Saturday, March 6, 2010

Mark That Board

As I furiously cut and sanded pieces of wood for the front window of the barbershop room box today, I began to realize that I could easily confuse myself with where the pieces would go.

Whenever I'm working on a project where it's critical that I know exactly where each piece needs to go, but need to stain or paint those pieces before I put things together, I take a pencil and mark the pieces on the back side or in places where I'll eventually glue things together. No one will thus ever see these notes to myself, and this way, I stay organized. I also sometimes will take a few minutes to write a step-by-step process for myself so that I don't forget to do something and then regret it later. (I've made that mistake before - I'll glue something together only to realize I needed to add some other component first.) Having a simple step-by-step to refer to saves those moments of blue language and frustrating times of tearing out finished work.

By the way, I almost always trial fit my wooden pieces when I'm assembling things. Sometimes, it's hard to hold the multiple pieces together with my fingers and/or even with clamps. That's when I use a minute amount of positioning wax - the stuff you put under things such as vases and flower arrangement to keep them from tipping over in your dollhouse. As long as I use a tiny amount, it doesn't affects the ability of the boards to eventually hold together when I use glue on them. Happy modeling!

3 comments:

Jo Raines said...

I have to do this also. I just wish I could wave a magic wand and electrify Joanna's house. Got to that point and quit out of fear and trepidation!

Jody

Michelle said...

It's a wise and good idea George, I only wish that parts of a dollshouse kit was labelled too! I am in the process of constructing a large kit and not all the pieces are easily matched to where they should go. I like the idea of the wax...I use masking tape (unsure if it's called that in the USA), to hold components together when I'm trying things to fit etc.

Michelle :o)

George the Miniguy said...

Indeed! We call it masking tape here,too. By the way, there's a new kind of masking tape called Frog Tape that is green in color.It's superior to both the blue and brown masking/painting tapes that I have always used in the past. It's superior in that it is better about preventing the paint from oozing under the tape and creating ugly edges to what I'm painting. It worked GREAT on the barber pole I just painted over the weekend.

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