cut all the way through. But I know with more powerful ones it'd probably do it in one. But you know it's working so far for me and I don't know a lot about the specs. Honestly, Again, didn't do a lot of, you know, in-depth research. I was trying to get something that was easy to get in and out of.

Now, what materials have you cut using the laser?

Just MDF or what have you experimented with and tried so good? Also good question, because what I've, I've been discovering all kinds of stuff about the materials themselves, including that you're you really want to stay away from. I believe it's pvc, um, which I guess is in a lot of the adhesives, so things like mdf that have adhesive in it. You're trying to get laser-safe versions of that so that you're not cutting into deadly gases, releasing deadly gases into your house, your garage or even next to where you're working. But so far I've done some basswood sheet. I've done some thin MDF and some slightly thicker MDF. I've done the m, some thin mdf and some slightly thicker mdf. I've done some chipboard and I've I've been playing with, I've done some paper like literally like copy paper, you know printer paper. But I've also been playing with trying to find the right material to use for masks and that that's included the both the tamiya and the mig ammo like adhesive sheets, you know the eight and a half by eleven right tape sheets basically.

Uh, have you tried the aura mask eight? I have.

Yeah, that one's definitely been the the most successful. But the problem with all those is that it you know and again this is there's some some setting work to find the right balance, but also the right materials. The Oremask works the best and I know a lot of the aircraft guys that I'm friends with use that a lot for a lot of their masking.

Yeah, on a, usually cut on like a Cameo or a Cricket or you know some sort of cutter.

Yeah, so I have a Cricket as well and I've tried cutting all those masking materials. The problem is I always want to go much, much smaller than the machine is capable of without tearing all the stuff up. And that's really where I was hoping that the laser would work much better, which it does. But the problem is it gets hot and it kind of melts the adhesive a little bit. So I'm still playing, I'm still trying to figure out the right settings to make that work and find the right material. I'm pretty sure the Aura mask is good, but I'm sure there's I'm guessing there's something much better out there that I just haven't come across yet. So anybody listening knows please let me know.

Well it's. I'm looking here while we're talking yeah, this model is still available. It's like right at well, right now it's about 900 new from certain places it's a diode laser, so it's going to be like you're saying a few passes to get certain cuts at a certain depth. I assume you're just generating a DXF file in your CAD program and going straight to the laser. What's the user interface like on the Glowforge product?

Yeah, that's a very good question and I also I'll tell you about the settings as well, because I keep talking about the settings. So I think it's important to share what that looks like, because it's surprisingly easy, which also makes it complex. But the way that I'm creating files basically for the laser cutters, you're creating vector files basically, so you know and and you can do different colors for the different lines, so that if you want some to be just kind of three settings for mine anyway, one is cut, where you cut all the way through the material. One is score, where you're just making a, you know, a score line on the material which can be handy for for, you know, with some stuff actually bending it on that score line or also being able to just just scribe into the material. You know, if you've got a sign you're trying to make and you want to scribe in the line work on it without actually cutting all the way through the material, you can do that with the score or the engraving which you know it's. It would take that same. You know that instead of the outline of the score or the engraving which you know it's, it would take that same. You know, instead of the outline of the letters, like the scoring would do for a sign you were trying to build. It would actually engrave the you know, the whole letter to some some depth that you set.

I haven't played around a lot with the scoring because I haven't had the need for it yet. I've played a little bit with the engraving. It's pretty cool as long as it's the right material. I played a little bit with the engraving. It's pretty cool as long as it's the right material. Most of what I've been doing is the cutting.

And Mike, I forgot what your question was. I use a laser at work quite a bit. It's a lot bigger. I mean it's still a desktop thing, I can't the name of it escapes me. Again, what you're doing with the exhaust on yours is completely the right thing to do, because you never know what's really coming out of those. Ours is completely vented to the outdoors with this huge squirrel cage blower, but it's a 60 watt laser co2 laser so it's pretty capable.

It won't cut metal, but it'll cut just about anything under that nice, right nice and what we do is we'll generate a dxf file in well, our cad package is escaping me right now but then that gets dumped into like Adobe Illustrator, okay, and then all the vector conversions are done. There we can change like make lines red, we want to cut, make lines black, we just want to raster so we can engrave on it, we can cut on it. We can do lots of stuff. It's got a lot of capability, but it's just once you get the file in the right format, it's really really pretty easy thing to do to use.

Yeah, and I do remember your question. Now you're asking about the app itself, and so so I start off. I do. It's easier for me nowadays to do stuff like I'm doing in in Fusion 360. I'll just create the sketches and then export the sketches as the vector files. Okay, so there's a svg plug-in for for fusion that is, it's free or pretty cheap I can't remember which one, but you know it wasn't a big lift but you just basically right click on the sketch and infusion and and save it off as an svg and then import it into the Glowforge app, which is it's a web-based app, which you know it's, it's okay. You know most of these, most of these custom made things, whether it's the bamboo printer or the, the cricket or whatever you know they've they've all got their own softwares and they're varying, varying degrees of of successful, but this one's web-based, it's okay, it's. It's got some features that work really nicely and overall it's pretty simple.

But you know, like I said, I'm not, I'm not really doing much with the different coloring. If I was, I I do what you're saying. Where you know I take it out, I take the SVG into illustrator and then change the line colors so that it would score some and and engrave others and cut some, as I needed to, because you can use different colors to tell the program what to do with that file, which can be handy, right, if you're cutting out a door that you're trying to build but you want to engrave a name on it and you want to score some text on it. Right, you could do all that in one shot if you have the right line coloring for it, and then you basically just drag and drop the SVG. I've had mixed luck with their web app with the DXF, but they claim that you can do it, but yeah, I've just been doing everything in SVG. It's a lot easier.

Now I'm going to ask Mike a question. Mike, you mentioned that you looked at the laser that Jake's got and you said it's a diode laser. Would you like to explain to me and anyone else listening who isn't an engineer, the different types of lasers?

I don't think I can, okay. I just know all the more powerful ones are CO2 lasers, okay, and I guess it's just the amount of energy you can get in a beam which kind of segues me over to what's next here For our application at work. The manufacturer's preloaded a bunch of cut settings for different materials and really all you're left to do is to jockey around with the material thickness to get the cut to work. But sometimes we go freelance.

There's a manual option as well and we can change the various parameters, and the things that are really available to change are the laser power, the tracking speed of the X and Y axis and then the number of pulses per inch, because it's not dead on all the time. It's really making all these micro flashes, and I'm not sure why it the time it's really making all these microflashes and I'm not sure why it does that. It's probably an energy savings or preventing overheating or something. That's why it's done that way, at least on our laser. Does the Glowforge use a lot of canned material selections for a lot of the cut parameters, or you got to go tune all those yourself?

Well, so let me work backwards to that question. So the settings are very similar to what you just talked about. There's really only three things you can change, which that's what I was kind of referencing earlier. It's kind of nice because it's so simple, but sometimes, because it's so simple, if it doesn't work with those simple options you're like, oh shit, what do I do now? But the three options are are, like you said, speed.

So how fast is the laser actually moving, which you know on some things you want it to move faster so it's not burning. Other things, you know, you want to slow it down so it gets as much of that cut in as possible on each pass. The the second one is just how intense the power is on a scale of one to 10. And then the third setting you can change for the cutting is number of passes. So, as I mentioned earlier, you know, sometimes I've got to. Even if I crank the laser all the way up to 10 and I slow it way down, as almost as low as it'll go, it still won't cut all the way through the material in one pass. So you just have to go. You know two or three or four passes and I think it'll let let it set up to 10, which you know I can't imagine. If you're not cutting through what I've been playing with anyway by 10 passes, you know you're you need to be trying something else.

But and then the, as far as the material settings go the way that they do it, with the way Glowforge does it, and I'm sure other companies do different ways, but they have what they call proof grade materials. So basically, if you go and buy one of their pieces of basswood, for instance, and you put it on the, on the print bed, my understanding is that the camera that that gives you a picture of the print bed. Sorry, I keep saying print bed, the cut bed. I keep calling it a laser, laser printer because I'm so used to printing. It gives you a picture of that so you can orient your parts on top of the material properly and that sort of thing. But I believe it also reads the QR code that comes on those proof grade materials. Or you can go in and manually set it by just saying you know it's proof grade basswood and it immediately knows what settings to use, the.

The downside to those materials is that they are wickedly stupid, expensive. Yeah, you know a piece of basswood that would cost you $4, they're charging $20 for right it's. I mean, it's dramatically different. So I haven't really been using much of those and so I'll just I'll just kind of pick a material that's close to the material, then I'll set my my settings, and you know it usually takes a time or two, but you can save the settings so that every time I go back to chipboard now I I just hit the chipboard setting and off I go now it sounds well, this, this, this particular model is, is kind of their, their entry level or their.

it's really made what's marketed toward the crafting kind of crowd, the hobbyists in general, and I know they make two models above this that are a CO2 laser versus a diode. But looking here, there's quite a few materials and you've given us some of the things you're cutting. I've got to ask will this one cut styrene?

You know, I just realized I haven't tried that yet. I have cut some foam with it, you know. Part of the challenge with the laser, though, is the color of the materials, because the for whatever reason, the laser has to be able to see it, so to speak, and so they. That's why you can't cut clear acrylic, but you can cut black acrylic, for instance, or why the acrylic comes with a, a brown, you know, sticker paper over the top of it, so the laser can actually know what I guess it's reflecting off of the foam.

Had some interesting challenges with the pink that I had, or was it? I can't remember which color. I have, pink and blue at home and I kept trying to cut one of the colors I can't remember which one, I think it may have been the blue and it just wasn't working and everything was running fine, but it wasn't making any cuts on the, on the foam itself, the insulation foam and I was like man, this is the weirdest damn thing. So I took it out and I put in another piece that was slightly thinner, and it immediately took off and was fine, and it dawned on me it was probably whichever color it was that the laser wasn't seeing properly and after that I was cutting. Fine it's.

It's not able to cut super thick. So if you've got, you know, a three inch thick piece of insulation foam, I doubt it's going to do very well because I just won't fit under the laser itself. Right, the laser rides back and forth on a rail so you can only fit so much under that before you you've run out of room. But you know it does, it, does, it does, cut it. I've seen other people that have done some interesting, interesting things with cosplay and whatnot where they've, they've cut out, you know, letters for costumes or props or whatever out of the insulation foam.

I haven't tried the styrene yet and I'm I, I feel like I've, I've, I've missed one uh, that that's the first thing I was thinking when, when we were setting up the one at work, and I've cut, I've cut styrene on it and we can talk about that in a little bit. But uh, well, I'm curious, did it melt it? Oh, it'll cut it. It's I've not, I've not, uh, figured out the sweet spot yet for the speed and power to keep the kerf, the kerf of the cut, low. So so what's happening is I'm say you're, I got a 40 millimeter circle. Well, I'm getting something smaller than that. So you either have to correct it in the, in the cad for the curve you've, the settings you've selected are going to give you this curve on this thickness of material. You're going to have to work that into whatever you're doing, and but I don't know it, it's going to, it's going to work. I just haven't figured it out completely yet.

And before these things were available to hobbyists it's interesting there's a company out in Colorado, it's a hobby robotics company. It's called Pololu, something strange, strange name like that. It's like a South Pacific kind of name, because I think their logo is a palm tree. So not sure where their name came from, but they used to do custom laser cutting and I'd sent things out to have them cut and the stuff they would send me back was was all really good. So I know it can be done, you know. Just especially with your foams and plastics. Yeah, you don't want to go too slow with too much power, because you're gonna have a fire yeah, so yeah, I think that's.

That's a bit I. I have not gotten to the styrene, in part because I had everything I did on the reading and some of the YouTube videos I was watching and whatnot. Everybody was just very hyped up, as they should be, about you know that the PVC or other kinds of plastics where you know the burning of those materials gives off toxic death fumes and I definitely didn't want that. Since I've got it in the garage and the garage leads straight to the house, I was like maybe I'll do a little more research first.

Well, we've talked around some of the technical gobbledygook around these things and that's all great, but I guess folks are going to know well, what can I use this for, Once we get past all the technicalities? What are we going to be using this for? And you're starting to apply here. So what kind of things are you doing?

Yeah. So your friends over on the Plastic Posse podcast did their group build, I say last month, but now it's December, so back in October, and I had this grand idea that I was going to do a little small scene and I turned out to be a little bit bigger than I expected it to be. It's surprise, surprise for me, um, but so I didn't finish on time, but I am close to finishing. But with that, the gas station building has some, some big windows and a wooden door. So, just as an example, I used the laser cutter to cut all those window frames as one piece out of MDF and then put them in the building that I had 3D printed and they come out much straighter, much more sharp, angled, much cleaner than I ever would have been able to do them if I was doing them cutting my own styrene strip, sure.

I mean that's like what a lot of the commercially available. There's some 35th scale models you have to remind me the name but where all the, all the stuff's like laser cut MDF, yeah, rt dioramas does a lot of that kind of thing.

You know, I mentioned, like the, you know the, the, the I-beams for the interior ceiling on a on a factory build, for instance. Right, you know those, those real complex, you know angle iron I-beam iron roof structures. They've got a bunch of really great kits like that and that's that's part of what kind of inspired me to to be thinking about it, because I've always wanted to do a factory, a factory diorama like that. So that's that's one of them. But you know, I also, you know, like I said earlier on that worn gas. You know the truck, the fuel truck and the gas pumps have some, some, some worn gas and W stencils or markings that I use the stencils for that I cut out. So you know things like that.

So far I've got I've got a few other ideas that are that are coming, but you know it really I'm working on the garbage truck diorama, if you guys remember that one.

I think we talked about it last time, but I've been designing this garbage truck bin that goes on a 35th scale GMC two and a half ton truck and it's it's a picture based on this, this garbage truck being outside what looks like a military barracks, I'm assuming sometime in the early to mid fifties, but all those you know you can imagine an army barracks, right With all those windows that are. It's just basically one big wall of of window frames. So all that window framing, those, those facades are I'm cutting out of MDF or maybe basswood, but MDF is what I've been playing with so far and those are looking really good. And again, trying to get the consistency, if I was scratch building those, even if I was the best scratch builder in the world, I still feel like it would be really hard to get that level of accuracy across. You know, what am I doing? Like 30 individual windows? What am I doing like 30 individual windows?

Yeah, I think that's where something like this shines is highly repeatable kind of general shapes like windows, like you're doing there. It's just between the CAD and the precision of the cutter. You can just lay this thing out and cut it all in one go or in pieces, however you like, and it's all the same. Yeah, exactly, it's got to be a huge time savings. And another thing I've seen is is with some of these laser cut kits. You know I was dabbling model railroading for a number of years and these kits started showing up there back in the early 2000s I think it was late 90s and to get things like paneled doors and things, they would just be built up in layers of thin MDF, so you'd have different cuts. You'd have the entire door, then you'd have a frame around that to get a raised or recessed panel, and it'd be three or four layers to build these things up and you end up with a really nice three-dimensional part when it's all over, but everything's flat, cut from a really thin veneer.

Yeah, it reminds me in some ways of the, the good versions of. You're doing photo etch, where you yeah, I did some some the folding screens on the side of a sd, kfc 7, slash 2, the, the half track with the yeah, anti-aircraft gun on the back, you know, and they've got these folding mesh sides. And Alliance model works made this really great photo edge kit where it was kind of the same thing you're talking about where it was. You know, there was one piece of photo edge for the outside frame and then one for the, the mesh that went vertical, and then one for the mesh that went horizontal, and then one piece that laid over the top and you know you kind of sandwich all together and it made this really beautiful build. And and, yeah, this, this is the same same deal for that On those gas station windows I have an outside frame that's bigger.

Now, design the, the, the, the building itself, to have kind of ridge on the outside. Okay, so I can, I can. I just laid in those laser cut wood frames and include them straight to that little ridge on the building wall and then around the back, after I put the clear piece over the whole thing, I had another smaller frame that would then fit right on top of the glass. So between the three pieces and that little ridge on the wall itself, everything came together beautifully and looked wonderful.

What do you think you're going to be using it for in the future itself? Everything came together beautifully and looked wonderful. What do you think you're going to be using it for in the future? I mean, every time you start a project at least when I do and I apply something new, it just kind of snowballs from there and you start thinking of these other things. And for me myself, I can honestly say that sometimes, getting a new piece of equipment like that, I will seek out an application for it.

You mean like Battlestar galactica hangar bay, where the project just grows and grows and grows and then grows, and grows and then has to be redone. Yeah, yeah, that one is finished, by the way yes, I know the mark two of that is yeah, completely rebuilt.

And, by the way, I I I know this is a little off topic, but when I did the broken one, you know. So I traveled to the Rocky Mountain Hobby Expo event. Tsa killed the first version. I was talking to Matt McDougall at the contest at the event and he said you know, you don't have to rebuild that out of foam, you can. Now that you have that bamboo FDM printer, you can just print the base. And so, of course, I came home and immediately started doing CAD and two weeks later I'd had the whole base printed out and it was almost entirely done as far as the base structure went. And I was like man, this is amazing, but as far as projects go.

So the next one up is this garbage truck diorama. So I've got to get this, the structure for the barracks facade. That'll be a lot of laser cutter work. I'm going to try and do some of the foam as well, because I am going to use foam for some of the. This is two stories, so you know the slab and the concrete, you know the ceiling of the first floor and the floor of the floor of the second floor. Those kind of pieces I'm going to do out of foam, but I'm going to see if I can't cut them with much more precision than I can do on my hot wire table.

Well, I saw something. If I can find the link I don't know if I'll be able to find it or not I kind of stumbled on it, not even looking for it. I'll be able to find it or not, because I kind of stumbled on it, not even looking for it. But it was somebody who was using a hot wire to cut some really intricate shapes, and they're using a template that I strongly suspect was a piece of laser cut MDF.

Yeah, you're probably talking about. I think his name's Gerard Boom from Shifting Lands. He makes a lot of stuff for those Proxon hot wire tables. Okay, possibly, so he's if if you haven't seen him for anybody listening, if you haven't seen, the shifting lands is his name, if you search that on on youtube, he does a lot of it, does a lot of work with various templates and tools for cutting foam. So if you've got that hot wire table from Proxon that everybody uses, that's so amazing it's only like $119 or something ridiculously low for tools in our hobby. Anyway, he has all these add-ons that you can cut different angles and different shapes and he even has a video that still blows my mind of him cutting a dome like a you know, like the Capitol building dome, cutting that out of a single piece of of square material. You know it's. It's absolutely amazing work. But yeah, he's a lot of his tools are are laser cut MDF that you actually assemble and glue together yourself when you get them and they work. They work wonderfully.

So you know, kind of what am I using it for? On the other end of that sort of level of complexity and material thickness, I'm I'm starting to think a lot more about small accessories. I mean, yeah, you know I still want to. I have a factory diorama that's coming up at some point and all that interior structure I beam, that'll all be MDF. But I'm starting to think about little, small pieces of things too.

So that worn gas diorama has a little sandwich board. That's a 48 scale sandwich board that is I don't know 10 millimeters tall or something, you know, not very big at all. And rather than trying to cut that thing out, it was just basically a square with two little feet times two right rights for sandwich board. But I threw that in CAD and in five minutes had it, had it already printing and 10 minutes later it was on my workbench with a coat of primer Right and and it looks and it's perfect. It's absolutely precision Perfect. And if I tried to cut that by hand I never would have been able to do it. And if I it had taken an hour to build that little piece, I probably would have skipped it and just not had it on the diorama. But because it was so easy, I was like, well, why not, I'll throw this on. I know how to make this work right.

Well, I wish you hadn't told me about this shifting lands. I'm going to have to go, yeah.

I did the same thing you did, Mike.

I have a great many of his pieces and I recommend them all.

I'm like now I've got to watch all these videos too.

I don't have the hot wire, but we've got that Proxon table at work, yeah it's pretty cool. I use it all the time but yeah, this looks kind of cool. Yeah, I was going to say, if the foam cutting outright doesn't work on the laser, you can always take this approach.

Oh yeah, doesn't work on the laser. You can always you can take this approach. And oh yeah. Yeah, I've got I don't know 10 or 10 or 12 of his accessories, one of which I use every single time I make a cut for the most part, which is the. It's basically a fence, but it's it's. It's just slides just barely under the arm of the hot wire cutter. Okay, so instead of having that cheap little terrible fence that proxons ship with their hot wire, that might as well just throw in the trash as soon as you get it. It serves the same kind of function, but it's much, much taller. So it's a lot easier to control and absolutely a must purchase for anybody that's using that hot wire table.

Well, I've tried it at work once and I don't know if I just didn't get a good edge on my template. Well, I'll tell you what it was. I was, I cut the template out of cardboard and it had a ragged edge. So when I went to, when I went to cut the foam on the, the hot wire, the wire kept getting snagged in the edges of the phone as my template. But I think if you used MDF you're going to get around that problem. So clearly that's what he's he's doing here. So, yeah for sure. Well, I, I'd be really curious. I don't want you to burn your house down, but, uh, if, if you, if you, yeah, keep the fire extinguisher handy. We got ours right next to the laser.

Yeah, me too we've not had a fire yet. But just you, just nobody plans. You know nobody plans on a fire, at least you shouldn't anyway. 20 000 styrene. I've cut that on our laser cutter at work. I tell you what it was.

Uh, two t-34 facebook groups. One's a historical, they're run by the same folks and one's historical reference. The other is scale modeling for t-34 tanks and they had this kind of a group build, taking the old tamiya t-34 and and really tricking it out and seeing how much you could get out of it. And a guy had, by hand, had cut, you know, the tamiya kits, all plain on the bottom right with all the battery slots and all that crap. And he had a drawing of the underside of t34 he was using to make styrene parts to put over that. So you have bottom surface detail on the tank. And I was like, hey, man, could you send me that as a dxf? And he did and I went and cut the thing on the laser out 20 000 styrene. Now it looked pretty good. Like I said, I have to tweak it a little bit.

But I guess where this comes into play if, if you're you're modeling from scratch or scratch print or just pulling out all the stops and using whatever tool you have in your workshop to accomplish the task, the the best way for me. I would. I, many times would rather work in styrene than like 3d printed parts. That's me, I just think it's. That's where all my history is and I I know the material. You know, like a sculptor would know clay or whatever. You learn all the what you can and can't do right, and instead of relearning that all with 3d print stuff, I'm still inclined still at this point to kind of go back to my default and styrene when I can use it and stowage boxes, even complete turret sides, armor, whatever.

A lot of, a lot of military subjects have flat panels right and it would just be great to to take those right off the CAD and and be able to laser cut them out of a usable thickness of styrene. But again, it's developing the settings to get that to come off our laser right and I don't know if yours will even do it at all, but it'd be really interesting to know because if you could get in at that price point and cut styrene, man, you really would have my attention then. I mean not that you don't have it now, because if I didn't have access to a printer or a cutter already. This is very interesting for me, yeah, and I think so much of the tool discussion.

As much of a tool whore as I am, I love having the right tool for the job at hand because for me it makes the process so much easier. Right, because I'm not a guy that's like, oh I got to do all this in this material or using this tool, or I don't want to get some newfangled thing in here. No man, I'm all for the newfangled tools. Right, use the gadgets as much as you possibly can. Find the best tools. To make the job as simple as you can is my philosophy, because I have so much more fun thinking, hey, I want to, I want to do this thing and then turn around and I have three options of how to do it and do it fairly quickly and with good quality, and I picked the best one. Right, and I think to your point. You know there's still stuff that I'm doing. You know, on on all these projects.

Lately I've had some combination. You know, on the Cylon Redo, the Mark II version, I was FDM printing the base. I was resin printing parts that went on the base. I was using the Cricut cutter to cut styrene. This was before the laser was in the house, but you're doing a little bit of scratch building here and there, like whatever I can put my hands on, to make it as easy and quick for me to get the best results possible Right. And that's I've jokingly called the laser cutter the third piece of the holy trinity between these three pieces of machinery that can cut, that can create so much amazing stuff so quickly. You know I'm I'm sort of honorary adding the cricket in there too, because it can do some really fun stuff with, especially with thin styrene. But you know that that worn gas I was.

I I resin printed the building, I laser cut the windows, I cricket cut the glass that went into it. The base itself is an FDM print. So just whatever makes the most sense at the time is what gets added right. This garbage truck is going to have all of the above plus foam right. So it's just really finding what's the best way to do the thing as easy as possible.

So you're building the, the, basically the, the compactor on the back of a garbage truck. Is that right? Is that what you're doing?

yeah, I can. I can share the photo with you guys. You can put it up as part of the show notes if you want to. But sure I found this like time life photo of a of a. It's a garbage truck, just like you'd imagine a garbage truck, except the the back bin. The garbage truck part is probably comes from Heil. We all probably seen that truck and company around, but they put it on the back of a what is probably a surplus two and a half ton GMC. So that I've been designing the garbage truck part in in CAD and printing it in resin. I'm adding it onto a Tamiya kit that's got photo etch on it. I'm putting it on a base that's going to be made out of foam next to a building that's got laser cutting resin and foam pieces all intertwined right. So you know it's a multimedia piece for sure.

Well, mike was talking about those T-34 Facebook groups. That's kind of what I wanted to ask you Now that you've gotten this item. Have you gone out and found anything either websites or Facebook groups or whatever of people who have your particular laser cutter, and are they out there sharing these settings? Work for me on this material. Here's how I was able to do this with the cutter. Is any of that out there?

So yes and no from what I've seen and from what I've searched for. So it is a little bit different. At least some of my usage experience so far has been a lot different. When I first got my resin printer, for instance, what was the first thing I did? I went out online, I looked for STLs to download and I printed those right. I didn't have the ability at that time to do even the most basic cad work, much less, you know, complex figures or something. I still don't really have the sculpting capability to do figures, but I can at least build some some more geometric shape parts at this point on my own. But the, the laser cutting that I've been doing, I know enough about the cad and all of it's been fairly flat, so to speak, right. I'm not doing really weird engravings or, you know, cutting complex shapes or anything like that. It's you know, literally I was cutting doors and window frames and that sort of thing. So far.

What does exist out there? As Mike kind of started this off saying, this is a machine that's got a much bigger audience with crafters. You know which? You know. If you go online and search for Glowforge, you'll see a lot of YouTube videos with women doing traditional crafting type stuff. You know I've actually been thinking about making some Christmas ornaments and, you know, making them customized for my family this year. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but yeah, I could definitely download some of those designs. And you know, even the glow forge software has some templates and whatnot that you can bring into the to the app and customize.

The glow forge itself has a pretty good help community. So they've got online forum with with people helping figure out different problems. In fact, I just used it last night to figure out why was everything I was importing so much smaller? Well, I had a setting set for downsize to 72 DPI when I exported the SVG file instead of leaving it the native 96 DPI, so it was making everything 20% smaller or something. So, yeah, that was something. When I searched the forum and found it immediately and problem solved.

Beyond that, I haven't really gotten out and looked around yet because so much of it was was much more buried in the traditional crafting communities, which didn't have a lot to a lot for me to to deal with. Right they were. They were talking about stuff that just you know was still functional, but not anything I was, I was doing. I am curious, though, to see if there's a.

I feel like we're finally getting into this point where the laser cutters are consumer grade enough that you know newbie like me can jump in and pretty quickly start start doing some, some cool stuff, and I am curious to see how long the hobby community takes to jump on the bandwagon. The same way they did with the resin printers. But it felt like there was a period of time where the resin printers were this, you know, black art, and all of a sudden, now everybody's got one and all kinds of people are using them and doing all kinds of things with it, right, and that's that really kind of blew up in the last what year and a half or so that we went from black magic to common usage, and so I don't know, I really encourage anybody to start this laser cutting process. It's damn cool.

You know the laser we have at work is as far as equipment goes. It was about a I don't know, by the time it was all installed and we had the ventilation system on it. It's like $5,500. It wasn't terribly expensive. Not bad for what it is. No, and you know we mentioned the price of the model you're using. New is about 900 bucks right now. It may be on a special, obviously, and I don't, I don't know, but the next two models still get pretty pricey. You know they got, they got another zero on the end of it. Uh to to get, get that 15 and 30 watt kind of capability on it, or 10 and 15. Yeah, I think you're right. It's right at the front end of this and you know I guess you'll be the pioneer, you're the first person I know of actually applying it that I know personally in scale modeling. I'm sure there's others out there that are doing things, but it's not a piece of equipment that most people have right now.

Yeah, and it's. I had a, even the upfront conversation we had about what's the difference between the diode and what's the difference between CO2 and what kind of materials can you use. I had for a long time in my head a very I don't know scared frame of mind, right, like it seemed too daunting for me to dip my toes into, and I finally just said, well, I've got enough ideas that I want one, and so I'm going to keep an eye out for something that gets cheap enough so that if it, if I do a terrible job of it and I don't want it after all then it's easy enough to just put right back up on marketplace and you know, at least get my money back Right. And so you know watching it and I and I've seen a couple other deals pop up that are that are of similar price lately here in here in the local area. So I'm assuming you know if people were going on marketplace in their area there's, there's plenty of good deals.

I definitely recommend that air filter just because I don't have to vent it anywhere. It just I just plug it straight into the the the filter unit and problem solved. It doesn't stink up the house at all, but it's, it's a. It's surprisingly easy. I've been shocked at how easy it is for me to get into it and even though I'm using Fusion 360 to make all my vector files, there's plenty of you know whether it's Illustrator at the kind of the also the higher end or some of these more basic graphics packages they all make vector image files pretty easily and you know you're drawing lines, right? This isn't 3D sculpting, where you've got, you know, all three axes that you're trying to sculpt in it's. You're drawing lines. That's about it.

So do you know anybody else, any modeler that you have regular contact with, who also is using one of these particular lasers? I don't.

I don't know If anybody out there wants to reach out, I'd love to talk.

Gotcha.

You're the Daniel Boone of the hobby laser cutting.

Yeah, I'll let you guys know if I end up doing some. So I say it's all drawing lines For what we're doing. By and large it's going to be drawing lines. Right, the craft folks are doing things like cutting around Christmas tree logo and engraving somebody's face on it, right? Oh yeah, even that's fairly easy to translate into the engraving process without having to know a bunch of computer design skills.

Well, I think you kind of got a head start with your Fusion experience that you've accumulated to date through the 3D printing. I think if you don't have that, that's going to be the harder step than actually learning to use this piece of equipment, because if it's anything like the one we have at work, all it is is bigger. It's not that hard to use. Really, it's the getting it to do what you want is the easy part. Getting what you want for it to do, if that makes sense, is the hard part. You've got to be able to do the design work but, like you said, it can be as complicated or as simple with that too, as you want. Yeah, and there's plenty.

I don't know what they are because I a, like you said, you can. You can be as complicated or as simple with that too, as you want. Yeah, and there's plenty, you know I don't know what they are cause I use Photoshop for work. So I've got Photoshop and illustrator and all the Adobe stuff you know, at my fingertips and I've been using them for 20, 30 years, however long it's been. But you know, I do know that there's a lot of, you know, cheaper, and some even some online tools that you can use to draw the vector shapes.

And if you're just doing like I said, the last thing I did with it was I recut a door for that gas station diorama that I needed to resize and, you know, 10 minutes in and out.

It probably would have been five minutes, but I had to tweak the settings a couple of times to make it cut all the way through. The material I was using that I hadn't used before. But you know, once I've got that saved, then it's, you know, pretty much done, right, it's just pop it in, and the first day I brought it home I was up and running making my first cut in a matter of 30 minutes. Right, it didn't, it didn't take a whole lot to get started. You know so, and and I'm I'm really I'm highly encouraging anybody to who's interested in this. Just go ahead and take the plunge. It's, it's pretty bad-ass, and it's definitely one of those things that once you start unlocking the ideas, the the ideas start to flow and you you kind of look around at your workflow and go, that'd be a much better laser cut option than me cutting this by hand.

I can see that, Absolutely, I, you know. Uh, that's why I want to get thisrene cut to work, because I got a couple of projects in mind, that man. I'd just like to lay this out. It's emphasized through CAD and 3D printing mostly the CAD side. You get to leverage symmetry and repeatability and all those things to make repetitive tasks easy and to make them all the same. And the laser cutter is just gonna, he's gonna fit fit right in there with that kind of philosophy.

So yeah, for sure and honestly, I'd be doing a completely different garbage truck diorama if I didn't have the laser cutter to, because that that barracks, it's kind of an l-shaped barracks, two stories and each there's kind of like one apartment, you know it's got a door and windows on either side and on top of the door, you know there's. I probably would have done one of those and tried to make that represent the picture I'm actually building off of, instead of doing like an L shaped building around the truck, because it just wouldn't have looked very good, it wouldn't have looked right, the illusion would have been thrown off. But you know, with that level of precision it allows me to do a project idea that I wouldn't otherwise be able to and that in itself is pretty dang cool.

Well, before we go here, you've got a place where you document almost all your work and it's a fun place to go visit when you're making lots of updates, and I want you to let us know where that is again.

Yeah, and it's a good prompt to hurry up and go update it for the some of this laser cut work I've been doing in the in the gas station diorama work that I have. I'm behind on updating but the URL is buildjakemckeecom. Buildjakemckeecom.

Cause I know I was following your Battlestar Galactica build there because I was really enjoying some of the stuff you were doing in that build.

So I need to go back and look at the rebuild because I knew you changed gears there a little bit on how you're going to do it, but yeah, yeah, and I tend to go overboard on documentation, for my own purposes more than anything else, so that if I want to recall in two years you know how did I do that thing, I've got it written down because I almost certainly will forget. But definitely get your modeling fluid and sit down for a good read for any of these things, because it's going to take a minute.

Did you ever send TSA a thank you note for giving you the opportunity to build that diorama all over again?

I sent them a claim I'm still waiting to hear back on. That could take up to six months to come back.

Good, for you.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see if that goes anywhere.

Fight the power man. Hopefully will.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right. All right, sir, Great to have you back and getting this information on laser cutting and be curious to keep up with your uh, your development there and see how that, how that progresses.

Yeah, thanks, guys. Well, I really appreciate you having me on and you know, like I said, this is a surprisingly easy of the three pieces of equipment and the holy holy triad here it's, it's almost the easiest one so far that I've been playing with. So you know, don't, don't let the the, the mask of uncertainty, should scare you off from playing around with these laser cutters.

Well, that's going to make us spend some money. Probably God he made you buy something last time, dave.

Yes, I did that fancy hand sander. Yeah, the sander which I have.

Dave, did you get it? Did you actually buy it? Yes, I bought it. I love it. Oh, it's fantastic.

It's one of those things again, like you get the laser cutter and then you start thinking of all these things you can do with it. I mean, this thing just cries out for you to do some architectural construction because of all All the angles and the ability to true up pieces of sheet styrene.

So yeah, got it and I love it, christmas is coming up, so don't forget that they've got a hand chopper that is remarkable.

I have a very good hand chopper, thank you. But I've got to tell you I've thought about a hot wire for that prox on for a long time, but right now it's, it's a matter of space.

Yeah, that's the. That's the trouble with all these is I need a bigger room Cause I want to have all these tools out all the time. Yes, you know I keep having to put my, my ultimation, ultimotion hand sander up, you know, up under my desk when I'm not using it, but I end up taking it out like every couple of days. So you know it'd be nice to have it out permanently.

hobby room's never big enough yeah well, jake, thanks again for joining us and thank you. We'll have you back at some point. I'm sure you'll get another tool to tell us all about I both hope and don't hope that that's true all right, thanks guys, take care. Time waits for no man and uh, it's really interesting to see this stuff get, I guess, price position down to where it gets affordable for the general hobbyist I.

That was a super interesting talk and I'm I am curious to see how quickly. I mean with 3D printing, you had it, was there, a few people started doing it and now it's relatively exploding in the hobby and I've got to think the same thing is going to happen with these lasers. So I can't wait to see how it develops.

I don't know that it's going to be as applicable as 3D printing, but for a certain subset of the hobby and a certain subset of tasks I think it's certainly got a lot of application and I want to see him try that styrene on this thing.

Me too On his cutter man. And then I want to see you try it at work.

That might be sooner than later.

Classic Model Mojo is brought to you by Squadron. Head on over to Squadroncom for the latest in kits and accessories, all at a great price and with great service. Are you a modeler on the go? Check out the Squadron mobile app for your Apple or Android device for easy shopping from just about anywhere. Squadron adding to the stash since 1968.

Well, I've almost been adding to my stash since 1968.

Yeah, that's right.

Dave, what is up on your bench?

Well, progress. Not as much as I'd like, but progress. The SAM is completely in decals and I have started the oil weathering process. And I have started the oil weathering process, which I've got Mr Hustad behind me urging me on slash, cracking a whip. I'm trying to find time here in the dark time to get that done. Then I'm also working on the Moosaroo Cup, which I can't show pictures of or anything like that, but I can assure everybody out there it's moving forward and, like I said last time, I've come up with the idea for what I'm going to do for the diorama, although if I had to do it again I came across a picture today that would be just really, really awesome well, you hadn't done it first yet, so why had to do it again?

because to do what I this picture that I saw, I'd take a completely different approach to even building the model. Ah, okay, it's still inspirational, it's cool, and I can't wait to get this thing in paint. I'm not that gosh-awful, far from that, and we'll get it in paint. And then I've got to work on the vignette base and that's going to be brand-new virgin territory for me. I'm looking forward to watching that, even though nobody else gets to base, and that's going to be brand new virgin territory for me.

I'm looking forward to watching that, even though nobody else gets to.

Yeah, that's right, you'll get to see it. Nobody else will, at least till March. So that's my benchtop. How about yours?

Well, it's not been as exciting as last time, but I've managed to get a few things done. The E16 was going gangbusters for a while, then I just got sidetracked by thanksgiving. It's got, oh, half the tail code on one side of the vertical stabilizer yeah and I kind of stopped there. So hopefully this week I'm going to get back to that. That's, that's going pretty well. Those, oh, who makes those tail codes? Aviology, aviology, aviology. Yeah, that's right, and those are some good decals.

Yes, yes, in fact, I understand they're going to reissue them and I need to get them.

When they do Well, I like them, because the clear film is also spot printed along with the color, so there's really no intricate trimming to do, because just take the whole thing and it's just ready to go on. They responded well to the decal setting solutions and it's just. I just need to get back on it, man, and get those knocked out.

You could have that done by the end of the year.

You know I was thinking about this the other day that yes, I would like to have that aircraft done by the end of the year.

Yeah Well, the SAM is going to be done by the end of the year, come heck or high water.

Now the other thing I've been working on is the KV-85. Yep, and well, last episode I'd done the flame cuts on the hull side, the tops of the hull side, top edges of the hull side armor. Yep, the next thing to do is to go back and in a couple of places the easy one is the, the curved tail armor. On the back of the tank there's a, there's a weld seam, there's a well that has to go there. That's going to be done in epoxy putty right. And then on the driver's front plate, which was a little, a little daunting. Little daunting because I had already glued the whole top part onto the hull sides Right. So I had to go back and remove. I didn't like the way the welds looked from the kit, from the Bronco tooling, yeah. So I've had to go back and take out those welds and kind of reshape that corner. And now I got to go back in with epoxy putty and put in the kind of more coarse weld seam that all the photos indicate was actually there.

So well. I've seen the night shift videos that only takes about 30 seconds to do. You know where he rolls out the little thing, and then you hear some music and you see his little tool working and the next thing you know they're all done.

Well, maybe that's the way it's going to go, I don't know. No, work on the 3D printed flak panzer. Haven't touched it. Yeah, can't work on all of them all the time. Nope, nope, you got anything else. That's about it. For the benchtop yeah, I mentioned I got to get something done. Man, I mentioned to start something new.

Yeah, yeah. No, you got to get something done before you can start something new.

It's probably going to be the E-16.

All right, well, the SAM gets done, we'll have two Japanese 72nd scale aircraft. Mike, the announcements are coming out fast and furious. This time of year we're starting to get basically new hobby announcements, new kid announcements. Have you taken a look at anything?

I have, though I don't know if this particular part of the year is as feverish as others. Can I give a blanket fave?

to Gecko. Yes, I'm going to do a blanket fave as well.

Well, this one is their quote-unquote British FV18001 Mark I 80-inch 4x4 utility vehicle, also known as a Land Rover Right. So it's probably unlicensed since Land Rover doesn't appear anywhere. But this is the second iteration they've done on this vehicle. That's a 50-0 one, so it's got some application, but it's a pretty neat thing, I think.

Well, and it was ubiquitous throughout the world. I mean, you saw them in africa, in asia, middle east, yeah, the middle east that it has a lot of potential but you know, that's.

That's one thing that gecko's doing. That's cool, and the other thing is and some of these aren't exactly brand spanking new releases, but they're they're within the last quarter or so of 2024 yeah just their vietnam stuff.

I know I gosh I every time they announce a new vietnam item and a lot of them are street scene type things. They're just awesome.

There's two different Saigon street vendor sets now yes.

Those are the ones I was thinking about, and in addition to that we've talked about the mopeds and the scooters and motorcycles before. But on the US military side there's an M76 amphibious cargo carrier, the Otter, the big six-wheeled goofy looking thing Right, they've kitted and an SK-5 hovercraft. Yeah, that's a really unique kind of subject. Yes, the Soviets had some big hovercraft. Maybe the Russian Navy still does, but the SK-5 in Vietnam was kind of a novel thing. I'm trying to not go down a rabbit hole.

I hear you, I hear you. I'm trying to limit my rabbit holes to one at a time.

Yeah, so this stuff's all pretty cool and look forward to seeing it out there in the model sphere, built and that shows and and all that. So it'd be interesting hearing from any of the listeners who've possibly built any of these gecko kits how they are.

Yeah, so let us know, let us know. Well, I've got a general shout out as my, or a general mention as my first fave, and that is a company out of, I believe, poland called White Stork Miniatures.

Oh man, you stole my next one. Go for it, I'm there for you.

They are announcing with like weekly regularity new items. They do figures, they do farm animals, they do German World War II motorcycles in 72nd Scale, they've got air crew, they've got ground crew. This is a lot of really neat stuff and I was talking to Inch recently and he just just placed an order and I am waiting for his order to come in because, assuming he gives it the Inch High seal of approval, I'll be making a purchase myself. So this is a manufacturer that's hit the ground running and I'm loving nearly everything they announce.

Well, I assume it's all 3D print stuff.

Yes, I believe all of this is 3D printed, which is why I want to see what Inch gets. You know how that goes.

Inch needs to do his article for the Inch High Guy blog and give us a hard link back to the dojo and let us know. And if you place an order and it's got the inch seal of approval, I'll let you know a few things I might want, cause that that's actually my other fave is the number of new 72nd scale figure sets from white stork miniatures.

Yep, absolutely, that's. I just can't wait to hear what, what he finds out. So, so do you have another now that I stole that one? Do you have another favor? Yawn, I've got a yawn.

Okay, tiger models. Out of China they released a tiger one kit, tiger models. That was kind of interesting. That was. That was a yawn. Yeah, now they're releasing a pants Panther Alf G. So I understand a model company releasing a kit others have done because company x is not getting company wise dollars for that model right, but to start a new brand and release a bunch of stuff that four or five other companies are already doing not only doing but doing well, doing, doing well.

Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so I don't know what Tiger Models is up to. Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah Well, I've got one more fave, and that is the guys speaking of our friends in Poland. The guys at IBG Models have announced a Semovente M40 75-18. That's the little Italian assault gun.

It's the 70-second scale version of that classic Atelier kit.

Exactly, except this is done by IGB in 70-second scale. So it's going to be a good kit. Not that the Atillary kit was awful, it just is what? 40 years old or more. Yeah, I love the Italian armor and the Japanese armor just because it's so steampunk and weird and this particular vehicle I have always loved. So I know, given IBG's past work, I know that when it comes out it's going to be really, really well done and it's on my list for next year. Anything else, that's it for me.

How about you? No, there wasn't a lot this last two weeks, so we'll see what the next two weeks have in store.

Bases by Bill is back with quality display bases that enhance any model, From US and Japanese wooden carrier decks to custom-sized cherry hardwood bases. Bases by Bill display bases are available for any type of model and for any size. Oh, and have you heard? Bases by Bill display bases are available for any type of model and for any size. Oh, and have you heard? Bases by Bill is now a US reseller for one-man army high-definition paint masks. These masks bring amazing detail to your model, even maintenance stencils. They have to be seen to be believed. And all one-man army products include free shipping. Check BasesByBillcom to see the products. Bases by Bill for all your model display needs.

Mike, we're here toward the end of the episode. I almost don't have to ask you because I know Russell's reserve 10-year did not let you down.

Well, it's like the four-peat or five-peat on this one man. It's my new standard. I like it better than the bullet. It's just got a good flavor palette and you can't go wrong. And all the folks out there in Mojovia who've picked up a bottle have validated my opinion. So there you go.

Well, I'm here to tell you that Lethal Weapon 6 is not bad. Now, it's a stout and I am not a huge stout fan, but it's not a harsh stout because it's a blonde stout. It's not nearly as harsh as a lot of the dark stouts are 6.5% alcohol by volume. Gunstout it's not nearly as harsh as a lot of the dark stouts are 6.5% alcohol by volume. Again, I could not resist it, simply because of the name and the packaging. Who's ever doing their marketing is doing a really good job. I'm assuming that this is all licensed. If not, we may be getting them in trouble for me mentioning it, but it is really good stuff. And, man, I'll tell you what I envy you in Lexington, because apparently the microbrewery scene in Lexington is just really taking off.

It's pretty good man. I'll have to cruise over there and get one off draft and see how it is. Yes, do that.

Now we are at the end of the episode, so, mike, do you have some shout outs?

I do. I want to shout out Corey Ransom and David Poles. They're the latest folks to support Plastic Model Mojo through their generosity and we really appreciate that. Guys, if you'd like to be like Corey and David, there's numerous ways you can do that. We have several avenues which could contribute to Plastic Model Mojo and you can find those outlets in the show notes. We've got Patreon, we've got PayPal, we've got Buy Me a Coffee, and all those links can be found in the show notes to this episode and most of the recent past episodes. So it all helps. We're in a season of change right now at Plastic Model Mojo and every bit of this helps us bring better content to you and it's going to help us bring our new website to you folks, and we really appreciate it.

I second that. Shout out as well. Shout out as well. I want to do a general shout out to everybody who is on the dojo, particularly those who have posted or interacted. That community is growing by leaps and bounds. With the increase in numbers means we've got an increase in posts. It's just become a joy.

I try and visit once or twice each and every day, and I have to tell you that it's becoming one of my favorite parts of the day is, you know, when I have a spare minute at work or whatever, while I'm drinking my morning coffee to pop over to the dojo and see what's gone on overnight and who's posted what and what interactions going on, and it's just been really, really enjoyable. Just like I talk about, one of the things that I really enjoy about doing the podcast that I never thought of when we started was all of the interactions with all the listeners through DMs or meeting them at shows or whatever. Just the same thing with the dojo. When we started this, I never anticipated there'd be anything on Facebook, much less that we'd have the community that we do, and so I want to give a shout out to all the Jojovians who are on the Dojo Keep posting, keep interacting. Thank you very much. Well, dave, we better wrap this up. Yes, we do. We had a long one.

As we always say, man so many kicks, so had a long one. As we always say, man so many kids, so little time. Dave, we'll catch you next time and hopefully, mom.