Two side projects

"Side project" #1, illustrated at right, has kept me occupied of late. Her arrival is imminent!

Honestly, a combination of things I have and haven't decided to do have also hindered progress on the ship. I haven't cleared off a large-enough space to do some next-step work, e.g. soaking, heating, and bending a few strakes that run the length of the ship. Also, some of the false keel pieces and upper deck pieces would really benefit from a good wood stain, and again I don't have/haven't made an appropriate work space to do these. It's a dicey proposition to do this work at my desk: when I started Albatros, I had a laptop that easily moved out of the way. It's now an iMac, which is a pain to move. Appropriating the kitchen table is a dicey proposition, but perhaps a bug will get me to knock out some of these steps in the near future.

I'm feeling pretty frustrated that I've not made much progress on the ship over the last six months. Really, planking and lining the hull was tedious and sapped a lot of my energy for the project.

I think what this enterprise has taught me is that I miss model-building, but the wood-ship avenue (at least plank-on-frame) is not my cup of tea. With baby coming soon and wanting to knock out some kind of building project, I went way back to basics on side project #2:

That's right: plastic, snap-together, and even pre-painted! If you've seen the little Star Trek and Star Wars miniatures in the background shots of Albatros, or just know me for more than 10 minutes, this choice shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

First impression opening the box went from good to amazed: the handful of painted details were sharp, and the mold itself was well-detailed. I was also stunned by the plastic's thickness. This may very well be indicative of the "level 1" nature of the kit (Revel has tiers for model difficulty), this being something of a starter model and meant to serve double-duty as occasional play-thing (note "8+" age range). But I made quite a few snap-together Star Wars Revel models -- in fact, I made a snap-together X-wing -- when I was closer to 8, and their plastic was not nearly as thick, the model not as detailed. Out of the box, this seems a superior product than what I'd assembled in my childhood.

Naturally, I managed to get step 1 wrong: the four wings are really just two pieces that, through a central dowel, rotate around each other to open and close. I swapped left from right for one piece and a few widgets didn't line up correctly. I figured out my mistake not too far into the process. But, geeze.

Assembly went pretty quickly: with a couple of distractions around the home, and distracted to watch a couple of scenes in Star Wars (which naturally was playing on my computer), it all came together in about an hour. One of the engine cowl's paint came scratched up, but no big deal: this would be a great model to weather, and scrapes like that one just add character.

The kit included miniature R2-D2 and Luke Skywalker figures. Artoo is well detailed, although Luke looks jaundiced. The tiny pilot figure, including its posture, reminds me of the die-cast figure that came with an X-wing toy I had as a kid.

The finished project looks and feels pretty good. I made a snap-together Revel X-wing years ago, and the build quality of this one is remarkably superior. Hopefully, in a few years I'll return to this or a similar model kit with aforementioned "side project" #1.