Orphaned Roof - Oops!

Wanting to make use of the roof on the left I built a tarpaper shed, something I have wanted to do for some time, so I measured the roof and dimensions and hoping I had the correct measurements, on to the material I was using for the subwalls, but once I had completed the structures wall treatment, the roof wasn't fiting.

So alas, I am in the process of creating a new topper (roof) for the shed. Not that I mind, I like retro fitting.

Front view of the tarpaper shack. More on its construction when the structure has been completed.

Back view.

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Previously: The Trouble with Retro-fitting

I will see you all next month.

The Lost World of Dragons Exhibit

The Lost World of Dragons is an interactive exhibit currently running at the Reading Public Museum

The Red Dragoan. These specimens move and roar.

The White Dragon. Did dragons actually exsist? Some believe they actually did.

"But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them."
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

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"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

The Dragon in Ancient China

I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever the cost of peril."― J.R.R. Tolkien

The FReeMade

"FReemade. A little tribe. Escapes from a man, without arms, with useless ornamental beetle wings. There is a man with rubberised pincers, a man who wears a crocdile's snout, a hugh cur with the head of a pretty woman. The dog's is a male body. By the skins they wear the jewellery of holed stones on sinews, by the complexities like wood and tea."

Iron Council, China Mieville

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Updated on 7.25.24 @ 1:25 PM: Corrected two spelling errors.

A Hive of Activity

I feel that I am behind my goal of completing at least one project per month. Perhaps I will surpass my goal this month. Here is the current state of my workbench. There are componnets for two HO scale structures here. One, a small tarpaper shack and two, a dilapidated clapboard shack.

From the top left to right and then clockwise: scale tarpaper strips, 9" scale clapboard strips, two clapboard walls, one completed, weathered, and dry-brushed. The other is under construction. Two battens for the tarpaper shack lay on the wall panel on the left, two walls for the tarpaper shack, one being weighed down after having had stripwood added to the underside to strengthen the side walls. I used bassword for this.

Sam Maloof: Woodworking Genius - Art in Progress

Here is another post for my "Chair Maker" series. Sam Maloof is a wood working professional or should I say artist. His work can be found in several prominent museums and galleries. His work can also be found in at least two past expresidents homes.

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Craft in America: Sam Maloof

Strange Animals and Predators

"There had been deaths or course, to the foothold lost, to viruses and bacteria of the hinterland, and to the depredations of the inland preditors, animals that unfold in claws, teeth, cirri, and killed. Drogon went hunting with the Council's forces and came back with heads of strange predators, with new wounds and stories...

...The Iron Council papsed over foorprints, the stiletto holds of an echinoerd rex, the strange track of an inchman, pounded earth in clumps of four or five yards apart."

Iron Council, China Mieville

The Cacotopos

"Even there in hte outskirts of the cacotopos¹ the land was liminal, half worldy geography half some bad-dream set. It was merciless, stone horns and trees that looked like stone horns, forests of head-high mushrooms, and ferns that dwarfed prunt pines and in between two-tall extrusions.

The Cacotopos also included mountains with new shapes, with snow on their tops a color snow, a color that should not be, but instead something alive and tenebrous."

Iron Council, China Mieville

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¹"An imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be."

Materials – Mat-board Odds and Ends

Over the past couple of months I have collected these bits of mat-board. I thought they might work well for a structures sub-walls. Measuring 2/16th inch thick the material is sturdy and is not all that difficult to cut. And unlike most card stock it files very nicely.

The Chair Maker - Short Documentary About Lawrence Neal

This another maker doing what he does best, building chairs by hand.

Orphaned Roofs

Although I wasn't able to find this image on my blog for some reason I believe I may have already posted it.

At any rate I came across these roofs. I do remember creating this specimen one of them for a structure I was working on, however I do not know of its where-abouts. The roof looks like it might be for lean to and is made from paper.

Two additional roofs, made from paper, and from unknown projects. They might work on a small structure.The one of the left especially, would make a great rood for a shed that has seen its better days. Well, we shall see what comes of them.

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What's on your workbench?

I am glad you asked. I am currently working on two projects, the clapboard structure and a small tar paper shack, which I hope I can make use of the orphaned roof on the left. I will keep you abreast of my progress.

Dilapidated and Abandon - Clapboard Shack

Back wall of my 1/87 scale Clapboard shack

You might ask, where is the board and batten structure you were working on? It is those stratch built windows that have me wondering why, when I have so many window castings, why I fiddle with my own windows. Although I do feel it might be fun to build in 1/4 scale. As far as those windows in 1/87 scale are concerned, I do have one that is just about completed.

I may have went too far with the weathering. We will see how it looks after the top coat of paint is applied.

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My other clapboard shacks

• And the Work Goes On
• The 6 x 6” Square of Cardstock Challenge
• Goods Shed Under Construction

Remade Horrors

"A Remade sutured to steam-and-piston legs like spread-out fingers that run with tremendous shuddering up slods of rock, his man-torso afail like an unwilling passenger. Another Remade, was a muscled man made into a strange six limbed thing: he is joined below his abdomen to the neck."

Iron Council, China Mieville

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Routledge Companion to Science Fiction: China Meiville

I just found this article (a downloadable PDF) while researching China Meiville. It makes for some good reading. If you click here it will deliver you to some good resources on the horror genre, if you so inclined.

Lost & Found - A Foamcore Glider

With its packaging giving a short history lesson on the glider I recently found this glider unassembled. I fits in my palm with room to spare.

It is colorful, lite weight - made of foamcore, small, and yes it can fly. It flys very well and I really need to give it a try out of doors. There is a number five on its tail, indicating there are five different models to collect. THe packaging says the same. It looks like Kids meal premium.

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Make yuour own glider instructions

The Chair Maker

A great video of a older gentlemen creating a rocker by hand.

Remades are Made Impossible

"A Remade with limbs becoming pistons and jackhammer, where he becomes deafened through his own labors. One was a man whose arms were replaced with the outsized spalyed claws of a mole."

Iron Council, China Miéville¹

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^1. Iron Council (2004) is a weird fantasy novel by China Miéville, his third in the Bas-Lag universe.

Remades are Always Varied

"The Remades are always varied. Their bodies made impossible. On the roadbed there is a man whose front pulsates with scrany arms, each from a corpse or an ambulation. Chained to him a taller man, his face stotic. A fox stitched embedded in his chest from where it snarls and bites at him, keeping the man in permanent terror.

Here a crawling man spiral-shelled in iron and venting smoke. Here a woman working. There are plenty of woman Remades working amoung the others. A woman became a guttered pillar, with her organic parts like a after thoughts. A man, or is it a woman? Whose flesh moves with the tides, with eructations like an octopus. People with their face relocated, bodies made of iron and rubber cables, and steam-engine arms, and animal arms, and arms that are body length pistons that reach out below their waists."

Iron Council, China Miéville