1951 Pullman Scratchbuild in 1/32

[hendie]

and so it begins...  I just wasn't happy with that last seat as it was. Once the carriage was all closed up they'd look okay - but it was bugging me - you know how it is.  It looked vaguely seat like, but you probably wouldn't want to sit in it.

I think one of my mistakes was to try and shape too much milliput at once - I was trying to do things too quickly instead of a systematic, logical approach.

 

I mulled it over for a few days and then the crazeee idea hit me.  After searching for a day or so for suitable scratching materials, I arrived at this nice flexible piece of cable I had lying around. So I chopped off a few lengths....

 

Can you tell what it is yet ? (are we allowed to say that these days ?) or are you all like-minded and in consensus that I have finally lost the plot ?

 

 

Moving on a touch - the cable will never ever again sense a charge running though it's veins.  Assorted bits of scrap styrene, super-glue that actually works on this cable for a change, and followed up by some strategically placed dollops of milliput and saliva.

Are we there yet ?

No !

 

 

Here endeth the first episode of "let's make a master."

Which, after covering with silicone mold stuff overnight, left a nice impression in said silicone - which I then proceeded to fill with resin.  That resulted in these two rather misshapen blobs of white stuff.

I know white doesn't photograph well, so you'll just have to squint.

 

 

If you've been following the plot to this mystery, you will probably have realized that this is these blobs are the parts I have to phnargle to make yet more masters. 

After a bit of hack-sawing, filing, sanding, cursing, shaping, I am left with these two parts.  Getting vaguely a bit more chair like.

Are we there yet ?

No !

 

 

I had some scrap milliput left over from the other day which I fortuitously rolled flat - just in case I ever needed a flat bit of milliput again.  Well, whaddya know .... ?

It was a bit of a pain to get such an acute angle sanded/filed into it but we got there..... twice.

 

 

Them flat bits are destined to become the wings on the chair.  At least I think chairs can have wings.

This was one of those jobs where I had to keep checking dimensions continuously - the chair has to fit inside a 23 mm x 24 mm footprint.  I think I'm almost there.

 

 

Mix up some epoxy glue, slap on the wings, a couple of arm rests (just dry fitted though) and we have a....... chair !

 

 

and from a more recognizable angle.... yup, it's a chair.

 

 

And now we have almost completed the masters for the second round of casting and molding.  There's still a bit of fettling to do before I can use these for molding, but I am a lot happier with this effort.  The use of the cable to give that "plush, stuffed" appearance has made all the difference. I can definitely live with these.

The legs still have to be figured out but I reckon I've done the hard part now.

 

the question now becomes, do I attach the seat back to the seat pan and mold it as one ?  Or do I mold them both as separate components and join them up later ?  The arm rests will have to be separate, but they'll be easy to position.  I am more concerned with the area where the seat back and pan join together, as trying to make that seam (with all the plush bulges meeting up) look decent is going to be tough. 

 

I'd rather only have to do that job once.

[Spitfire2865]

For all that effort, Im surprised youre not searching for finely woven fabric to coat the seats and make the carpet.

[hendie]

For all that effort, Im surprised youre not searching for finely woven fabric to coat the seats and make the carpet.

 

for the carpet - yes, I am actually trying to source some material to use as a floor covering.  For the seats - no !  Common sense prevailed at last and I'll have to make do with a painted finish on those

[Spitfire2865]

What material were you thinking for the carpets?

[hendie]

I was originally thinking of using felt, but I think that may not be in scale.

Now I'm looking around for anything that will appear carpet like in 1/32.  The bigger issue is that the carpet was made specially for the carriage, so I am unlikely to find anything with the correct pattern.  To be honest, I think I'll have trouble finding anything the right color as well.  It was a weird shade of aquamarine with green flecks and a gold symbol repeated over the width/length

I have a bitmap of the pattern that we supplied to the maker of the carpet, so as a last resort, I may just print it out on paper, so I am looking at flocked paper as well to try and get at least a little bit of texture.

I'll need to find something soon as I'm getting close to having to work on the internals

[hendie]

Well, the chair got assembled, and is now sitting in a silicone bath as I type.  It will be tomorrow at the earliest before I can remove it, then I may try and cast a chair before the end of the week - we'll see how it goes.

 

After getting the chair all sorted,  I was rather stuck for stuff to do... I need to do some drawing work to get dimensions and figure out how to assemble the major components of the bathroom, which is the area I think I shall concentrate on next.

 

So in order to keep things moving, there was a couple of mundane jobs that I could get out of the way. Number one on the mundane list was to fit the buffer mount castings.  It was a bit nerve wracking drilling through the brass, but it all went reasonably okay.

 

 

Then these reinforcement plates on top of the bogies were painted white.

 

 

And a little bit of experimentation....

 

 

From the left....

1) Red Mahogany Stain (Water based)

2) Same Red Mahogany Stain but heavier application

3) The same brown polish that I showed the other day but with dark brown shoe polish buffed on top

4) The same brown polish that I showed the other day

5) Dark brown shoe polish.

 

I actually like number 3, but if I am keeping true to the original, then it's somewhere between numbers 1 and 2. 

I think a couple of light applications, followed by an application of one of the brown shoe polishes should get me pretty close to what's needed.

[Spitfire2865]

There are some very fine fabrics such as lawn, batiste, etc. might be cheap just finding a scrap long enough. While they would be a single color, you might be able to print onto it. Or make up a mask for that gold symbol and spraypaint it.

[richard i]

I would print the carpet on the paper, think how deep carpet is in real life and then what that translates to in scale depth.

For me the colour of Pullman market ray is between 3 and 4 with the inlay in a much lighter shade.

[hendie]

Thanks guys - I'm really starting to think that printing on some kind of textured or embossed paper is the way to go.

 

I might head out to one of the craft shops this weekend to see what they have in stock.  Thanks for the input.

[hendie]

When I got home tonight I couldn't resist having a go at casting a chair to see what it turned out like.  It was a bit of a pain getting the masters out and I broke the joint between the seat back and the seat pan.   - doesn't bode well, does it ?

At least I still have a usable (though not very pretty) mold.....

 

 

But about an hour or so later.... success !!!

 

 

It was a lot easier getting the casting out than it was getting the master out of the mold.  It looks like I managed to capture all the definition and detail I wanted.

 

 

Though I should probably cut down on the size of my pour block - looks like I'll have a bit of sanding to do!

 

 

This copy came out with a load of pin holes in the wings of the chair - easily fixed with a light application of filler, and still a hell of a lot easier than making a chair from scratch.  I probably also waited a few seconds to long before pouring the resin into the mold which didn't help.

 

All in all though - Very happy with this result.  Now I've just got to cast a bucket load more of these things

[hendie]

Well,  white resin combined with my less than sharp eyesight looked great to me. However, when I decided to give one of the seats a coat of primer just to see what it looked like.... well... it wasn't quite as good as I originally thought it was

 

 

and the bubbles are pretty much every where.

 

 

However, I am not too dismayed.  I'll try a coat of rattle can primer over them and see what happens.   I haven't been able to find high build primer over here yet. I'm sure it exists but they probably call it something else.

On the plus side - my Chinese Chair Army is growing day by day.

 

 

In other news - I decided to start working on the bathroom area. Not surprisingly, this area will be completely hidden and closed up on the final model, so strictly speaking, I could just box in the area and be done with it - but we all know how that goes don't we ?

First up is the corner vanity unit with the sink.  I glued a couple of pieces of balsa/basswood together, then sanded the radius.  I then cut a strip of basswood to size to use as a "veneer" around the front face.

I had bought a bunch of 1/16th inch strips to line the interior (well, that's the plan).  The basswood is surprisingly pliable and formed around the radius very easily.

 

 

Once glued in position, I stained the basswood using the red mahogany stain I purchased last week.  The color has worked out very nicely.  Then the top for the vanity unit was scratched using bits of styrene card.

 

 

I then spent about two hours messing about to make a tap - resulting in this affair here.  I thought it looked fine, but on seeing this photo, it might be a touch over-scale... and we still need a sink.

 

 

Which will be sculpted using milliput

 

 

Then lastly for today, since the airbrush was fired up already, I threw some Alclad chrome on the tap - no primer, no base coat, just straight alclad chrome.  I went a little bit heavy so it's not as chrome-like as it could be - but I'm going for a satin chrome finish 

I'll give that a coat of Aqua clear tomorrow.

 

 

I'm still figuring out how to get the appearance of a door on the vanity unit - I've tried a couple of things -knife, razor saw, pencil - but I haven't produced anything convincing enough to be mistaken for a door quite yet.

[hendie]

Look what arrived today....  a little 1/32 scale WC!  During one of my frequent ebay sojourns, I discovered that Brengun had a 1/32 scale toilet pan for the USS MIdway Skyraider toilet bomb.  I had considered making the WC myself, but I think I have enough on my plate with this build and there's no point in reinventing the wheel is there ?  It does not come with any lid so I started to fashion one out of styrene sheet

 

 

It should work out nicely.  I often use drawings printed out at the chosen scale to ensure that everything is lining up.

 

 

I couldn't resist a quick dry fit of the few pieces that I have made so far.  I think I'll stick with the tap - it doesn't look too bad over the sink (it would look even better if it wasn't all cockled over).  I should get a coat of white on the milliput sink tomorrow, then I just need to figure out what color the vanity unit top was. (some kind of azure blue I believe)

 

 

The toilet roll holder and towel rails are going to be fun.

[hendie]

It's been a slow day down in dingley dell today.

I spent this morning searching for decent images to use for the bathroom area.  The only information I have is that the walls were Formica "Mineral" then some code number than I can not find anywhere on t'internet - so I took my best guess.

The same goes for the floor tiles - 25mm square, white.  Then I spent some time tiling the images in PSP.

 

After I got the images done, it was back to work.  I got the sink painted with my last few drops of satin white, then made a nice little plug for the sink. Actually, I made three of them but the first two dropped into the chippings tray on my lathe when I was using the cut-off tool - it was only after the second one dropped that I had the bright idea to actually clean the tray out so I could see the next one when it dropped.

 

 

Then the toilet got finished off - at least for the moment. Eventually, once the bathroom walls get made, I'll cut the back end of the WC off so it sits flush (sic) with the wall.

 

 

Once again I'm working with limited information. The only note on the drawing for the vanity unit is that the top is "azure blue" - so I took my best guess.  I also forgot to clear coat the tap so my handling has rubbed some of the chrome off - no big deal. I'm sure I'll be having the alclad out again soon. 

The "formica" pattern on the bathroom wall looks a bit large - I may scale that down and print it again.  - or may not - I don't think it looks too bad as I view this photo

I think the floor tiles are reasonable though - at least for a first attempt.  I also found some patterned foil, that I used as a kick plate at the bottom of the vanity unit though it looks a bit bright now that I see it here. I think I shall tone that down a bit later.

 

 

After that I started on the plumbing. This is a copy of the cistern that was originally fitted to Car 310. (or will be when I finish it).  This particular part looked so good we refitted it in the rebuild - non functional though, but it looked cool.

 

 

It looks like I'll be going with printed walls and floor for the bathroom. I'll laminate the photo paper to the basswood once I figure out all my sizes.

onwards and upwards....

[hendie]

Just a small update today - Still working in the bathroom area - this is the only photo I have of the cistern that we saved and reinstated during the rebuild

 

 

and here is my interpretation of the part.  Made up from a turned piece of aluminum, brass rod, tube, and resin nuts and bolts.  Now that I compare it to the photo above, it looks a bit agricultural. Oh well, we'll see how it looks in situ when it's all chromed up.

 

 

The original pipes disappeared up through the ceiling.  I've decided to have them turn into the wall as I'm not absolutely sure if I'll be having a ceiling in the bathroom or vestibule ends.  A little bit of artistic license is allowed every now and then.

The part has now been primed and sprayed gloss black in preparation for some Alclad chrome.

[hendie]

Upon closer inspection of the cistern it appears that there is a vintage "push to flush" type button.  I searched and searched, but I didn't have any of those lying around, but... I did have one of these...

 

 

I used a Meng nut and bolt - this was my third attempt at filing a groove in the back face so that it sat nicely over the pipework.  That was given a quick lashing of gloss black, and then just before I vacated the den tonight I threw some Alclad chrome on to see what it looked like.

 

.. and it looked like this....

 

 

Now, whether it stays like that is another matter. I always have trouble with alclad chrome rubbing off as soon as I breathe anywhere near it.  I'll try giving it a quick coat of clear gloss later in the week and then see what happens.

 

In the meantime, I'm working on the towel rail and the toilet roll holder.  Exciting stuff !

[hendie]

Okay folks.  Sabbatical is now over, and I'm back on the rails so to speak.   It took me a few days to get back into the swing of things after my work trip, but I think my mind is now back in the general area.

Quick warning - this post is dotted with lots of photo's with not really much progress.  I'm at that stage where I am really starting to figure out how all this internal stuff fits together, and it's taking a lot more thought and planning than I had originally anticipated.

 

Anyways, onto the build.... still working on the bathroom - this time the towel rail.  I turned an aluminum rod on the lathe and approximated something that sort of looks like a stanchion (if that's the right word) for a towel rail. All done by eye of course, since I haven't quite gotten that au fait with the lathe yet - well, that and laziness !  Once the stanchion was turned, it was out with the drill

 

 

which then allowed me to fit the rail

 

 

The problem with doing it by eye is that my eyesight changes quality from day to day, hour to hour.  Eventually, I produced two parts that could pass as close cousins. 

The rail has still to be cut to size, but I have to build the bathroom first to ensure I get the rail cut to the right length. Once that's done, the towel rail will get a coat of alclad chrome

 

 

Here we have standard issue hands (Large) as a scale reference.  Oh yes, I lost a few of these towel rail parts while using the cut off tool on the lathe. They do tend to fly off at the most inopportune moment.

 

 

Moving on.... started a dry fit of some of the bathroom pieces.  It looks as though the cistern will only just fit - but that's good enough for me.  It's sitting offset from the wall at the moment as I want to get some more parts in place before I commit to drilling into the wall. The cistern will also sit a tad lower so that those two pipes will disappear into the wall near the top.   The vent on the side wall was made by cutting a rectangle from the thinnest styrene I had - then painted flat aluminum.  The mesh was also painted in the same color, but I followed up by using an old toothbrush to "clean" the mesh ensuring that the mesh was open and not all clogged up.  The frame around the mesh looks a bit heavy duty.... should I retry using some other material ?

 

 

'cos when it's all fitted together, this is about as much as you are likely to see.  Those are 1-2-3 blocks in case you were wondering - so again, a nice scale reference.

 

 

I was a bit perplexed initially when I saw the tiled pattern arrangement on the bathroom floor, but all the drawings I have show the star pattern disappearing under the wall to the left of the WC.  (Dunno what Suzie was thinking back then, but as that's the original plan, and I've got proof, that's what I'm sticking to)

 

I'll be giving the floor a quick coat of semi gloss later to tone down the shininess and reflection.

Another, slightly better view below. Still lots to be added, built, lost, and otherwise constructed before this is finished.  Door handles, hinges, flush button, aluminum trim strips, toilet roll, mirror, light fittings etc.   It's a thankless job at times.

 

 

But before I get to that, I need to construct the outer wall of the bathroom, which isn't made any easier by the fact that the wall includes a small window. 

 

 

Some paint arrived during my away trip, so at some point in the very near future, I will be doing some paint tests to see if I can get a decent Pullman looking coach.  Thankfully, I kept all the not quite so good side frames to use as paint mules.  I don't think I have any danger of running out of them any time soon.

[hendie]

On a lighter note, and back to things of a toilet nature. This is the ferrule I turned on the lathe to tidy up the entrance for the cistern pipe going into the bulkhead.

 

 

Followed by the "Vacant/Empty" indicator on the toilet door.  Believe it or not I spent an entire evening getting those door handles and scratch plates made up. The handle itself is stainless steel wire, hammered over in a vise to get as tight a curve as I could, then spent forever, well, not quite forever but quite a while, filing the end of the door handle down to a nice taper.

The scratch plate was a bear to get done. I started off with bare metal foil - didn't like it, then tried aluminum foil - didn't like it, then tried 0.002" brass sheet painted with flat aluminum. Guess what ? Yup, didn't like that either.  I ended up going with the 0.002" brass sheet, covered in bare metal foil.  I'm not ecstatic about the scratch plate but I think it's at least passable.  The other thing I'm not too enamored with is the architrave surrounding the door. However, it's slightly less than 1mm in width, and I don't think there's any way I can achieve a true routed architrave look with wood at this scale. - unless someone knows different and can let me in on the secret !

 

 

and this of course, is t'other side of the toilet door.   Now I look at it, I think I could have positioned the vacant indicator slightly better, but I don't fancy making this all up again.

 

 

The next section leading on from the toilet is the private dinette area. This is the view from the corridor area.- I think the basswood grain is working fine. It's still a bit large scale, but once everything is in place, I don't think the scale of the grain will be so noticeable.

 

 

A quick and dirty dry fit of everything so far... That spacing for the chairs is just about right, though now I see them in place, it looks like I need to cut down the length of the arms to just over half what they are now.  I may also reduce the size of the wings - not quite sure just yet.  I've halted production on the chairs until I can make my mind up.

 

 

The next big problem challenge is going to be figuring out how to deal with the dinette/corridor wall seen above.  The basswood scales out to be pretty much the right thickness for the wall, however, in that wall, I now have to fit two windows, with some nice beading all around them - and another door and some architrave. Then roller blinds....

The basswood is 1/32" thick.  I bought some clear acrylic for the main windows but that is also 1/32" thick.  So it's kind of hard to try and have the windows inset.

I may try sandwiching the window between two layers of basswood and hacking out the wood to "inlay" the window, then phnargle the width of the corridor ... stay tuned....

 

The last up for today's session is the electrical cabinet, also situated in the corridor.  This proved to be a little bit problematic.  The cabinet is the same height as the corridor, and has a nice radiused end to it.  I built and shaped the initial form using a couple of blocks of balsa, intending to use basswood as the final form.

My first attempts at just bending the basswood around the radius ended up with the basswood (not unexpectedly) splitting.  I then tried sawing vertical slots on the backside of the panel - also snapped.  Eventually I arrived at a solution where I soaked the basswood in IPA (it was handy) - and that seems to have done the trick. I could then form the basswood panel around the balsa former and get it glued in position.  Mahogany stain will be done once the cabinet is cured and a bit more solid.

 

 

Now, regarding the paint.... I fired up the airbrush today and tried coating my paint mules with the ivory/cream color.  It sprayed like pebble dash. It was awful.

I had a good dose of flow improver, and some retarder in there too, but the Humbrol paint was utterly crap.  Now, it's acrylic, so I used IPA as the thinner - which I always do with no problems (usually).  I'm wondering if there's something in the Humbrol acrylic paint that isn't compatible with IPA, or whether it's just totally crap paint (which I wouldn't rule out based on may threads I've seen regarding their products)

If it is the paint, then I'm in trouble.  I don't think anyone makes a color close the the Pullman Umber and Cream. At least in all my searching I haven't been able to find any alternative colors from other manufacturers.

[hendie]

So, an incredibly busy week at work this week meant that there was little time for modeling, and what time there was, was crawling along at a snails pace.  The good news is that I should get my car back from the repair shop next week... at last.

 

Anyhoos.. on to the subject at hand.  I started with the vestibule/corridor partition - cutting two windows and using some clear packaging I had lying around.

 

 

and then I stopped !  The windows on this partition are inset with a nice bead around the frame to hold them in place. The basswood is 0.03125" thick, and the clear plastic was about 0.025 or so.  There was nothing left as a ledge to glue the "beading" onto.  Cue the damn why didn't I think about this beforehand music.  I searched around and did eventually find some clear packaging that was around 0.010" thick but it was full of striations from the vacuum forming process - no good.  Well, I could probably have used it, but even although once all in place, you would never be able to see it - it would have bugged me no end.  I've now ordered some 0.010" clear so the windows will have to wait.

 

So, to keep myself amused, I decided to carry on with the electrical cabinet that sits at one end of the corridor.  Once the basswood sheet was firmly stuck in place, I cut the part to length, then added some flat strip on the top and bottom.  That was then sanded to have a small overlap, then I used a very thin strip of basswood glued just below that to give the impression of some kind of molding around the cabinet.  The "hinges" are actually the gill cover spacers left over from my Lysander build.  Door handle from brass rod again, and scratch plate from brass sheet.  I have to keep checking my references as some of this carriage was chrome fittings and some areas were brass.

 

 

I did try various methods of setting a door into the basswood, but really wasn't happy with any of the results. For this cabinet, I decided that I would merely give the impression of a door by fitting the door hardware.

I think the scratchplate is passable in this instance, but I'd like something better for the rest of the carriage.  I have a drawing made up for window frames and various other pieces which I intend to have etched in brass - probably professionally as much as I'd like to do the PE myself,  I don't think this is the project to learn photo-etching on.

 

The folks that pay (or not!) to travel on this carriage, particularly if you've forked out for the private dinette area, no doubt like a bit of privacy, and that is accomplished in the dinette by three roller blinds fitted over the windows.... well, where else ?

So, three roller blind covers were hacked from scraps (of which there are many!) of basswood.

 

 

All stained up and nowhere to go!   I can't fit the roller blind covers until the windows and frames are secured in place. (Well, I could but that would just be making it harder than it already is for myself later - now why would I go and do that then ?)

Truth be told, that panel above is my second go round - on the first, I had mitred one edge to match up with the bathroom wall, and when I cut the windows out, I had the mitre facing the wrong way so the windows were cut in the lower half of the panel... 'doh!

 

 

The finish looks a bit rough in the shots above as I'm still only halfway through that piece.  I like to give the basswood a quick rub with wire wool, then stain and leave the part to dry.  The staining raises the grain slightly, so I give it another rub with wire wool, and stain again. After that, I give a heavy coat of Alclad clear semi flat, rub that back when dry, then give it another coat of semi  flat.  By that time the wood has a nice sheen to it... plus lots of teensy pieces of wire wool unless I'm careful.

 

While in the main, the finish inside the carriage is mahogany, there are birds eye maple highlights, or accents. Every panel join is covered by a section of mahogany inlaid with the birds eye maple.  There's no way on earth I could even begin to attempt such a part. so I have to fudge it.  As far as I am concerned, the basswood has a very similar color to the maple - okay there's no birds eyes, but you'd never see them at this scale anyway.

My first attempt at replicating this cover piece is done using a strip of basswood, sanded quarter round at the edges, then I used a strip of tamiya tape down the center before I applied stain.  It's a reasonable pass - though this is about my fourth attempt as the stain kept creeping under the tape.  I may investigate other methods before I pick a winner.

 

 

.. and that's about as much as I have accomplished this week.  Today was the first grass cutting of the season (Arrrrrrrghhhh), so by the time I had cut the grass, changed the oil and the filters, and done the edging, I had spent about 6 hours out there.. and I still have to do the weeding and spread the weedkiller.  I hate gardening.

 

On that note I shall leave you with the obligatory here's where we've got to dry fit shots.... (I really need to get that bathroom floor cut out and in place)

 

 

and a shot down the corridor...

 

 

There seem to be a lot of "Likes" and such for this thread but not so much in the way of comments.  I should point out that I have relatively thick skin, so if anyone has any suggestions or observations, I'm all ears... or in this case... eyes.

[Spitfire2865]

Tis how workbench threads go sadly. Noones commenting unless youre wrong!

[hendie]

interesting.... a sort of "approval by silence" thing then? 

 

thanks for enlightening me. I was beginning to think I had broken some form of etiquette somewhere along the line (no pun intended)

[chris p bacon]

interesting.... a sort of "approval by silence" thing then? 

 

thanks for enlightening me. I was beginning to think I had broken some form of etiquette somewhere along the line (no pun intended)

It's one of those threads that has so much detail it's just inspiring to read. 

[farren]

You don't disturb a master at work, now do you. Or what can I say other than just.... WOW

[Enterprisingwestern]

You wanted a comment?

You're a madman sir, all that work and fantastic detail in the toilet compartment and it will be hidden from view behind opaque windows, unless you're thinking of building a voyeurs special WC?

As others have said, lack of comments doesn't indicate lack of interest, the only sound at my end is my jaw hitting the floor, consider my like/craftmanship clever notifications as a season ticket.

Once you've got this one out of the way the other 8 cars to make up the rake should be a doddle!

 

Mike.

[Mark Forrest]

I'd not visited this thread for a while so just been catching up. Stunning and inspirational work, thanks for continuing to share progress updates on here.

[hendie]

You wanted a comment?

You're a madman sir

 

heh heh - that probably sums it up quite well.

 

It's certainly turning into a longer and somewhat more complicated adventure than I had anticipated.  However, I've started the project - it's been a project I've been promising myself to do for a number of years - now all I have to do is see it through.

Things are going quite well at the moment as starting the interior has breathed new life into the project overall.  I was starting to become exhausted with doing just the chassis and bogies. 

 

I'll probably take a short break from it at some point to prevent it from becoming stale, but at the moment, it's full steam ahead... slowly