monkeysarefun

Thanks Phil,the more I googled gerni, the more confused I became.. Jamie - I apologise for thinking that you were in some 60's psychadelic band, obviously its presumably all due to autocorrect/predictive text. Where will it end...?

Wow - but just need more snakes to fix. I had a mate who lived in a dairy near here at Cobbitty, SW of Sydney. He'd kill mice and rats that infested the hay shed, skin them , glue the hides to bits of badly cut ply with a keyring attached and give them to his friends - including me - as presents. Very entrepreneurial, but they got stinky after about a week so we'd have to throw them out.

G'day Jamie, I have not been able to find where you are writing from, so obviously regional differences are causing my issues but I sure am wondering what your definition of a gerni is, because here in NSW a Gerni is a high pressure water blaster, and so, to find 3 of them sound asleep in my wall would be like some weird psychedelic drug thing from the 60's that I've only read about, like the yellow submarine etc . (I was under 10 in the 60's so I have actually only read about it!)

Yeah, he gave that reply to my post questioning what he meant, so I'm thinking that too. But I've ordered my emblaser 2 with the air assist bits so I'll try styrene again, outside once the temperature here comes down a bit. I think the toxic fumes bit comes from the fact that some definitions of styrene mention vinyl as part of its composition, the trouble is that plastics have so many definitions and spawn so many internet urban legends in so many forums that it gets confusing. Personally, I'm taking styrenne to be HIPS - High Impact polysterene which in order to be sure of the composition I buy from a reputable ( for Australia - just before someone sticks it in there!) plastics manufacturer who sells it as that. Saying that, I've not actually retried it since my initial experiments, given that I don't use plastic in my models, preferring card for architecture and wood for ships but since seeing Ross Baldersons N gauge model of Sydney's Central station, I am thinking of trying out..

Tiger snakes in my shed, a red belly black snake living in the drain outside my parrot aviary, huntsmen spiders popping up in my house.. (and car) regularly'.. What is this 'mouse' that you speak of? I've never seen one!

Today I went down to my shed to cut some wood, bent down to plug the saw in to find a tiger snake curled up just below the powerpoint. My fault, I should have mounted the powerpoint halfway up the wall. It does make you question your manliness though when you call up WIRES (thats our local wildlife rescue organisation) and a young lady in shorts turns up and captures it. I wish I'd thought to get a photo. (of the snake - not the young lady in shorts..)

Some say... they are planning to sell the Emblaser 2's diode and air-assist as an upgrade package to the Emblaser 1, so if it does cut it successfully, you too can go to the ball, Cinderella! Heh heh - laser cutter.... Cinderella...

That is interesting since I had a quick play with .5mm styrene when I first got the Emblaser and didn't have too much success - it tended to melt rather than cut and very black sooty smoke came off. I have since seen online pictures of things cut from styrene and the secret seems to be very low power and fairly high speed and multiple passes, though even people who have had success say its not good for fine details. I guess thats why they invented Rowmark and so on. But, I'm looking forward to seeing anyone else s Emblaser 2 experiments, maybe the optional air-assist is the secret - it certainly helps when cutting corkboard: https://vimeo.com/203536325

There must be a point, possibly roughly halfway between where you live and where I live, which is perfect,

Not Emblaser related at all apart from the fact that it kept me from laser cutting outside in case I burn the town down - but I just wanted to mention that it was 46.9 degrees here today - thats celsius. (117 point something in Fahrenheit..) If I was the Daily Mail I would now post 300 pictures of bikini babes at Bondi beach, plus the standard Daily Mail link to a 3 year old video of a koala drinking from a hose. (Here I have chosen a DIFFERENT old video of a koala drinking from a different hose which has been snubbed by the Daily Mail for no apparent reason. ) I walk outside and my eyeballs INSTANTLY dry up. Its a weird feeling.

Its been pretty hot here, temperatures nudging 40's quite often, so its been a bit too hot to sit outside with the laser cutter.. We've also had a few total fire bans due to the high temps and I'm not sure where I would stand on using a laser cutter outside on these days - they don't mention lasers on the Rural Fire Service website!

Cool...... I've got the day off because its Australia Day AND I learned something new in Inkscape!

Its pretty clunky to do - create a rectangle, select it and press the object to path button mentioned above, select the node tool to bring up the corner nodes, click on the one you want to adjust and move it. If you hold the CTL key as you move it it will not wander up or down as you slide it - hard to explain, easier to test for yourself what I mean. The clunky bit comes in if you want to move the opposite corner node the same distance as the first one so you get parallel lines - I haven't been able to find a way of duplicating the amount you moved the first one, other than moving the first one by pressing the arrow key and counting the number of times you press it, then doing the same with the other corner and clicking the same number of times. Is there a better way I know not of?

Broadly similar I guess to the use of the 'N' word. Obviously unacceptable if used in movies set in current days or by Top Gear presenters, but it gets used in 'Django Unchained' about 100 times, presumably its deemed acceptable due to historical accuracy.

Hi Andrew, Just wondering -what did you use for N gauge corrugated iron? IT looks good. Its often modelled as very rusty and weathered, but I've also seen many examples of buildings where it is still the uniform pale silver gray as you have it, with no sign of rust so its nice to see an example of that. Maybe the local climate has an affect on how it ages. I guess in dry inland areas it might stand up better? I don't know much about Shepparton, was it a gold rush town? (Warning - the following has nothing to do with scratchbuilt buildings, so if it disappears, I understand, especially if Shepparton turns out to NOT be involved in our gold rush antics!) As an aside, its always intriguing to read about some of these regional Australian areas during the gold rush. History is all taken up with the American goldrush version - all that "miner 49'er and his darling Clamentine" stuff and so on, but theres little known about what went on down here. Cities like Ballarat sprung up pretty much overnight, built on the back of huge riches - and massive commercial and public buildings then went up due to the strength of the immense wealth of gold found. At one point in the 1890's the biggest stock market in the world was located in one of these provincial Australian cities - I can't remember which one - Charters Towers in Queensland, or one of the Victorian towns. All built by gold. How do I know all this? you are possibly wondering. Well, back in the 70's this kind of thing was what we learned at school here in Australia - all gold rushes and bushrangers and explorers. Learning was such fun back then! For instance, we all knew who Dirk Hartog was, and Captain Moonlight, and the exploring bloke who was doing exploring stuff (I forget his name right now) who got killed by aborigines who speared him in the back, and - we got to see the artists impression of the the exploring bloke getting speared in the back in our textlbooks.. . . No one teaches these things any more here, let alone handing out textbooks with blokes getting speared in the back to 8 year olds - , which means that sadly, the rmweb forum of 40 years from now will be barren when it comes to Australian history and violence. But back then, it wasn't just schools pumping this information into us, our national broadcaster had a series on the gold rush called 'Rush" which was unmissable to all us 10 year odds in 1974, which meant it was such a joyous chance to revisit it when it was resurrected and comically re-voiced as the pretty funny 'The Olden Days" by a comedy show back in the 90's.

.... I know - we used to have flats in Australia, then at some point in the nineties they became apartments. I guess it sounds more glamorous.... I realise that this is going way off thread topic and is probably totally uninteresting to everyone else here, but Allied Fielders built a big shiny silver new replacement mill down here just past Picton. Promised a bright future and employment for everybody, but its actually run by 4 or so blokes and a computer.

Wow ! you were having bucks parties in my hall model and I was going past your silos on my way to work! Tis a small world!

Great subtle weathering technique on the silos. Reminds me of the Summer Hill Flour mill which was such a landmark when I traveled into Sydney via the western suburbs line back in the eighties,. I think its now expensive apartments and looks nothing like the original flour mill, despite what the developers say. Well done anyway! Must be a huge model..

Here's more because I think that these show that with laser cut bricks, once you get the suitable laser materials worked out... then when you get the lasering settings right... and then the painting technique right.... and then the colouring right... and then the mortaring technique right... and then the mortar colouring right....it all comes together, and I think, the closer you get the better they look. Is it just my failing aged eyes though...

This is a 4mm scale model of my local A.H and I hall, chosen because it has what it is in big letters on the front of it, so even if it looks nothing like the original, people should still know what it is a model of. To show what the real one looks like I chose this picture of the 2013 version from google street view, because the roof tiles back then were all covered in moss - which is easier for me to model by just splotching green stuff all over, rather than carefully picking out the multi-coloured fresh clean tiles that it has now: This is a blow-in from my thread on the Emblaser laser cutter and was built to test out the capabilities of a low-powered diode laser. Apart from the posters and the embossed roofing, the laser was used for pretty much everything else. Except for anything that looks a bit wonky - that's all my own work! Happy New Year every body!

Thats really great, I need to work on my brick corners. Thats also a clever use for the bits that you laser with the settings accidently set too high!

It was your thread on laser-cutting buildings that got me wanting a cutter of my own!

Thanks Simon, Merry Christmas to you and yours..

With all this technology, 4mm IS the new 7mm! For example, in the first pic I posted theres a 4mm scale A4 flyer in the nearest window ( the one with the red bit on top). I wanted some random colourful posters to put in the window so I googled 'pamphlets" or whatever, and just chose the most colourful ones. It was only after I'd printed them off, stuck them in the window and thought I'd check them with a jewellers loupe that I realised that I can actually read them and that that colourful red one is calling for a boycott of a certain country.... So now because of high resolution printers I have to check all my posts just in case I unintentionally flout either the web forum rules, OR Australia's...

Why, thank you, kind sir. I just edited my post to sneak in another pic, - so its now probably the third photo! The roof has a tricky *Pizza Hut" style change in pitch near the bottom, so I'm putting it off until New Years eve when I'll be drunk and more confident. I don't think I've mentioned before that its 4mm scale, hence the Optivisor..