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Viktor von Domm wrote:a bit of uneveness with wooden boxes is totally acceptable...in fact it makes them more characterful to me...
and it seems you soon need yourself a chop-it to get that evenness quicker...

Yeah, I'm hoping the commission stuff will at least pay for nice and useful things like that.

lone dirty dog wrote:Great Job Doc surgery was a success, and trust me the angles look fine I made furniture that was more out of square than that.
The wood grain looks spot on although the wood effect you used before was good, you could do a box in the same grain finish as the hut so it looks aged.

Thanks LDD and welcome to the show.

It's the little ocd/perfectionist devil that sits on my shoulder that wants it to be nearer to square, that's just the way I do things.

The wood-grain on the boxes is pretty much the same as on the hut, done in the same way, it's just not as deep as the grooves on the wood of the hut.

I know what you mean as to the OCD aspect how many times have I scrapped or pulled a project apart (probably why I never finish anything ) but those boxes look great and even if you do notice these things the rest of us don't.

I never received my party invite hence the lateness to the party

Thanks. It's only noticeable if you look down on to the box (whereas I gave you all nice angled shots to look at) and probably if you stacked the boxes next to each other.

Worry-ye-not, it's not something that drives me mad (more mad) or away from the project, I actually enjoy the perfectionism...

...and have always been like it, such as in the lab I would weigh out a chemical for a reaction and I wouldn't be happy unless I got the mass correct to at least 3 decimal places, and this is with milligrams of stuff (so that's + or - 1 microgram). That's the difference between a large and a small grain of salt...

Better boxes will happen soon.

I may try a toilet tomorrow evening...

Your personal invitation must have been lost in the post LDD, I shall hang, draw and quarter the person responsible. Please accept my most humblest apologies.

Surly you take something to help that along

 lone dirty dog wrote:
Surly you take something to help that along

Milliput?

Strange laxative what kind of doctor are you LOL

I'm a chemist, we're a special breed

 Dr H wrote:
I'm a chemist, we're a special breed

If you are anything like my university teachers... you are beyond a special breed, your freaking endangered.

I started A level chemistry Dr H and I know what you mean about grains of salt. Titration exercises where the worst. I transferred to biology after about a month.

That's a fine box. Craftsmanship.

WOODEN BAWKSES

(please do some ebay sprue box commisions)

cormadepanda wrote:

 Dr H wrote:
I'm a chemist, we're a special breed

If you are anything like my university teachers... you are beyond a special breed, your freaking endangered.

I wouldn't say that I'm entirely like a teacher/lecturer...
I can teach, I'm reasonably good at teaching, but I don't enjoy it.
However I can get a little carried away when talking about science, so that may be similar...
Anyone that goes through a PhD comes out a little weird in the end though.

weetyskemian44 wrote:I started A level chemistry Dr H and I know what you mean about grains of salt. Titration exercises where the worst. I transferred to biology after about a month.

That's a fine box. Craftsmanship.

Yeah, titrations are a major part with chemistry, although at PhD level you do get to play with more interesting equipment to do titrations with...
Ah, I looked at Biology for A-level, but there was more writing essays involved and as a dyslexic that kinda put me off.

Thanks Weety.

Largeblastmarker wrote:WOODEN BAWKSES

(please do some ebay sprue box commisions)

Glad to have made you happy.

The bad news is that I won't be selling sprue boxes made of sprue (it's far too much work to make lots).
The good news is that sprue boxes will be available for sale as casts of the ones I make of sprue, once I have a few varieties and other things good to go (and find out what is the best stuff to use for moulding and casting).

Unfortunately there isn't a toilet to show you all today as I got sidetracked "looking for inspiration" (read; running about the capital wasteland now it appears to be mostly working). But I will do something model toilet related tomorrow, barring any natural disasters or alien abductions.

Casts made of resin I assume?

Here is a resin casting tutorial I really liked http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_212448&feature=iv&src_vid=ZKqoI_XkJ-Q&v=RmuWo9xP1iQ

Serious question, what happens in chemistry if you see a chemical backwards? Could that not have some bad results i mixed with the wrong thing? Or have you learned to compensate for it?

LBM: Not sure yet. Need to balance the quality and cost of what's available. Thanks for the link, I'll give it a look.

Shas: Not sure what you mean by backwards?
When planning a reaction/experiment in a lab it's unlikely that you will use the wrong chemicals in a bad way (e.g. explosion-like bad).
You know what reaction you want to take place (e.g. what molecules you want to attach together and where to attach them) and you then have to read a lot of literature on that reaction to find what chemicals and conditions are required.
Then you plan the reaction, equipment needed, calculate the quantities of the chemicals and what solvent is best. All the time thinking of the hazards and costs Vs the production of the desired product.
You then need to fill in a CoSHH form (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) where you look at the hazards of the chemicals involved and risks involved in the reaction.
And after all that work, you usually make sure that you pick up the right chemicals in the lab because that's a lot of time to waste.

Most reactions need quite a bit of persuasion to take place even in the best case.
So if you accidentally use the wrong chemical, if it's similar to what you actually wanted you may just end up with the wrong product or nothing happens. If it's completely different from what you wanted then very little will usually happen.
That said there are some things that you really don't want to mix and there are a few reactions/chemicals that do react very quickly and violently if not handled appropriately (but that's covered when you're filling in the CoSHH form). The dangerous chemicals are usually kept separate from most of the safer chemicals so it's not like you could accidentally pick up the bottle next to it.

The worst I've seen in the lab have either been the wrong solvent or wrong salt (like a nitrate instead of a chloride) and they either lead to no reaction or the wrong product.
The only time we had to evacuate the building was when someone had a cannister of HCl gas (that's hydrochloric acid) that had a faulty valve and started leaking...

Little willy was a chemist,
Little willy is no more,
For what he thought was h2o,
Was really h2so4!

Only thing I took away from chemistry class.
That and the teachers first name was Ken, and he was married to Barbie
They did have a dream house also

But if her knees couldn't bend....

He taught at our school, she was a principle at a local private school and she was built like a tank. If her knees bent it wasn't going to be good for him

Thanks for the link to to the casting tut. I like to get into that someday!

Doc, good thing, I know how HCL vapor can irritate and good that they keep the nasty away from the simple chemicals.
I know you add to water, not water to chemicals for dilutions, and it is not usually good to mix things as has been bad for schools and others when ammonia and Chlorine or other bleaches mix. As a Janitor, I learned decades ago about HCL in a pink solution used as toilet cleaner, I had noted before that how after having to clean a toilet covered by me when my stomach emptied how clean the surface was and thought how good a cleaner that would be? then saw someone else had already beaten me to it!

Dave and Theo: lol. Who actually names their child Barbie? Please say it's a nickname.

Solar_lion: Lo. It is an interesting tutorial in many ways.

Shas: Yeah, sometimes it can be just enough to have 2 certain chemicals in the same cupboard and they would react...

Adding to water is because solvation is an exothermic (that means is gets hot) process and water is a very good at absorbing heat (has a high heat capacity) so the heat produced is quickly spread through the water without raising it's temperature by much. The other way round, for example adding water to sulphuric acid (H2SO4 for Theo), will lead to the acid boiling; and you don't want that.

HCl is such a useful acid. It's good for changing the pH of a solution without adding complex or unwanted ions etc...
On a side note, I've had the pleasure of using an acid that makes HCl look like water, Trifluoromethanesulfonic Acid for those of you who want to look it up.

In other news, I have started looking at toilets...

As you can see, I have started on two concepts:
The one that is more upright is based on what I have here (and is a nice simple design) and those of you familiar with a certain computer game should recognise the pieces laid out in front...

I've started with simple card to get the measurements right and to use as a possible skeleton for the putty.
There's a few things though before I continue:
Is this big enough / in scale? It comes up to just below the knee which is where you want a toilet.
However, I needed to put it on a base in order to compare it to my Eldar chap here. If it's not on a base, it looks ridiculously small... Do I leave it small (as it is), build it up to this height without the base, or somewhere in between?

Input, thoughts, ideas?

So, triflic acid is very dangerous stuff!

 shasolenzabi wrote:
So, triflic acid is very dangerous stuff!

Yeah, it's not something to mess about with. But handled properly it's fine.

I would build it to me rightly scaled without the additional height of the base...
I assume you soon fill the shape of said skelton with Sculpy? You are on your way to greatness!

The resin is probably the most accessible thing for an amatuer caster. what you could do is take the pieces of the box (flat sides) and just lay em out with sprue in between to make the mould. Anyway, if all goes well, I will one day be clipping Dr.H brand boxes for some scenery.

And the molds take like no time to create and reuse. And tbh, they are wooden boxes in a warzone. I would expect them to be low quality XD.

EDIT: just don't charge 40 pounds a box ok?

Viktor von Domm wrote:I would build it to me rightly scaled without the additional height of the base...
I assume you soon fill the shape of said skelton with Sculpy? You are on your way to greatness!

Cool ta.
Ja, well with milliput as that's what I have to hand. I'll add a little more skeleton first though.

Largeblastmarker wrote:The resin is probably the most accessible thing for an amatuer caster. what you could do is take the pieces of the box (flat sides) and just lay em out with sprue in between to make the mould. Anyway, if all goes well, I will one day be clipping Dr.H brand boxes for some scenery.

And the molds take like no time to create and reuse. And tbh, they are wooden boxes in a warzone. I would expect them to be low quality XD.

Ahh, you have discovered my cunning plan for making near "square" boxes.

Good to have a potential future customer involved. Nice to know that I am doing something that someone wants. Thanks.

I want perfect square boxes please.

this next project is coming straight from and to the crap-er. Neat.

On a side note, you are definitely like my professors... its a chemist thing i am sure.

In all the years I have been playing and modeling, of all the pics I have scrolled by online, I will say that I've never seen anyone else create such functional and impressive art from GW sprues.

That box staggered me. Wow.

Incredible work. Your craftsmanship has my respect.

Lo people. A little update on the bogs for you below.

I didn't see your edit LBM. No, they will not be 40squids a box. I'll have to see how much resin goes into each box before I can calculate a price, but I could probably make a 1:1 scale box with £40 of resin...

cormadepanda wrote:I want perfect square boxes please.

this next project is coming straight from and to the crap-er. Neat.

I'll measure them especially carefully just for you Comrade.
Thanks, more crap-ers below.

On a side note, you are definitely like my professors... its a chemist thing i am sure.

Probably, but every subject has it's nerds and weirdos...

Skalk Bloodaxe wrote:In all the years I have been playing and modeling, of all the pics I have scrolled by online, I will say that I've never seen anyone else create such functional and impressive art from GW sprues.

That box staggered me. Wow.

Incredible work. Your craftsmanship has my respect.

Hey wow, thanks Skalk. The number of times I've been staggered by things in your blogs that means a lot.

So, toilets.

The basic skeleton has been constructed for the two initial concepts.
The bog on the left is one of those "up against the wall" types ( ) and so won't initially have a cistern (although I may build a large box-like one later).
My time wandering the wasteland hasn't been wasted either as I found a toilet that I could get to the side of and get a picture to show what goes on behind it.

I still need to make the cistern for the FO bog and that is the next job. The gap at the back of that one and the big hole inside the first will be filled (probably with sprue) before I start putty-ing them.

In other news I have been buying things for casting.
So there is some silicone, some resin AND some Oyumaru (that name is a nightmare for a dyslexic) winging their various ways towards me.
I just want to give a shout out and thanks to Galorn for his advice in casting materials.

I need to have a look at what equipment that I have laying about that will be useful for casting and I will be shopping at the weekend for anything I don't have, then some vaguely exciting casting like things will happen once the stuff arrives...
I also need to decide upon what I want for my birthday on Monday. It will likely be something plastic...

And as it turns out the cistern was reasonably quick to make.
I had a piece of sprue that was the perfect length (just slightly wider than the seat).
Into which I carved out the shape in the front of the cistern.
The flush handle I couldn't make any smaller I'm afraid.
And I used a little putty rivet for the round thing that's on the side of the cistern.
Then I had to find a suitable pipe and the best fit I found was a length of paperclip.

You'll have to imagine the bowl filled in with putty and I think it's a pretty close match.
What do you think?

And behind it you can see the first wall of my taller (about shoulder height) simple box.

Just have to "flesh" it out a bit with the putty and voila~! toilet