Plastic Memories and Dreams

My Work Area    

When I read many of the post in the forum many people speak of their tight workspace or working in a living room or bedroom.  That must be very tough, especially if they are not a lot neater than I am.  I am very lucky to have a house with a basement and luckier yet the basement is all mine.  My wife seldom goes down there.  It's great to have room and a place where I can work without having to cleanup my mess each time I work.  My basement was originally my woodshop, but lately it has been rearrange to accommodate my model building.

Here are a few pictures of my workspace and my model storage.  Being a woodwork I was also able to build my own storage cabinets.

This is my main work table for building.
This is the spraybooth I built using a kitchen exhaust fan.  I have been thinking of changing the fan location from the top to the back to avoid small junk falling from the filter into the paint area.
This is my casting that I do on my woodworking bench.
Here you can see the entire area.  You can barely see it, but I store all of my paint in an old white medicine on the back wall.  A neighbor gave me this cabinet years ago and I finally found a use for it.
Here is my backlog of kits to build.  Glad I bought alot of these sometime back at some good deals.  All the prices keep going up.
This is the first storage cabinet I built.  Really helps to get your builds from getting dusty.
Here is a small case I built that hangs on the wall.
This is another cabinet I built.  This one servers a dual purpose.  Stores models in top and has three drawer below.
This is my setup for painting whitewalls and red lines.
Airbrush Bottles - The caps for the airbrush bottles to attach to the airbrush are a little expensive so I came up with this method to make my own caps. At the local hardware store I by some 3/16 OD plastic tubing.  Using a airbrush bottle cap I remove the original gasket and then I drill a 3/16 hole in the center and a small 1/16 hole about a 1/4 off center for the vent hole.  Then I insert about a 3-4 inch piece of tube through the hole.  Note you may have to sand or shave a little off of the end of the tubing to fit in the hole and also into your airbrush fitting.  Note I never put the gasket back in the lid.  It seals to the bottle fine.  One word of caution, some of the tubing will not stand up to Lacquer paint and thinner.  It melts the tubing.
Here are some of the bottles in storage.  I never clean the bottles quickly after painting.  May need them for a touch up.  I just stick a small piece of dowel in the tube end and place a piece of masking tape over the vent hole.  This paint will keep for quite a while.  I have even added a little more paint and thinner to the bottles and used them for other jobs.  I sometimes mix other colors with the part bottles for custom mixes.  As you can see I also use some of the old Testors bottles the same way.  When I need clean bottles I just pull the tubes, pour and wipe out the excess and put the lid and bottle in the CSC.  Works great.
Nope this is not a model.  These are our 3 boys, Zeus, Drew and Jake. All three of them are rescue dogs and we love them like our children.  They are alot of company and entertainment.  This is a photo of them at the front door on Halloween.  They had a ball barking ay all the kids that came to the door.

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