Episode 42: Barry & Jim Yakking About Current Projects, Various & Sundry

In this episode, your hosts talk about what’s been happening at their work benches, and (as usual) a few other things, including a movie they’d been eagerly anticipating but which, alas, let Jim down.

First up: Having succeeded in bringing home “A King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet Sees the Ghost of His Father),” Shep Paine’s classic 1982 box diorama, after a rather harrowing train ride from Chicago to Salt Lake City, Barry brings us up to date on his restoration work, replacing the original automotive light bulbs with LEDs.

Above: After thoroughly cleaning them to remove the lead rot, Barry mounted new LEDs in Shep’s original bayonet sockets to handle the lighting.

Those old incandescent bulbs generated a lot of heat: Shep’s small theatrical gel on the bulb illuminating the ghost had melted. Note the two-way mirror at right, essential to pulling off what Dennis Levy would call “the gag.”

Gaining access to the fireplace to replace those bulbs was no easy task, but persistence, patience. and rubbing alcohol to soften Shep’s wood glue finally paid off.

Barry built a new panel at the back of the box to accommodate the protruding shafts for the new dimmers. Shep’s old rheostats had some serious rot, and were hard to access inside the box.

Above: While waiting for his framing guy to finish his work (Jim has been building his own frames for his last few boxes, but he wanted something a bit more elaborate for the piece he’s calling “dans les coulisses”), he started a fun project based on the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage and Moebius Models’ 1/32nd scale Proteus submarine kit… and he had a bit of a decal and airbrush disaster. Barry talked him down and, as usual, offered a lot of helpful advice.

Above: Step one was, as always, mocking up the box and playing with sight lines and measurements. The sub was soon thereafter cut in half.

Round two of airbrushing, pre-gloss coat, and playing with some lighting for the interior of the sub. This one has been fun… when it hasn’t been frustrating! Meanwhile, Jim has been deep in the research for a more ambitious box depicting a WWI zeppelin raid on London, he extends many thanks for the help from folks in the Small Subjects/boxdioramas.com community, including Per Olav Lund, Scale Model Critique Group on Facebook, Rev. Bart Muller, Michael Scarborough, Jamie Stokes, Mark Matz, Matt Flegal, and Tony Bell.

Finally, although they keep swearing they’re done with this subject, your hosts had to revisit it one more time because of an especially eloquent and well-reasoned commentary by Stephen Lee entitled “IPMS/USA vs. The Golden Age of Scale Modeling.” Read it here; honest, it’s worth your time.

Thanks as always for listening, and we wish all of you a happy holiday! (Below: Storyboard for a sadly deleted scene from that movie. Maybe this would have made it better!)