Tonight was a totally can’t be arsed kind of an evening. I went off to paint a couple of my dwarves in the big shed. Outside temperature has dropped below minus so it was a little chilly. I put on my down riding jacket and the heater and waited until things warmed up. Whilst waiting for the paint to unfreeze (a slight exaggeration there). I played on the console and as you might have guessed, I achieved nothing.
Off into the bath and to while away the time, I watched the following
A channel called building Middle Earth. As I am into Tolkien I have been watching this channel for a little while, I do like his builds.
In this one he was building a Minis Tirith dwelling out of Hirst Blocks.
This was something I did about 10 years ago (by did read stopped doing). By the end I had around 20 Plus moulds, all imported from the states, I used to get a good deal… buy 4 get 1 free, plus he helped out on the taxes too. When I became rather skint I sold pretty much all of them on EBay and weirdly made more money than I paid for them. My eldest when she was a tot used to help me. She loved measuring out the spoonfuls of plaster. We got pretty slick at it by the end… if I left things for a while I would forget the ratio, so to remind me I stuck a label on the bottom of the cupboard shelf…
Yep it’s still there, in case I ever feel the urge to purchase Keramin again. The ratio above is not the recommended one from the package, but rather a trial and error system of getting the best results.
Anyway the moulds are long gone but the bricks remain. I must have thousands of the things, even after I gave a kilo or two away to the gaming club.
This is only one such box/bag/sweetie tin that contains various bits and bobs.
Although I don’t make things out of them any more, why?quite simply the weight – oh and time to cast enough blocks and then actually build something. Don’t get my wrong these are awesome, but I think I just ran out of steam. It didn’t help that the cost of getting the hard plaster up here was getting silly. A bag of Keramin cost £6 …postage to the uk was somewhere near £3 with an extra £6 to get to me.
They are handy for bits and pieces of ruins though…
I really should just bin them as in those 10 years I haven’t really used anything apart from some Egyptian statues. And truth be told I now have the printer. Okay it isn’t the same as building it yourself one brick at a time but the printed stuff does tend to bounce a bit easier and furthermore it is a twentieth of the weight.
When I say the moulds have all gone, that is not exactly right. I have one left… #75 the ruined Fieldstone mould. The other piece of Trivia is some of my moulded pieces supported my Wife in one of her International conferences. They made a pathway for people to follow (on a table – I didn’t make that many 😉). It went down quite well from what I remember.
Even though the Temperature here is chilly – spring is definitely on the way as the Oyster catchers are back and making a massive racket.
