Cartoon Wednesday

 

More Railroad Figures - ScaleHumans on Shapeways

In my quest to find better modeled railroad figures I hit Shapeways and quite frankly was a bit disappointed by what I was finding until I worked my way through the truly massive list and found ScaleHumans.

He does a lot of figure modeling and has a selection of railroad figures available in a variety of scales (much like Modelu). This aren't scanned they are 3D sculpts. Screen resolution being what it is I figured they only way I could get a good idea of what they might look like was getting an order placed. And off an order went. At the time I ordered three sets, 2 in HO and in O. I ordered everything in a tan plastic and that was probably a mistake. One set of the HO figures ended up being canceled because it wouldn't print in that material. I emailed back and forth with the sculptor and all of his stuff should only have been available in the Clear Ultra Fine Detail Plastic.

The sets arrived this past week. Off the bat they looked pretty good, one O scale engineer had a broken hand and two had hat brims that didn't completely print. One HO scale engineer also had a broken hand and that sucker slipped right out of my hands and disappeared forever. Most of the hat brims didn't really print very well either. The O scale ones were all fixable without to much effort, the HO we will have to wait and see. The two HO sets are interesting. The set that did print in the tan plastic are definitely bigger than the ones printed in the ultra fine. I may re-order than tan set in ultra fine to see if they come out the same as the tan or smaller like the ultra fine. Don't hold your breath it will be awhile.

Here are the sets I ordered (these are how they appear on Shapeways):

HO Engineers and Crew Pak II (7 figures)

6 Figures HO Scale 1:87 Scale

1-48 Fig pak 2 Engineers and crew

The HO Engineers and the O scale Engineers are the same figures. The other HO set is not currently available in O scale.

The O scale engineers getting their pins.

The front of the brim is missing on this one.

And a good chunk of the side is missing on this one. Both relatively easy fixes at this scale.

Quite the difference in size between the HO engineer pack and the other HO pack.

Cartoon Wednesday (For Real)

 

Jigsaw Puzzle -A Big One

There is light at the end of the tunnel for the Christmas Jigsaw puzzles. This is my first larger puzzle. This is a an 11x14" version of the Spanish Windmills, a photograph taken by my Dad on one of their trips to Europe. My goal was to create a puzzle somewhere between 385 and 400 pieces. I missed the goal by a bit with the final count being 370. It should be occupy my Mom for a couple of hours (who routinely does a couple of 1000 piece puzzles a week).

This is where it all starts. Photo is dry mounted to a piece of 5ply baltic birch plywood. Then I decide where the Whimsies will go.

Because of the size I made the first cuts down the middle to keep things easier to work with.

Working from left to right, here I have finished cutting the windmill. I put the puzzle together as its cut.

The next section to cut

Its been a bit of process but progress is being made

Left side is done, ready to move to the right.

Taking a slight different approach I'm working from the bottom up.

Puzzle is finished, here you can see what it looks like from the back side. I sand all of this down again so its nice and smooth.

Here is the finished 370 piece puzzle.

Cartoon Wednesday - Oops delivered early