According to professional model maker Adam Savage that is : he also says that Every Tool’s A Hammer which must mean that when i’m beating my head against a wall it must also count as a hammer – or maybe it means that i’m a bit of a tool.
Adam Savage also says that we don’t need to have in mind every step of what we are doing or the thing that we are making : all we need to know is what the next step is and how to go about that. Another Savage-ism is that making is not so much about creativity as it is about solving a series of problems. The main reason that iv’e taken up model making after a 50 year absence is that it creates for me a whole load of minor problems that I have to solve to make progress with any model or in fact with any project. Right now for instance iv’e got two intertwined projects as my railway diorama model (Trungle Hole) is sitting on my indoor work station and the work station/bench needs ongoing development : right now iv’e just failed on building it a knife/blade drawer with drawer slides.
Of my main projects the actual workshop is the largest and most complex as it needs a new roof first and then everything else follows. The builder has finally promised that he’ll turn up and take what measurements he needs and then we can get on and order the materials – he says we can get the job done over a long weekend. After that is when the fun begins as I would first have to insulate under the new metal panels and only then start fitting out – I can’t see very far into that job which is why iv’e not added anything to the 1/12 scale model I made of it to help me work out the layout.
My railway model cum diorama now has it’s tracks laid although they need painting – I primed them on the workshop floor and the next stage that I can see is to mix and apply a load of realistic looking ballast to one half of the layout : the other half is essentially underground, in the Trungle Hole mine and thus will never be seen, After that I think I have to start working out the geo of a quarry cum mine. set in west Cornwall.
I’m having a problem with my tracks this week when I tried to be all scale model and realistic. I removed many of the ties to make the tracks look more in keeping and now my gauge – distance between rails – has gone off a bit on one curve. This week i’m trying to cook up a temporary solution although what I think it needs is to make up most of my tracks from scratch which is something iv’e never done : still, this whole project is supposed to be about me solving small scale problems and that’s perhaps my first one. As you can see, the tools section of my workbench has been remade again, in fact I think this is version three (of many)
The main model or perhaps it’s center piece.
This post seems to be mostly about me fan-girling Adam Savage and is Tested channel, if so then I may as well carry on in the same vein. The two other things that iv’e picked up from his book and his regular video output is that most models are, at first, simply first versions or in his own terms first iterations of the same intention – i’ll come back to that. The other thing that I got from studying his work is how much he relies on checklists and check boxes to help show him where he is with any given project.
My final savage-ism for this post is that he often makes things in their first version out of the simplest and easiest materials on hand such as basic cardboard and more modern foam core. What that often creates is the form factor and overall shape of the thing to be made while spending absolutely zero time on the tedious detail work that will, in several iterations time, be added to make the model visually eye catching and fully immersive.
Oh go on then :
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 