Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Getting the Most out of what we do.

Yesterday the main focus was fixing the interior door tops I use as shop tables. Al gave me several after he got out of the annual yard sale business. He was a tenant land lord for many years before retiring and replaced a lot of them.

I went to Lowe's and got 2 big sheets of thin plywood for less than $30. They were good enough to cut it to my specifications. Then I bought a big jug of Elmer's glue, came home and laminated the tops. They didn't turn our too bad and they are flat, which is an important quality when building model airplanes. In the summertime I set t hem up on saw horses and work under the shade tree next to the driveway.

I met with a friend of mine after PT and bought some models from him. It was a sort of sad experience because I could see he was losing it. Probably has beginning stages of one of those dementia afflictions. He was once a really smart person and is going down hill. Too bad, so sad. We are all getting older. Me, I take my Prevagen and hope those jelly fish know something I don't.

Traditionally I worked with balsa and light plywood in making my models. Lately I've been experimenting with foam. Foam has some good characteristics like being cheap, light, strong but brittle, and easy to work. If I sandwich it between thin plywood formers the result is some of the best of both materials. There is one big problem I've encountered with my building process and that is that plywood/balsa and foam do not like the same chemicals nor can they tolerate the same levels of heat. So, a builder has to be extremely careful. The foam can suddenly melt when the wrong stuff is sprayed on and if the covering iron gets too hot the result is a puddle of goop.

I enjoy watching u-tube and seeing how different builders are coping with the problem. One takes a brown paper supermarket bag and covers with that. Elmer's glue is thinned slightly and painted over the foam. Then the brown paper is soaked in water and applied to the portion being covered. The result is a light cheap covering that can be painted and makes the underlying foam more resistant to heat. The down side is that it tends to wrinkle and not draw tight when it dries.

As a writer I often find myself trying to get the most out of characters who are very different. Writing is like that..., taking different things and getting the most out of them.