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So I have been out of modelling and gaming in general for many years for various reasons but have now rekindled my interest in all things GW and Wargaming. This has come about in the last 6 months for a number of reasons but mainly;

1] I've alway loved GW minis since roughly 1987 when I first picked up and GW Dwarf Adventurer [for 60 pence!] and followed this up with WH40K: Rogue Trader and RTB01 Space Marines
2] I moved to a new house a couple of years ago an now have my own Home Office in which to do as I see fit [althouugh the Mrs does try to invade from time to time, all advances have been replused!]
3] I'm getting older and won't be able to play rugby as much as I would like so expect to have more spare time
4] The internet access at my new job lets me get on to Dakka Dakka and have as such over the last 6 months + been posting here but not doing allot of anything 40K in the rteal world

So its a New Year and I have new focus on my hobby activities; thus I am intending to get all of my 23 years of minis and paints out of the loft and get cracking again! Much like allot of posters here I am doing this Blog [my first ever one incidently - did someone hear a cherry popping?] for motivational reasons but also because I have been active in this community for a while but haven't really added anything "hobby" to it other than some hopefully helpful comments. Therefore this Blog is to track my progress creating my hobby area, reviewing old miniatures, creating new forces [roll on Dakka 2010!] and generally showing off any on-going projects that I might have!

Lofty goals indeed! Progress may be hard and slow but bare with me and you might find something you like here.

Incidently before I go any further I hate the term hobby as in the GW Hobby context. Slightly irational I know but I find it twee and tacky but it seems to be the only term I could find to use so I guess I will have to get used to it. *deep breath*

So first things first. Before I can paint or covert anything I will need a suitable hobby [arrgh!] area. Unfortunately I can not use a kitchen or dining room table because my very quick and grabby one year old daughter would quickly put paid to any progress, but I do have a home office which I have always intended to use for hobby [ah! hold it together man] purposes. So here it is:

Don't call it Hobby then, call it Obsession

"What are you doing tonight?" "I'm going home to work on my Obsession." "Right..." *backs away*

Or consider any of the following synonyms (courtesy of dictionary.com)... amusement, art, avocation, bag*, craft, craze, distraction, diversion, divertissement, fad*, fancy, favorite occupation, fun, game, interest, kick*, labor of love, leisure activity, leisure pursuit, obsession, occupation, pet topic, play, quest, relaxation, schtick, shot, sideline, specialty, sport, thing*, vagary, weakness, whim, whimsy

Good luck with the beginnings of the painting area, it really means a lot to have a place to retreat to, though children work tirelessy to find ways into areas you'd rather they didn't go. Give it another couple of years I'd guess

Well not sure what happened there, the second picture isn't great but you get the idea!

Anyway Its a box room as you can see, there is desk space for working but the whole area is cluttered so I decided I needed more storage space so project #1 is the building of shelving for models, books and supplies. Obviously some of you may be thinking that this might not have allot to do with P&M but being an Old Bugger I can't stand working in a mess and feel I want everything in place so I don't have to go searching for things mid project!

So I have designed and planned out my storage solution, which is to be a 1200mm x 2000mm multi shelf bookcase which I will be building out of 25mm MDF. Its a bit "belt and braces" but I like to chunky-ness of the material and weight will set it down into the Carpet and thick foam liner we have nicely.

With the design done I procured the material cut to size from a local timber yard and have proceeded to prepare the pieces to buid the bookcase. In the following pictures I am using a biscuit jointer to cut groves in each side of the junctions into which little beech "biscuits" are inserted. This is a quick and easy method of jointing which is why I chose it [also because I bought the jointer cheaply in a sale!].

As you may guess by the past tense of my posts so far the below pictures represent the work I did up to last Saturday Morning. Unfortunately on Saturday afternoon I endevoured to scupper my own progress by landing knee first on someones studs playing rugby . A 4 inch wound, 10 stitches, infection and 6 days later I have not been able to get any further with this project but rest assured it will be done. On the plus side it has given me time to start this Blog. So more from me soon.

Notprop

I've never heard of a 'biscuit joiner' before, is that a tool you own, or did you hire it? Looks like a nice way to strengthen the shelves and sides. Very much looking forward to seeing the shelves once they're up.

Will the shelves support their own weight, or will you be putting in seperaters?

Bishop have you never seen New Yankee? You're missing out mate...

Tek wrote:Bishop have you never seen New Yankee? You're missing out mate...

Is that a film? I feel decidedly uniformed

No it about a bloke making stuff from wood.

"New Yankee Workshop"

BishopGore wrote:I've never heard of a 'biscuit joiner' before, is that a tool you own, or did you hire it? Looks like a nice way to strengthen the shelves and sides. Very much looking forward to seeing the shelves once they're up.

Will the shelves support their own weight, or will you be putting in seperaters?

A biscuit jointer is something I picked up on the cheap [screwfix sale] with the intention of building some alcove shelves in the lounge either side of the fireplace. I'm doing the "hobby" storage shelves in conjunction with the lounge to minimise material costs and mess.

The jointer has the dual advantages of making strong joints with hidden fixings. It works much like a circular saw blade does but is designed to accurately cut grooves into the board edges and faces on either side of the joint. You then insert "biscuits" which are formed from compressed beech into the cavity along with some PVA glue which expands the compressed beech and sets the joint in place. Thus:



It is not my intention to use any other fixings on the shelf itself possibly just against the wall for safety and lateral stability. This is my first use of this tool and i'm finding it suprisingly easy so far.

Sorry i'm not sure what you mean by seperaters, but the shelves [probably more of a bookcase than shelves?] will be self supporting and not on brackets.

Anyway I have had my stitches out of my knee and am looking to complete this stage of my project this weekend [unforeseen injuries aside hopefully!]. This done I will be digging out my mini collection and getting some really old skool models up on Dakka.

Rejoice and praise his name!

By the Emperor that peculiar shelving blog is back and this time I’ve finished it!

It has taken me a few weeks longer to get around to [real life has a habit of doing that hasn’t it?] but I am fairly happy with the results; but I did get very close to scraping the whole design altogether because it under estimated the adhesive abilities of PVA of all things!

When I finally got time to start installation all of the pieces were cut, grooved for the biscuits, primed and ready to go. I dry fitted it all and as planned [luckily] it all fitted together perfectly and no bodging would be required.

It is worth noting the usefulness of sketching out work before you begin. I have done things around the house before without planning it through first and time spent on prep is always better than wasting time bodging things together.



All was rosy in my little world so I broke out the glue and got assembling. As I said this is where I started to come un-stuck [pun intended].

Knowing that my design included limited lateral satiability my plan was to assemble in-situ, planning to use hidden brackets top and bottom to do the job. Unfortunately it didn’t work as my method of clamping the joints together didn’t work and the unit was in danger of falling apart. Drastic action was called for so I tore the unit apart and remade it; this time on its side.

I discounted this approach originally as finished the unit would be bloody heavy to lift into position and the lack of lateral restraint would over stress the joints while lifting into position possibly breaking the shelves. But I was desperate at this point and using anything heavy in the house I could lay my hands on to press the joints together I built the unit on its side and left it over night to dry.

The next day I check it and whilst I wasn’t 100% happy with the joints it was a great improvement on the previous effort. I just about cajoled and lifted it into position. I now realise that this weighed in excess of 75kgs and realise why I was struggling with it so much!

Cool Shelves

I was gonna say just buy/build a 'hobby' desk that would go under your window so All you would have to do is rotate your chair to the left to work on models and back right to read dakka. Could always place boxes under the table as well. Of course what you have going on looks clearly more impressive.

ugh. storage.
i live with my GF and storage is so hard.
she stubbed her toe on my army protector foam box thing from GW, she got so cranky. so so cranky.
i now put everything in a large plastic container under the bed.
so a tip:
when finished with a sprue, cut off the pieces you dont use. Put them into your bitz box, and throw away the sprue.
i now have 100 sprues, and i just couldnt be bothered to cut them all off.

Thanks for the replies and tips fellas.

The first pictures you see are mostly after I started to move stuuf out of the way, so there were boxes under the desk, and at 6'4" it was becoming a problem to comfortably looking at Dakka so things had to be done.

@Skohm - yeah thought of that when we moved in but it did work with the radiator and power/data points without moving them so I bought in the desk and came up with this solution.

@menziez - I know that situation, the Mrs is also the primary motivator in this project. Of course she isn't aware that there is quite a few boxes of minis in the loft now about to be moved on to the shelves! She probably will not be impressed, but gak happens!.

Next post hopefully some of those old skool models promised at the start. Purely by accident I now notice that the shelves also double as a lightbox, now that skill people.

I need a bigger bitz box, and i burn the empty sprues.

menziez wrote:so a tip:
when finished with a sprue, cut off the pieces you dont use. Put them into your bitz box, and throw away the sprue.
i now have 100 sprues, and i just couldnt be bothered to cut them all off.

Noooooo! There are so many things you can do with a sprue, it's ridiculous. You can cut them up into smaller pieces and stuff them in a ziplock with your bits. That's what I do.