Plastic Model Mojo
Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby
Plastic Model Mojo
Scope Creep or Learning New Things, w/ Jake McKee: Episode 116
Discover the electrifying atmosphere of model show season as Mike and Dave recount the highlights of the Smoky Mountain Model Con in Knoxville. From the exceptional venue at Knoxville Catholic High School to the vibrant camaraderie among fellow modelers, find out why Knoxville might just become the next big destination for scale modeling enthusiasts. Listen to Dave's eager anticipation for future shows like the Nationals and Wonderfest, and how they both keep their modeling spirits high amidst tornado season.
In an exciting segment, we delve into the world of 3D printing and CAD designs with a spotlight on Chris Medding's extraordinary 1/35th scale buckets from ITA3. You'll hear valuable insights from listener mail, tackling topics such as painting metal finishes and achieving realistic paint distress on models. We also share our thoughts on modeling fluids, from Redemption straight bourbon whiskey to Trader Joe's natural mountain spring water, offering a delightful blend of tips, techniques, and fun.
Join our fascinating conversation with Jake McKee from Austin as he unveils his incredible Battlestar Galactica diorama project. Learn about his innovative use of foam construction and the transition to 3D printing, and get inspired by the endless possibilities of Arduino in model making. From simple lighting projects to interactive dioramas, find out how modern technology is revolutionizing the scale modeling hobby. Plus, we discuss the evolution of nerd culture and how resources like YouTube and online communities are accelerating the journey to competency in this creative space.
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Mike and Kentucky Dave thank each and everyone of you for participating on this journey with us. We are grateful for having you as listeners, and the community that has grown around Plastic Model Mojo makes it all worth while.
Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.
Mike:All right, Mojovia, I think we got a good one for you. Welcome to episode 116 of Plastic Model. Mojo. Dave, how are you doing?
Kentucky Dave:I'm doing great, man. This is the good time of year. The Nationals is closing fast. Model show season is in full swing. The weather outside, other than the high winds and the occasional tornado, is pretty darn good. The pool's open. I'm doing great. I'm pretty happy. How about?
Mike:you, so the weather outside is frightful.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, it is a little bit. But you know what I did the other day when we had the bad weather. I went down into the basement and modeled a little bit.
Mike:It's good man. What's up in your model sphere then?
Kentucky Dave:Well, let's see A bunch of good stuff. One again as I said, middle of model show season, We've got Wonderfest coming up this weekend. We're slightly a month and a half from the Nationals, so that gets the juices flowing. I've been modeling. We'll cover that in a Benchtop Halftime Report. I'm not getting as much done as I want, but I am getting stuff done. Scott Skippy King dropped by the house Memorial Day weekend and got to grill a couple of steaks and hang out with Skippy. We didn't get to model like we normally do, but we at least got to see each other and talk models and talk all sorts of modeling related stuff and plan for a build session in the near-term future. All in all, it's good. The juices are flowing, the mojo is high. How about you?
Mike:Well, that's good, and we're going to do something a little different tonight on the front end, with a three-episode drop in May. Something just had to give man. So we're not going to have the breakout model show spotlight this month, we're going to just do it right here and right now, dave Yep, and I'm going to start by revisiting a show we spotlighted last month the Knoxville Scale Modelers Association's Smoky Mountain Model Con. This past weekend, memorial Day weekend, my son, jack wanted to go down to my parents' house in East Tennessee and go do some outdoor stuff, and we did. And part of his penance for that was since we were leaving on Saturday was to swing into Knoxville before we headed up to the Tri-Cities area and I got to pay a truncated but efficient visit to Smoky Mountain Model Con.
Kentucky Dave:I was so jealous that you got to drop by and see those guys. Had a great time talking to them and it looked like a great show and I'm so glad that at least one of us got to actually stop by there.
Mike:Well, it was exercise and model, show efficiency. I think I was there about 42 minutes, which gave me time for about three laps of the vendor room.
Kentucky Dave:I was going to say you bought stuff, I did, I did.
Mike:But we'll save that for a future segment, next episode. But you know they had this at the Knoxville Catholic High School. I think it's a pretty new campus so the venue was great. They mentioned in our model show spotlight last month that the lighting was really good at this place and you know, being an old model show hack, I was. I was skeptical because, uh, a lot of times great light means the weather outside's nice and you're right, you're getting that, you're getting the skylight boost right, right, uh, well, it was raining when we got to knoxville so that wasn't happening. But uh, you know this is a private school and it's got all the private school whistles and bells and, uh, you know, they went to the nines with everything, the interior lighting in the gymnasium, classic basketball gymnasium. Anybody who's been to a one-day invitational in most of the United States can appreciate what that's usually like. Pretty typical venue, right? Yeah.
Mike:Really good Lighting was great. Really good Lighting was great. So the school had the money to put in the lights. That went to 11. Yeah, and it was really good. You know, they were at their table capacity for vendors. They actually turned a few away at the end.
Mike:So I've been talking to Michael Poland offline a little bit. Ask him, you know, maybe because I think they were getting all the tables from the school. But I asked them, you know, maybe because I think they were getting all the tables from the school and I said, hey, man, you looked into renting the overage so you can get some more people in there, because they definitely had the space. It looked like a huge facility. It's a big, you know standard, you know single court basketball gymnasium with retractable bleachers and they had some more space. We'll see what they do next year. I I don't know. I I mentioned to him I don't know what the vision is for that show. They may be at capacity as far as manpower and maybe they're right size now, but I don't know, we'll see what they have to say about it. And uh, uh, just Knoxville so situated for Got it, and just Knoxville is so situated for they could be a really great one day show there. Oh yeah, with the potential to be a really good regional show in that region as well.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, the distance from Knoxville to all sorts of Metro areas is pretty amazing and you and I need to pencil that in next year and see if we can actually do that show the whole nine yards.
Mike:Oh yeah, we could go down Friday evening, have a great dinner camp out in a hotel one night and hit the thing early in the morning, stay there all day and still be home in Lexington before dark. Yep. So yeah so, michael Poland, keep keep twisting the dagger on. So yeah so, michael Poland, keep keep twisting the dagger on us. Man, we'll, we'll, we'll try to make that happen. But, uh, congrats on a great show. Uh, I tell you, the biggest surprise was the familiar faces. Yeah, you there were.
Kentucky Dave:There were a lot of people, some of which were unexpected Some.
Mike:The ones who were expected was Bill Moore and Frank Peroni from the Middle Tennessee Club. They caught me real quick after I got in there. We'll see those guys again this Saturday at Wonderfest. They're both coming up for that show. They were excited to be there and it looked like they were having a good time. Jason Campbell, our Gundam guy. Yeah.
Mike:The Gundam Mecha Club there was there in force. They had really stacked it up. They'd even slit out an extra table for those guys. Well, that's great. There's a lot of entries there. And on Jason was the first PMM t-shirt ever seen in the wild.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, I saw that. I loved it. I wish you'd gotten a better picture of it. I'm glad you got a picture of it. It was cool to see.
Mike:Well, the biggest surprise was Mojovian Special Agent 003 was in country. Yes, Brandon Jacob was there from Houston Texas.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, that was unexpected.
Mike:Well, that's a guy who checks his surroundings often because he did not come from Houston to go to that show. He'd actually been hiking the AT in Southwest Virginia, there around Damascus Virginia, which is not too far away, and had actually come down to my hometown, johnson City and, I guess, spent the night and had dinner and they were going to a concert in the greater Nashville area on that Saturday. So they cruised through Knoxville, he went to the show and he left early, like I did, and headed on down to Nashville. So, brandon, it was great to see you there. That was a lot of fun. We took a good selfie. Look forward to forward to seeing you seen at nationals man.
Mike:So uh all in all, smoky mountain model con for my brief 40 plus minutes, uh was was time well spent, so yeah, and looked like a great time. It was on theme shows. Dave, you and I are going to be at Wonderfest this weekend. Yes, we are.
Mike:Wonderfest is June 1st and 2nd, that's Saturday and Sunday, the weekend that this episode drops. Hopefully we'll get this out on Friday. That's the plan. So the following Saturday and Sunday if you're in the greater Louisville area and you like sci-fi, horror, fantasy, that sort of thing, you're going to want to come to this show.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, it is amazing it really is.
Mike:It's the premiere show of this genre in the United States.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, absolutely.
Mike:Hands down. So plan on being a location with the Mojo Roadshow on Saturday the 1st. Yeah, we've carved out pretty much all day. Yeah. We've got all that squared away and look forward to being there. Info for this show can be had a couple places For just the nuts and bolts of Wonderfest. Wwwwonderfestcom is where you can go see all that and get the information of the show schedule. The vendors are going to be there. There's a bunch of them. Oh gosh yeah.
Mike:I'm serious. If you like this stuff, this is the place to be this weekend.
Kentucky Dave:And even if you don't think you like this stuff, believe me, you will like this stuff.
Mike:By the time you leave, you're going to be a fan.
Kentucky Dave:It is eye-opening to see what you know, even if you're normally an armor modeler, car modeler, aircraft modeler and you don't think that you have any interest in sci-fi, fantasy figures, gundamsening, modelers working in these genres and the lighted stuff, all of the different effects that they use. It's fantastic. You'll love it. Just take my word for it, just like the Nationals, I'm not going to lie to you. You will go to the show and you will love it.
Mike:Another place to get a little taste is the last episode of the Scale Model Podcast, stuart Clark's show. They had a couple of the Wonderfest principals on there talking about the show. Yeah, and we look forward to seeing all those guys Saturday. Yes, well, you know, model shows, folks don't need reason, don't need rhyme, ain't nothing I'd rather do. Yeah, give one shot. If you have not, I think you'll have a good time going to a model show.
Kentucky Dave:I agree.
Mike:Well, that's not all that's in my model sphere, Dave. I got to keep going, man. Okay, Go, go go Inside the Armor ITA 3. Chris Medding's latest incarnation of his ongoing concern Right. Ita 3, Chris offered us a peek to some of his new wares Pretty impressed, and we've talked about this a little bit before.
Kentucky Dave:Go ahead, dave. Yeah, the stuff that he has been posting he regularly posts CADs and all of the 3D print stuff that he is working up and they are just absolutely amazing looking, and so it doesn't surprise me that, when you see the actual items, that they are top quality as well.
Mike:Well, the prints live up to the CAD. I will attest to that right now. I was pretty impressed, I tell you. I told him earlier or late last week. There are some 135th scale buckets that everybody puts off the tail end of their German tank. Right.
Mike:I don't know why anybody would solder or glue up a .35 scale photo-etch bucket ever again. That good, huh, yeah. So bravo, chris, if folks want to check this stuff out wwwinsidethearmorcom. Now it's armor. That's going to be the non-American spelling, with the U, with the U, yep, wwwinsidethearmor. One word, dot com. So keep it up, chris. Wish you success. The quality's there, man. Yep, absolutely. Good job. Well, dave, that is my model sphere, and yours too, I think.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, you know it's going to be an episode, so you've got to have a modeling fluid.
Mike:Do you have one? I do have a modeling fluid. Okay, I do too. What's yours? Mine is Redemption straight bourbon whiskey.
Kentucky Dave:Oh my.
Mike:And this is from the Crossroads of America, state Indiana. Yeah, so buckle up, folks, we'll get to it at the end. What do you got? I have dihydroxide from trader joe's natural mountain spring water I wonder why that didn't like a beer can yeah well well, just a peek behind the curtain.
Kentucky Dave:I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning at 9.15 with full blood tests, and so I'm afraid, no modeling fluid for me tonight.
Mike:I'm sorry, buddy.
Kentucky Dave:I'm getting my hydration in.
Mike:You can double down tomorrow.
Kentucky Dave:I will double down tomorrow to make up for it, but you know I'm pretty sure that this is going to get me through the episode and keep me hydrated, even if it's not quite as good as the normal modeling fluid.
Mike:Well, we'll give you a pass, because I've played that water card once myself on the show. Yes, well, dave, we got some listener mail, all right, and I guess we need to get into it First up from IPMS Ottawa. All right, I hope he gets to meet our friends up there. Yes, alan Carrier. Okay. And I hope that's right. You know they're close to Quebec. You don't know exactly what the pronunciation is going to be.
Kentucky Dave:And we'll butcher it anyway.
Mike:Well, ian, help me out there a little bit. I don't know if I butchered it or not, but I tried, all right. Anyway, new, a returning modeler, dave All right. Ten-year hiatus Okay, he's been bingeyear hiatus. Okay, he's been binge listening to the podcast Good, he's got an episode.
Kentucky Dave:Suggestion All right, painting metal. Okay, you can take that two ways.
Mike:Does that mean? I think he means all ways.
Kentucky Dave:Okay, okay, he means both representing metal on plastic and painting metal items like barrels and photo actions on them.
Mike:Well, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, I think he means metal finishes. Okay, so he meant the first of the two, first of the two, but I guess I was thinking I don't know if it's current or not. It's current to me because I don't pay attention a lot but there's this non-metallic metal painting. That's kind of in the Warhammer and fantasy, where they don't use metallic paints, right, but they do all the light bounce and all that stuff.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, he may mean that too, I don't know, but I think, primarily, right, he means the first part, natural metal finishes and and distressed metal finishes yep, and there's so many new products and new techniques over the last, even just the last five to ten years, that you've got people doing all sorts of different things, Whereas in the old days it used to be well metalizer or bare metal foil or spraying silver paint and that was about it.
Mike:Yeah, I don't know if you or I are the right guys for that.
Kentucky Dave:Well, we know some people We'll have to have some, we do we may have to shop that one around. Yes, that's right.
Mike:Willie Garcia, our Teutonic Spaniard friend in Ireland. Yes. He's building a what if a Ukrainian Sukhoi 27. And he wants to basically go the next level of painting detail and paint the, the paint distress that occurs when they're putting in and removing, like the intake covers right and uh, like he sent he sent a couple of photos and primarily it's like there's an just a head of the uh intake cover into the, you know, the very opening of the intake right there's like this arc of scratched paint and he's like how do I do this?
Kentucky Dave:it's a good question because it would be a good effect to try to add yes, and it should be an effect that you'd see on pretty much every SU-27, because they all use those big FOD covers, they all. I mean there's nobody who's operating that aircraft who doesn't use those things.
Mike:He's asking you know, doesn't use those things. He's asking how to do this. Do we have any ideas? I've got one. I would come up with some kind of template, cut to this arc angle, which you could probably figure out based on the model and this photograph you've sent, and I think I would take that template and just trace in a path for this arc that this paint scratch is occurring in, and then go back and start dabbing in this with chip paint. That's probably what I would try first.
Kentucky Dave:Well, that's a great question. I don't know. Listen, there's a model models and see if he has tried to represent that wear. It would not surprise me if he has. So it's Y-U-F-E-I the new word M-A-O. You might try Googling on the Internet and see if some images of some of his SU-27s come up and see if he's tried to repeat that Up next Will Woods.
Mike:And Will is from Saskatchewan, rural Saskatchewan, Yorkton to be specific. Population of 17,000. It's not tiny, but it's almost tiny. Yeah.
Kentucky Dave:Although for Saskatchewan that might be decent size, it might be like New York City.
Mike:Yeah well. He discovered our podcast through our kit mask episode. Okay. He started checking into it and found our podcast and was thinking he's going to only listen to the kit mask portion of mask episode. Okay, he started checking into it and found our podcast and was thinking he's going to only listen to the kit mask portion of the episode. But he got hooked he could. So that's a search engine optimization win right there.
Kentucky Dave:That's right. That's what we're working for.
Mike:He's a 68-year-old addiction counselor, retired. Okay, so he's on his third go-around for scale modeling. Started his teens the first time, then in his twenties again, and then now and he, he thinks he's in the in the long haul this time.
Kentucky Dave:Good, good and and hopefully, he being a Canadian, he's going to have a long and and a healthy period in which a long and healthy period in which to model further.
Mike:I think in his part of Canada specifically, he's going to have a long modeling season. Yes, that's true, that's true, but he's retired, so he may be like Husted. Yes, that's right. Well, we're glad you tuned into the Kitmas episode and he's patronized those guys. Yeah, glad to hear that that was a good episode. He's doing good things with that business. I hope he continues.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, I agree.
Mike:Good luck. Up there in rural Canada. Most of his purchases have to be mail order, sure, and he's been dealing with Sunward Hobbies out of Toronto in Ontario because they've got free shipping over a certain dollar amount Canadian dollars. Yep, that's always an attraction Four to five days Canada post, so that's not terrible.
Kentucky Dave:No, that's not.
Mike:I'm going to plug Hobby Center Yep In Ottawa. In Ottawa. In Ottawa. Give those guys a try too. We've got some friends there and they're friends of the show and they might be another outlet for you.
Kentucky Dave:Yep Check them out. They'll give you good service.
Mike:Ask for Ian.
Kentucky Dave:Ask for Ian, that's right.
Mike:Oh, up next is our bass thumping retired system engineer, dave, okay, ed Barath. Yep. Says he assumes he won't be a guest on PMM before the Nats.
Kentucky Dave:Well, considering how close it is, that's probably true.
Mike:Yeah, you're really smart Ed.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, that's right.
Mike:That's probably true, but not because we don't love you. That's right. And he helps do a segment with us while we're there, and that's going to happen for sure. Yeah. He wants us to mention his seminar, which we will gladly do at IPMS National Convention. Yeah, it's an early one Midday, thursday 1 pm. Thursday 1 pm at the show A system engineer's approach to finishing your next model Again you know me, I have said that the seminars are the undiscovered pearls of the nationals.
Kentucky Dave:When you get to Madison, first thing after you pick up your registration packet is look at the seminar schedule and start circling all the seminars you want to go to. You never get to all of the ones you want to. I can highly recommend Ed's. You're going to learn stuff and hopefully learn stuff to help you finish a model.
Mike:And finally, from the email side of things, Dave, Mr Michael Karnalka from New York City has got a question for us All right Always look forward to these, and he wants to know, if we had unlimited time, which subject would we study in archives throughout the world? Now he would be tempted to pour into all the photos and documentation available for the 1st Polish Armored Division. Oh, good choice. His late uncle was in this unit. Makes sense, karnak. Yes, yep.
Kentucky Dave:What would we do? Dave God, there are a bunch of good choices. I think my choice would be Ploesti. I think that I would not only hit all of the research facilities here, but I would spend tons of time in Romania, tons of time in Romania. I think that I could spend a whole lot of time researching and learning, and I think there's tons of stuff still yet to be discovered. To all subjects, eastern Front. But it was particularly good for learning new things about the Ploesti raid that you know. We thought we knew some things and many of those turned out to be incorrect, so I think I could spend a long time doing that. How about you?
Mike:I would get to the bottom of the mystery, that is, do the foreign equipment evaluation reports from the Germans' Kummersdorf proving grounds still exist and if they do, what would it take to get those cracked open and exposed to the public? Of course, this is the KV-85 talking right.
Kentucky Dave:Right.
Mike:Because there are two photographs from Kummersdorf where they've chalked the armor thicknesses and angles on the vehicle. Yeah. At some point in history. Maybe it's gone forever, maybe it still exists. Somewhere exists a very exhaustive report of that vehicle and all the others yeah, with a lot more photographs. It's just the Germans. That's just the way it is. It's going to be thorough and those photographs that exist out there are just. They're like the cover photographs for the report.
Kentucky Dave:Are any of the reports available from any of the, or did that whole archive just disappear completely?
Mike:I think something has to exist because those photos exist. I don't know that I've seen Coomersdorf photos for any other captured vehicles. I don't know that I've seen Kumersdorf photos for any other captured vehicles. That's something I think needs to be investigated by somebody with with so inclined to do it, you know, and with the with the interest to do it. Uh, possibly the answers is is as easy as the Russians were coming and they'd burned it all. That may be the answer. Yeah.
Mike:But uh boy, there's a gold mine out there. If that's not the answer.
Kentucky Dave:Right, if the stuff still exists somewhere. It got buried in some East German archive and then by the time the wall fell, it's a bunch of boxes somewhere that nobody even remembers.
Mike:That's right. Yeah Well, dave. That's it from the email side of Listener Mail. What do we got going on on Facebook Messenger?
Kentucky Dave:We've got a fair amount going on on Facebook Messenger. Steve Schaefer reached out to let me know that, or let us know that he was going to be at Wonderfest this year.
Jake McKee:All right.
Kentucky Dave:And a bunch of other guys did the same thing. So there are a fair number of PMM listeners who have reached out and said they are going to be at Wonderfest. So Mike and I are going to be there all day. Saturday. It should not be hard to find us. We're going to be moving around, we're going to be hopefully going to be at a table, but we're also going to be moving around talking to people, hopefully doing interviews. We really want to spend a lot of time at Wonderfest and doing it upright. So for all of you guys who've reached out and said you're going to be there, please find us, please come by and say hi, we want to spend some time shooting the breeze with you. Look for the chessboard shirts.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, that's right, we'll be wearing the black and white chessboard shirts because they're easy for people to see. Mark Dines, a listener, reached out and he's doing what hopefully a lot of people do when they find us is they go back and start listening and work their way through the entire catalog, and I think he said he's around episode 77 or so and he wanted to know if he reached out to ask did we do this year a dedicated Wonderfest episode? And I told him well, it's actually stretched across 113 and 114, but he's enjoying working his way up through the whole back catalog and listen. If you're a new listener and you've just discovered us recently, I encourage you to go back and listen to those back episodes because, while there's some stuff that is no longer timely, a lot of it is information that would be valuable or the same today if we did the same discussions today. So go back and listen and, like Mark, hopefully you'll really enjoy it. Listener Martin Payetta reached out to thank us. He enjoys the show. We turned him on to Three Floyds and he is really enjoying the Three Floyds experience. He also, by the way, mentioned Kit Masks and he, after listening, ordered from them and his interactions have been really, really good with Kit Mask and he wanted us to know how pleased he was with the product and the service and the fact that we turned him on to something that good.
Kentucky Dave:Finally, dr David Geldmacher and I have been communicating Now. You know the Stanley Cup playoffs are on and you know I spoke previously about Whitey and his Bruins and me and the Golden Knights. The Golden Knights got knocked out in the first round and the Golden Knights, the Golden Knights got knocked out in the first round. Whitey and his Bruins got knocked out in the second round. Dr Gellmacher is a New York Rangers fan and his team's still in it and I've been commiserating with him over Facebook Messenger while these games have been played Facebook Messenger while these games have been played and so trying to help him survive the pressure that is the Stanley Cup playoffs. So, dave, rangers are still in it and can't wait to see you. He's going to ride up with us to Madison, so I can't wait to see you. Hopefully you'll be wearing your Stanley Cup champions t-shirt on the ride up.
Mike:Anything else. That's it. Well, folks, listener Mail is a lot of fun for Dave and I and we really love this segment and look forward to more participation from the listening audience. If you'd like to participate, send us an email or Facebook Messenger. If you'd like to participate via email, you can do so by emailing us at plastic model mojo at gmailcom. Or if you'd like to do the Facebook messenger thing, you can message through that, that system, through, uh, the plastic model mojo Facebook page, and send them in. We like it.
Kentucky Dave:We like talking about it, absolutely folks, when you get done listening to this episode of plasticastic Model Mojo if you haven't done so already, would you please go to whatever app you listen to us on Apple Podcasts or YouTube, whatever and rate the podcast. Please give it five stars. It drives the visibility up and helps us find new listeners, and we are really interested in finding new listeners.
Mike:And once you've done that, please check out all the other content creators out there in the model sphere that we enjoy. There's a lot of other podcasts out there. You can go to wwwmodelpodcastcom. That's modelpodcastpluralcom. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark from the Scale Model Podcast up in Canada, and Stuart has aggregated all the banner links to all the other podcasts who are participating with us in this spirit of cross-promotion. So check out all that content.
Mike:In addition to podcasts, we've got a lot of blog and YouTube friends out there Jim Bates of Scale Canadian TV You're going to want to check out his YouTube channel. Chris Wallace, model airplane maker A great YouTube channel, a great blog. Check out all his mostly 48 scale aircraft content. Panzermeister36, evan McCallum A great YouTube channel. Check out his build reviews, his weathering tips and techniques and see what he's got going on. The Inch High Guy, jeff Groves the Inch High Guy blog all things 72nd scale. If you like 72nd scale, you're going to want to see what Jeff Groves has going on. And finally, stephen Lee Spru Pie with Frets A great long and short form blog. Steve's also primarily 72nd scale. I got a lot of thoughts on the hobby. He updates frequently on his projects. Please check out his blog and check out all these things. A lot of great content. We're fans of all these things, so check it out, folks.
Kentucky Dave:If you are not a member of IPMS USA, IPMS Canada, IPMS Mexico, whatever country you live in, if you're not a member of the national organization, your national organization of IPMS, please consider joining a bunch of really good people trying to make the hobby better and more enjoyable. Additionally, if you are an armor modeler or modern figure modeler, consider joining the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society. It is an organization of modelers dedicated to advancing the armor modeling hobby and modern figures as well. A great group of guys who are doing a lot for the hobby.
Mike:Well, Dave, let's have a word from our sponsor.
MPS AD:You got it. Plastic Model Mojo is now brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder steam back airbrushes, david Union power tools and laboratory grade mixing, measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints, be they acrylic, enamels or lacquers. Check them out at wwwmodelpaintsolutionscom.
Mike:Well, Dave, we've got an interesting guest this time. Yes, absolutely. Mr Jake McKee out of the Austin area. Jake does some incredible work and he's a lot of foam insulation in his construction and he does a lot of interesting things.
Mike:Yes, he does, and he does a lot of interesting things. Yes, he does. We got Jake on the show and, just like the project we're going to talk about, it was kind of a little bit of a scope creep and just was an enjoyable conversation. And I don't know we'll wrap this up at the end, but you're going to want to check out Jake's blog at buildjakemckeecom and see what he's been up to. And primarily, this segment revolves around a diorama, essentially a display he built of the recent reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica. He built a Cylon Raider fighter craft and put it in the hangar bay of the Battlestar Galactica and wow is all I can say. This project kind of exploded and it's just really neat to hear him talk about it. So, dave, let's just quit beating around the bush and just get into it.
Mike:Dave, I'm excited about this one because, you know, right on the heels of our last episode with the Quokka, mr Paul Gloucester and his experiment in trying new things, we've got another model here out of the Austin area that's also tried a lot of new things, mr Jake McKee. Jake, how are you doing tonight? Doing good. Thanks for having me. Well, you're welcome and I think it's funny how this came about. You heard me mention somewhere about inviting myself onto somebody's podcast and and uh, that's kind of how this happened. But that's, that's perfectly all right. I'd seen your work before and in fact, I think one of the first things you posted on our facebook group, the plastic model dojo, was your little tracked model t. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and models, yeah, vargas models.
Mike:Yeah, vargas models and that was really swell. I liked that a lot and I think the thing that caught my attention after I dug into it back to your blog was the foam construction on the cobblestone road and I just that's something I don't do a lot of. I've done a little bit, but not much, and foam construction in general is a topic that I've wanted to talk about a little bit, but not much. And foam construction in general is is a topic that I've wanted to to talk about a little bit more. But we're going to talk about another one of your projects in in detail, I hope, to the degree that we can in the time we have. But this cylon raider, battle star, galactica hanger diorama you've built and it kind of encompasses a lot of things and at a high level. I'm gonna let you introduce this project a little bit and tell us how this all got started yeah, and the.
Jake McKee:The funny part about that project is that it's a. You know, it's a continuation of the foam work that I've been learning and playing with for a number of years now, which I blame entirely on our friend uncle night shift and his barn diorama. You know, and I was a couple of years back I was, I was watching that video and thought, oh, this is pretty cool. You know, I've kind of messed around with some foam before and you know I haven't really done a whole lot with it, but you know I'm, I've, I've experimented, but man, he looked, makes it look so easy that he's such a good teacher that sure I can get started now. You know, hours and hours of countless study later. Here we are, yeah, it's interesting.
Jake McKee:So if, if you just get a little bit of background on the, on the foam piece, and I'll tell a little bit about the, the raider diorama, but yeah, the, the foam stuff has been an interesting journey just because it's.
Jake McKee:You know, we all see the insulation foam in Home Depot and we've, at this point, I think all of us have seen projects that have the pink or the blue foam in the US or gray or green in Europe used for different projects and you know it's a surprisingly easy material to work with but it's of kind of a pain in the ass to get it to do what you want sometimes you know you can press shapes into it, but sometimes the shapes don't, don't stay like you want them to. Or, you know, trying to glue it together sometimes can be more difficult than it should be. You know cutting it can be really easy with a lot of methods, but other times it just you know you can't get it quite straight like you want it to be. So yeah, I've been playing with it quite a bit and have documented some of that playing on my blog through articles and experience.
Kentucky Dave:Now, before Uncle Night Shift encouraged you to explore the foam. It's not like you'd had a hot wire or used any of this. This was hey, that looks neat. I'm going to go get some at Home Depot and I'm going to just try something.
Jake McKee:Right, yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, again, my accountant doesn't like Mr Uncle Night Shift, but I certainly enjoy him the amount of tools and whatnot that I bought over the last few years as I've learned this process. Yeah, the hot wire cutter table, for instance, has been a huge tool. But you know, even in one of his videos he talked about getting a bigger hot wire table just so he could fit certain things. And sure enough, I ran into that same issue and so off to eBay I went.
Mike:Yeah, I know that feeling. Yeah, amen, now we're going to eBay. I went. Yeah, I know that feeling, yeah, amen.
Kentucky Dave:Now we're going to put a link Supplies supplies, supplies. Yeah, we're going to put a link in the show notes to the Cylon diorama hangar so that everybody can follow along and actually see what we're talking about here.
Jake McKee:Yeah, and I've excessively documented that's probably the right word the build process. But to introduce that project I had a Cylon Raider the Mobius model Cylon Raider model built and base-coated, sitting in my display cabinet and it must have been seven or eight years it had been sitting there unfinished. And so a few months back I was cleaning out the display case, trying to make room for some new stuff, and I had the thought that, man, I need to either throw this thing away or finish it. And I don't know, I mean, it's already base-coated, might as well finish it, right't know, I mean, it's already base coated, might as well finish it right.
Jake McKee:Famous last words yeah, six months later and I started looking at the base coat and it was just, it was just awful I I didn't like it at all and so I decided well, easy enough to strip right, I'll just strip it and and reshoot. It's already built, no big deal. It's a relatively small ship. It's already on a stand. It came with right plastic stand and you know I don't have to do anything for basing and so I stripped it off. But of course that took three days because the metallic just didn't want to remove to save my life with anything I had for it. And so I finally get it stripped down and I start painting it and weathering well, what did you strip it?
Kentucky Dave:well, first of all, what was the, the metallic paint? And then, how did you strip it?
Jake McKee:just so that others can learn yeah, honestly, I don't know. I think that it was. It may have been alclad, uh, but I I don't remember.
Mike:It's been a long time uh, I I do that too, if I let something sit too long.
Jake McKee:I that's why I make notes now yeah, I, I mean that would have been smart on my part, but you know that definitely didn't have notes. I, I tried the purple stuff. I tried, aka paint stripper. I, I tried a few other things I have here. I think I, I even at one point was using some alcohol. I used some, you know, normal mineral spirits. You know through all of them.
Jake McKee:Oh, oven cleaner, you know, usually the oven cleaner is my go-to. But right, it got about half of it and the rest of it just refused to come off. I even had to do a little bit of sanding and you know, taking my flapper wheels and the in the in the dremel tool to remove a few spots as well. It was, it was rough. But yeah, so I'm, I'm building, I'm stripping this thing, I get it base coated with a good base coat with, you know, modern skills at this point, and get about half the weathering done. And I came in one morning and it's sitting on kind of this crescent shaped display stand that came with the kit itself. And I walk in the model room and the whole thing has just tipped right over because the stand cracked in half, not sure why or how. It just gave up. The plastic just got weak or something and just gave up. So, of course, you know, my first thought is well, let me get online and get some reference material, for you know what kind of little small base, right, I was thinking like a couple inch square type of base just to hold this thing up, right, just something simple. Again, get this project done. I'm already a weekend and two weeks in.
Jake McKee:At that point, I think, instead of you know the weekend, long weekend that I was hoping to pull it off in, and I see this picture of a screenshot from the Battlestar Galactica show the one, not the original, which I always hated the original, much to Will Pattison's chagrin. But I see this screenshot of a scene in the show that's kind of a little fuzzy, and I think I see the Cylon Raider, but it's on the. You know that's the Cylons are the bad guys, the Colonials are the good guys, and it's, you know, this Cylon ship sitting on the Colonial hangar deck, right. And so, of course, I had to go to the show and I start watching the episode of the show that this is on, and it's like, oh, that's a captured ship hanging there, suspended in midair, and I thought, man, that's cool, I can do something like that. That's cool. I can do something like that.
Jake McKee:And you know, fast forward six months and I spent a huge amount of time to build this massive thing that barely has the the ship. The work wasn't the ship at all At that point. My my family always calls it McKeeing that project and I sort of keyed that project.
Mike:Yeah, that's I'm. I'm guilty of that to some degree myself. Uh, before we get too much into the diorama, I wantorama I want to tell you I've read through the blog and we'll link that, as Dave said. But there's a couple of things when you've refinished the Cylon Raider that I think were really neat, and one of those is something I'm still exploring and maybe you are too, or maybe you're a bonafide expert at this point, but all these layering effects and how much more interesting and deeper finish you can get with that.
Mike:And, if I remember correctly, there's one of the photographs on your blog that you're spraying through a stretched piece of pantyhose material piece of nylon. It looks, I swear that's a flexi-file frame. It's on, it is yeah, and just that layering. And then you're doing the chipping kind of intermittent with that. And you came up with that and our listeners can go look themselves, came up with that and our listeners can go look themselves. But you know, this kind of another worldly alien alloy kind of thing, a look to this thing, and I think you really nailed it and I think it's a really brilliant thing. And and, oh, if you're coming to madison, I hope you bring this diorama with you. Yeah, oh yeah, it'll definitely be there yeah, and you're, you're absolutely right, the.
Jake McKee:The goal was to make it look a little otherworldly and stand out dramatically from the, from the side, the sorry, the colonial ship that it was parked on right. It was trying to create some, some good separation. And you know the, the show, you know humanity's on its last legs and these, these Cylon robots or you, you know the, the ships are basically robots and they're, you know, constantly fighting with the, you know with the colonials, and just you know the whole show is basically them. You know, in the middle of conflicts, right out in the middle of space, sure, but you know they've. Who knows what's happening when they get recovered on their ship, and you know they're they're getting beat to hell over time and and trying to figure out how to add, like you said, some, you know, some different alloy type of material, but also weathering.
Jake McKee:That was weathering, but not ground level weathering. Right, it was, it was in space. You know there's things get weathered in space, but trying to make it look a little bit different than traditional weathering. And so, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, a lot of that was just pure layering of, you know, base coat and then, you know, I did a lot of airbrush effects on the base coat, you know kind of the cloudy airbrushing. And then I came back with some weathering and chipped that and then over top of the chipping was you know, you're absolutely right I stretched a piece of pantyhose out on the flexifile frame and then just kind of held it off and put the airbrush up to it and just sprayed through it and that kind of gave this weird mottled effect. And then, you know, lots of weathering on top of that as well and, you know, just kept working it until it felt like it was right.
Kentucky Dave:Now, where did you come up with the idea of using stretched pantyhose? To get that to be your model, your M-O-T-T-L-E, your pattern for doing that?
Jake McKee:I mean, I'm not sure that pantyhose would have been my first, the first thing I thought of would have been my first, the first thing I thought of yeah, and like so many of the things that I've I've been able to pull off in my modeling career, especially of late, it's some combination of me making do with what I have and remembering in the back of my head some technique I saw 10 years ago, right, some technique I saw 10 years ago, right, and I I was, I was looking at. I have a couple of those photo etch. You know, spray stencils. Stencils, thank you, yeah, for for wood, and I've tried them before. They work okay in certain, in certain instances. I I know other people have made them work really well.
Jake McKee:I haven't gotten there yet, but but I was looking at those and thinking, you know, I definitely want some more texture, I want it to look similar to like the, the F-14s on the Navy ships, right, that have that real modeled with the T look. And I just was looking around in my, in my hobby room here and trying to find something that you know I could spray through. And I had some pantyhose from some project that I was working on some period of time back that I bought for, you know, netting or something, and thought, well, let me, let me try this and it and it seemed to work pretty well. And so you know again, just kind of a combination of luck and materials at hand and vague memories of techniques I'd seen in the past.
Kentucky Dave:Well it did, it really came out. I mean, I don't want to say surprisingly well, but it came out to give a really Mike said it best an alien. Look to the finish of the craft.
Jake McKee:I appreciate that. Thank you, you're welcome. That was what I was going for, so I'm glad it turned out it did half. I appreciate that.
Mike:Thank you that was what I was going for, so I'm glad it turned out it did.
Kentucky Dave:Well, from that point things kind of deteriorated rapidly. I think Spun out of control is the word you're looking for.
Jake McKee:Yeah, it really did. Yeah, Again, the whole rest of this story is you have to keep in mind the fact that my idea was to create some sort of very simple plinth, right you know? Just a you know couple square inches kind of size, and maybe have a logo from the colonial logo or something on it, right, the Battlestar Galactica logo. And I thought, you know, I'll just print out a Battlestar Galactica logo and stick a pole on it and put that into the bottom of the ship and call it a day. That was really honest to God. That's where I started.
Mike:I believe you? I really do, but that rapidly went to hell in a handbasket, can you?
Kentucky Dave:identify the point at which you realized you'd lost control.
Jake McKee:Yeah, I absolutely can. Actually, I went into my wife at one point and I said hey, I think I'm almost done adding new stuff. This is about halfway through the project, mind you and she just looked at me and went sure, you are. And then went back to what she was doing and I was like oh okay, I think this may have spiraled.
Mike:Well, let's roll it back then and let's talk about this hangar. And what was the impetus to? Just well, you mentioned that already, it was this show episode.
Jake McKee:Yeah, this is one of those projects where I had a pretty good reference material image that I was working off of. Good in the sense that I knew exactly the scene I was trying to recreate. Not so good in the sense that it still was a movie set. And when you, when you look at movie sets, obviously they're not the real thing. They're meant to look like the real thing. They film it, they light it in a certain way that gives you a sense of of, you know, either space or tightness, or you know dark or light, whatever it is, but they're, they're doing things to make it seem like what they want the visual to be. Not how the visual actually looked, right, because, again, there's no Battlestar Galactica in real life. But I knew that, you know, I, I wanted to have it as close to that style as possible. I didn't want to get super wound up about it being perfect, because I didn't care that much. To be honest, I just wanted it to look. I wanted it.
Jake McKee:When somebody looked at that scene reference photo and they looked at the, the diorama finish, they went, yeah, basically the same, right, and I, I had this vision that if somebody took a, you know, a laser saw and cut out a section of the of the ship. This is what I'd have. So on one, on one side, the backside, is the, is the exterior hole and on the inside is the, the working hangar bay, and each, each part of the ship was divided into these, these bays for for a fighter Right. So you know there's, there's walls between each one of the fighters and you know the goal for me was to represent one of those bays and the.
Jake McKee:You know, the joke is where the frack are we supposed to park? This thing is the title of the diorama and, yeah, the, the idea, the senses. That didn't quite fit, you know it's. It's not really designed the same way as the other ships, it's, you know it's suspended on a overhead crane, because I, I don't know how we're supposed to park this thing. It, yeah, I don't know on the silent ship. Maybe it floats or something, or, you know, plugs it upside down like a bat, who knows? But you know, just was a ship out, a ship out of water, so to speak well.
Kentucky Dave:So when you decided, okay, I'm not going to make the little two or three inch plinth, just to stick it on and and you're off to the races what did you sketch out what you wanted to do or did you just start it like, okay, I've shelved the little plinth idea, I'm diving in with both feet? Or did it just build over time?
Jake McKee:Yeah, so kind of in the middle. The one thing that I haven't picked up from Uncle Night Shift is his precision planning, where he gets out his millimeter paper and his pencil and his ruler and really draws out everything. I think maybe on the next big project I'll probably do that, because that would have been helpful, if I'm honest. But in this case I did a lot of mock-ups, right. So I did a lot of paper cutting and I took pieces of foam that I had just laying around and kind of stood them up next to each other masking, taped them down next to each other just to try and find the basic shape of the and the basic outlines. You know, the the exterior backside, ended up being rounded, but it's it's.
Jake McKee:Initially I was thinking I would do it as kind of a, a series of angles that that made kind of around right, so kind of a 45 to to a, to a straight up and down back to a 45, and that's. That is what it is. But I I realized I just hated that one as I was designing it. So I ended up going back and putting a shell on it. That was. That was round, to make it look more like the real ship. But it was. It was a lot of layout and paper mock-ups and you know, just kind of tweaking as I went and and so it. It did start off basically as about as big as it is because the and there's no, there's no room spared on it right. The it's tall but the, the base size itself fits the ship and the two upright walls and a little little bit of space, not a lot, pretty tightly, which was hard to visualize in the beginning without doing those paper mock-ups, and even then it was still tough to to visualize. So as I built I tweaked quite a bit.
Kentucky Dave:Now I understand that now there is an actual kit, resin kit available to make the hangar.
Jake McKee:Yeah, yeah, it sure is. I found that about halfway through, when I had already decided.
Kentucky Dave:you know, I was going to ask if it predated it, if you discovered it along the way or if you appeased the modeling gods. And as soon as you finished it, the kit came out.
Jake McKee:It wasn't as soon as it was, which you know. When it comes out afterwards I'm like, well cool, I had a fun experience building my own version and now there's another version on the market. That's great. Maybe I'm a little irritated sometimes, but that's usually perfectly fine. It's when it's in the middle of the project where I'm like, well hell, how do I want to stop and start over with that one, or do I want to keep going? And is there anything I can learn?
Jake McKee:Right, and in retrospect, there's definitely some things that I would have designed differently, based on what I saw them do and kind of how they did. Like I've got an open walkway on the backside. There was more, more tv show accurate, where it's got kind of bulkhead doors at the end on either side, that sort of stuff that you know. It would have added a whole lot more time to do some of those things which you know I was already in for as much as I really wanted to do at that point. But uh, but yeah, I saw, that did, it did give me some reference and you know, sort of bring home some of the show elements that, as you, you know you pause, rewind, pause, rewind the show 50 times trying to get the, you know to get into one corner, to go, okay, what were they doing over there? What was back there? What do I need to add to fill that corner out with accessories and that sort of thing? But yeah, that, that that was a a definitely a moment of like, well, what do I do here?
Mike:So you, you've got it laid out with your mock-ups, and, and now it's time to cut foam. And well, let me ask. Let me ask one question first, because I don't think I saw it in in in the write-up, which is pretty extensive. But when the rubber hits the road, how big is this thing?
Jake McKee:just about an inch too big for my display cabinet, and I mean literally about an inch too big. That's so perfect it's not funny.
Mike:It's about oh God, I'm guessing now, but I think it's about 20 inches by 12 inches on the base width, the base itself, and it's probably about 12 inches tall, I'm assuming, Okay about a foot tall, but I think you said it just a minute ago that, and it's a peeve of mine to see a diorama base that's just too big, and I think you've successfully not done that. So kudos for that. You've successfully not done that, so kudos for that. I think you showed enough of the hangar to be, I guess, relevant to the size of the ship and to get that whole aesthetic together. And you look at it oh, that's the Battlestar Galactica hangar. I know what that is. Just from an arm's length, or even 10 feet, you can see that. But back to the foam. How do you, how do you start that process? And and what do you use for? How do you template it? And how do you, how do you cut it and just uh, how does that kind of construction go forward?
Jake McKee:Well, and let me we'll. We'll talk about this more later, I'm sure, but when you look at the diorama, it's important to understand that that the base itself, you know the horizontal base and the, the back wall, except for the outer shell, which is all sheet styrene, is made out of the, the insulation foam, the two upright walls that have the you know kind of the slat texture on them. They were supposed to be foam and I started with just sheets, sheets, styrene strips overlaying it. And I started doing that and absolutely hated the look. It was just terrible. I, I, I probably could have worked out it and made it look better. I just didn't want to. I'd already been wanting to learn fusion 360. And at that point I said, okay, it's Thanksgiving, long four-day weekend, I'm just going to make these walls. I know I can do it in Fusion. And so I sat with Fusion and Google and YouTube and basically established my Fusion skills that long weekend and by the end of the weekend I had those walls created and it took me a while to kind of print them out and you know, really get the process of designing those walls were too big to fit in the printer so I had to break them up into parts and then you know how did the parts fit together and you know how did the lighting wires run through them properly and all that kind of stuff. So there was a bunch of iterations in there for that.
Jake McKee:But for the foam, I mentioned that just because it's important to understand, like, what is and what is. Yes, yes, because there are. There definitely are some limits to it. The, the insulation foam itself is really good for certain textures, right, so you can. You can carve into it with a with a pencil, with a you know sharp tool of some sort of toothpick, you know whatever you have to to carve with it. And you see a lot of guys doing like the cobblestones on my, my model t, with tracks, vignette, the, the groundwork on that, both the sidewalk and the cobblestones, is all one piece of foam, that, it's multiple pieces of foam cut together to create the little curb and the gutter and that sort of thing more easily. But yeah, the, the it's, it's, it's all effectively just the foam with a veneer wood banding around the edges to make it look pretty.
Jake McKee:But with the galactica diorama, the base is a is a single piece of foam, large single piece of foam cut into a shape. You know, and everything in battlestar galactica didn't have 90 degree corners, it all had 45 degree corners. So you have, the edge of the of that base piece has some 45 degree corners. I'm sorry, my, my allergies are killing me this week. You have no, but the the back was again was three pieces.
Jake McKee:Right, you know, the hardest part of this whole thing was trying to remember how to cut my angles properly.
Jake McKee:But the way that all those cuts were made started on the table saw.
Jake McKee:So the great thing about the insulation foam is you can cut it with the table saw, with the miter saw or a hot wire table, and you know I used all of those for various reasons. You know, when you go to home depot and you get a big four foot by eight foot sheet of this stuff and you bring it home, it's a whole lot easier to put it on table saw, to cut it down into some much smaller pieces to manage right before you try to put on your hot wire cutter. Or, in my case, you know, when I was doing the, it was actually 30 degree angles. When I was doing all those 30 degree cuts it was again easier to just put the, you know, cut it into strips and then put the strips through the table saw on an angle and then some of the pieces would you know I'd use the miter saw to to cut them down to to length size and that works really well. It it makes really nice. You know, sharp cuts just like a piece of wood.
Mike:And then, just generally speaking, what are you using to bond most of these pieces together with it?
Jake McKee:is. That is a. That is a a good question. I feel like I've tried every adhesive that I've read anywhere online somebody using and none of them are very good. So part of the, so part of the challenge with the, with the foam, one of the biggest challenges for me with the foam is getting a good bond between pieces. So if you're stacking up you know three different pieces to make, like the the world war one diorama that I have is actually two or three pieces. I think it's two pieces of two inch foam that I stacked up and then cut into right so that I had some some height to it and that the.
Jake McKee:The challenge with a lot of this is that the, the foam can get eaten away. Like if you use super glue, for instance, it's it'll just melt the, the stuff, liquid nails you know people use liquid nails a lot. I've heard people using the 3m contact adhesive. A lot of those things just eat the hell out of the foam and sometimes that helps it to bond, but not always. Usually just pull it apart and it's still wet, but it's got some cave-ins on either side of the, the bond site. Honestly, the the best thing I've used is that eileen's tacky glue, yeah, yeah, that's real good white glue. And you know, the, the trick is, depending on how you're trying to cut, the hot wire table doesn't go through the, the adhesive, very well, you know, put it on the miter saw, it's fine, it doesn't care right, that's just like anything. But if you're trying to hot wire cut or do some some fancy shaping with the hot wire table, yeah, I always try and do that within two pieces and then glue those two pieces together and, you know, shave the edges down, sand the edges down to make them match perfectly at that point, just because it's the, the hot wire, it can go through some of those bonds, but it it definitely doesn't. Doesn't make it easy, gotcha.
Jake McKee:Actually, maybe that's a good point too to bring up the hot wire with the foam, one of the best at-home tools. If you don't have a table saw, don't have a miter saw. And even if you do, depending on what, you're trying to cut smaller pieces, really small pieces you're not going to want to put on the table saw. But the hot wire cutters literally heat up a piece of wire and when you run it through it melts a really nice straight line and the kind of the go-to, the one I have and the one that you know a lot of these folks have is a, is the Proxon hot wire table, which I highly recommend.
Jake McKee:It's like $109 on Amazon, you know, completely reasonable, completely reasonable for our tools. And if you go to Shifting Lands I think it's shiftinglandscom they've got all kinds of accessories that he makes out of MDF that you glue together. You can make angle cuts and round cuts and all kinds of fluted things, you name it. He's come up with some little helper tool to use on that hot wire table to create some really intricate, interesting or just flat out straight cuts. You can do some surprisingly intricate work with that thing if you practice.
Mike:Well, getting the shapes and textures and detail you wanted. You quickly moved off the foam alone for this thing and I think another avenue you went down I assume it was probably new to you as well using a cricket cutter, the cricket cutter to to cut, to cut styrene, and I assume that was go for it yeah, the, the cricket cutter.
Jake McKee:You know I've had it about a year, I think. Funny story my wife and I bought each other the exact same model that year, not the last year, but the one before. Yeah, we both opened it up and were like, oh, it's the same thing, I got you, how weird. Nice, so yeah, it's the Maker 3, which is their biggest version. Nice, so yeah, it's the, the maker three, which is it's the like, their biggest version.
Jake McKee:It can cut wood veneer, which I've done before and, like on the, the model t vignette, it made it super, super simple to get incredibly straight cuts for all the, the four pieces of wood veneer that went around the side of that thing.
Jake McKee:You know it's super easy to use. But but yeah, there was, there was a fair amount of, you know, cutting of of of the styrene with that thing. Once you get to you know get familiar with how to use it. It's so much easier to use than than this, than a exacto knife and a and a ruler, because the cuts again come out perfect 90 degrees every time, which you know is not one of my, not one of my skills. With a exacto and a and a ruler, I I don't know how Chris Maddings does it so well, but I can't seem to get a straight cut to save my life on on that sort of thing. So, and yeah, you know, and I had every intention, as I said you know to, to do those those upright walls with with a piece of foam and then kind of layering in the strips of sheet styrene on top of it to add the smooth texture and it just, it just didn't work.
Kentucky Dave:What about it Didn't work? You've got me curious. You said you didn't like the way it looked. And what particular? What? What irritated you? What? What's? What made you say, okay, the heck with this, I'm going to 3D print.
Jake McKee:Well, so, yeah. So there was probably one step in between those two thoughts, but the first thought was just Well.
Kentucky Dave:yeah, it was probably a cutthroat.
Jake McKee:Yeah, it was several of them. You know I did the first one and it was just I couldn't really carve it. You know, my, my first thought with the foam is always to carve it. You know I'll get the foam out and you know if I can, and I tried this with a couple of tests but it didn't really work. But yeah, I thought it's it's just a wall with its particular shape and I can, I can just take a, you know, like a one of those, those skewers, you know the big thick skewers, uh, wood skewers, and with the sharp edge and and just, you know it's a straight edge just pull a line through it.
Jake McKee:But it just didn't. The depth of line that I needed was tearing up the foam too much and it wasn't really giving me the right texture. So I said, okay, well, let's try the sheet styrene. You know I'll put a bunch of sheet styrene pieces on there and you know if you've ever tried to install tile and get all those lines straight, you know, even with the little helper, those little plastic plus signs, you know that you get the right spacing on it still doesn't quite work Like, oh yeah, you're really good, and that was part of it. And then, you know, getting the, getting all the angles right, getting the cuts right and sanding it down, I was just like man this is going to take.
Jake McKee:I could probably make this work, but I'm not really excited about how it looks and those is such a predominant part of the. You know, your eyes drawn straight to those walls in a lot of ways, and it's what it those two walls are really. What makes that the battlestar galactica right when people look at it and say, oh yeah, that's from the show. It's those two walls and I I just I knew I had to have them right, so I took a step back and I played with a few things and I just didn't like them. And I'm like man, I wish I could just print these out, you know perfectly, because if they're printed out, you know know they're, they're designed CAD and all the lines are straight and all the all the edges are filled in like they should be.
Jake McKee:And I thought, well, I mean, it's not that complex of a shape. I could probably do this. You know, will Pattison had given me a couple of hour long tutorials on fusion, like six months beforehand, and so I I had some familiarity with with how this would work enough to go. Yeah, I could probably do it, and so you know, off I went and made my first little test print model. That was just a really small, literally like a I don't know like a quarter-sized version of the ball, just to see if it was going to print out like I wanted it to. And I was like, okay, this is good, I like this, this will work okay, this is good.
Kentucky Dave:I like this. This will work. And did you have any trouble breaking it up? Since you said it didn't fit on your printer as one complete wall, did you have any real difficulty breaking it up and then, once printed, reassembling the broken parts to make a whole wall? Was that difficult at all to make a whole wall?
Jake McKee:Was that difficult at all, sort of. So yes and no, the process of splitting it wasn't that tough. It's just one of the features of Fusion and that sort of thing. So it's just like anything else I was learning. At that point it's like, oh, I've got to slice it in half. How do I slice it in half? The first wall has some little round nubs and and holes, kind of like lego blocks. You know, uh, you know my, my lego history is was coming through and I was like I'll just make them round. When I I I changed it for the second wall to be l shapes, just so that there was less movement. Um, you know they, they didn't have as much lateral movement against each other. When I did that, I also made the tolerance as much tighter so they couldn't move around as much.
Jake McKee:And you know I was using JB Weld for the resin gluing. You know, gluing these pieces together it's really good stuff. But it's also kind of an interesting material. It's super strong, except it also comes apart really easily if you want it to. It's sort of like this weird psychic connection with you If you want it to stay together, it stays together. If you want to pull it apart, it kind of snaps apart pretty easy. I don't know how that works, but it does. But, you know, trying to keep that in, you know, without you know oozing out into the edges, and you know that sort of thing there was. There's definitely some some work there and if I had it to do again I'd, I'd redesign the whole thing in a little bit different way, just to, you know, make it easier to to glue together with a little less thought in it. Right, you know, make the, make the connection points a little little more. You know snap together, so to speak. Sure, you know snap together.
Mike:So to speak, man, you're really stacking up the new tools and the new knowledge.
Kentucky Dave:Which leads me to the next question. At what point did you go? You know what? Lighting this thing would be a really good idea would be a really good idea.
Jake McKee:Well, so that's, that was a, that was a, a growth of the original issue kind of thing. So I had lights that I had put when I built it. I put a little red dot light in the front. I didn't make it move like the real ship, but it was just one little red led in the in the, you know the, the cockpit area right, and then I put two blue lights in the engines and even through all the stripping those, I kept checking the wires every once in a while make sure they were still working. And sure enough, those lights were still on. And I had done that years back. It was just, you know, on that little small stand I had. It was just a little coin battery that powered the two.
Jake McKee:And I kept thinking, man, if I to run these wires, I might as well put some other lights on, you know, and try and give it a feel of, you know, the dark hangar right, it's still, you know, in the belly of the ship, and if you've ever been on a, like an aircraft carrier, even when the side doors are open, there's all kinds of light poured and it still feels dark and, uh, you know, cave-like. And so I I thought, well, if I add some lights then maybe that'll give a sense that it's darker than it is, because so much of it's open and you know, a couple of lights turn into a couple more than I thought. Well, if I'm gonna redo these walls anyway in in fusion and print them, might as well run some wires through to the bottom. And then, hey, if I've got all these wires, I better ask for some help on how I'm wiring these up.
Jake McKee:So, after a conversation with Barry Biediger, he gave me the idea to use a portable USB battery to charge it, to power it. Not only because there's enough power there, but you know I really didn't want to have to go. If I put it on the show at Nat's, go over there every couple hours and change out a coin battery, right. So but this thing, I haven't charged it yet. You know, after I finished it I charged it once, but you know I've been showing it to friends and stuff and have not even dented the battery on it yet.
Kentucky Dave:Now, did you know Barry previously, or did you reach out to him specifically because you wanted to learn lighting, or how did that occur?
Jake McKee:Yeah, this is sort of my ongoing process of making modeling friends is when somebody says hey, I know a thing.
Kentucky Dave:This is a great way to make modeling friends. This is the way nobody should be afraid to reach out and make a new modeling friend. This way, go ahead.
Jake McKee:Yeah, well, that's, that's exactly what I did. I sent him a note and said hey, I've been listening to your podcast for a while and you guys talk about lighting a lot and I need some help. Can you help? And like so many people in the hobby most people in the hobby he's like well, sure, of course, let's talk. And so I got a couple of conversations in with him and a few emails back and forth as I was trying to figure it out with further questions. And now I was actually supposed to call him this weekend and just lost track of it. So, barry, I owe you a call.
Mike:Make a note. Yeah, this project, the scope of this thing is just. I don't want to say it went off the rails because you ended up with what you wanted, but that just seems like the right thing to say. You've learned with this one project. You were already doing the foam, so we'll discount that one a little bit, but you've got this new Cricut cutter. You're learning how to use it. Was this the first project you used it on?
Jake McKee:Yeah, I've done some little small stuff here and there, but with any sort of regularity I printed or I cut. I should say not printed, I cut a bunch of stuff. For that one for sure.
Mike:And then you're into Fusion, and you know I'm into fusion too, so I know what that's like but uh, this, this project was was new, fusion was new to you for this one yeah, yeah, I hadn't really used fusion for anything.
Jake McKee:I printed stuff for the last couple of years, but I'd never okay, that's my next question.
Mike:How much 3d printing had you been doing prior to this as well?
Jake McKee:yeah, decent amount. You know, I I was I was pretty familiar. I've been doing a couple years now and again thanks to uncle night shift. He's the one that prompted me to get the 3d printer on that barn diorama because I wanted to do the the roof tiles that he had, yeah, put up on his patreon. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool, I could print off my own. What a great opportunity. Go to go get my first printer.
Mike:Well, in the spirit of learning new things. How do you think? Well, I don't even know how to couch the question you started down a path with an idea in mind and you've had to learn these new things, or this was at the forefront of your decision-making, Not sure I'm making sense here. How did all that play into getting this project moving forward, and was it just a natural progression, or did you set out I want to learn X, Y and Z, and I'm going to do it with this project.
Jake McKee:Yeah, so generally my brain works in a well sure you can do it sort of way. It definitely gets me in trouble more often than not and I don't always have the ability to pull it off in the way that I want it to. But you know, one of the things I've been doing modeling stuff since I was in eighth grade or something you know took a few years off in the in the what, what the Lego fans called it. Yeah, the Lego fans always called it the dark ages, right, but, but I I came back to it pretty strong in the last 15 years or so. But you know, it's everything's a technique and especially these days it's so easy to learn new stuff because people are accessible in a way that you know, when I was in high school and doing this stuff, there was one guy I knew in my town. Yeah, it was a small town but it wasn't. It wasn't tiny and you know, once a year we'd go to the ipms show in la somewhere and you know, other than that it was the, the very little information I get from fine scale modeler. Right, it was just hard.
Jake McKee:Every once in a while you get a new book. Maybe, you know, once a year you get a new book or something. But these days it's the information is so accessible, you know, through through YouTube, through, you know, facebook groups like your guys's, or just saying, hey, I saw somebody doing something cool, I'm going to, I want to do that. And I call him up and say, hey, what are you, what are you doing here? And he's like, let me tell you everything. Um, but you know, part of this was just the fusion thing was a good example. I finally got to the point where I'm like, okay, I have a use case. That's overwhelming to me now. The wiring and the electricity piece was. I'd done a little bit of little chintzy pieces here and there. That Ford Model T diorama or vignette has a street light on it, but it's literally one LED going to a coin battery and that's it.
Kentucky Dave:That was easy enough, which, by the the way, is a great way to start. I would urge anybody yeah, for sure anybody who wants to to get into lighting their models. Start with a street light on a little diorama base and light it, and that's a great way to start yeah, yeah, it was.
Jake McKee:You know that that street light's a mini art street light and the, the, the well, it's the top and it's the base, the, the column in between is just a piece of brass rod, right, so I could run the wires through because the, the kit part's solid. But you know, the, the stuff. So one of the, the things I really encourage people all the time, both in my work life but also certainly in the hobby life, is just try it Right. A lot of this stuff seems so complex and, you know, unattainable, but it can. The light super cool and these days you can buy the, the, the LEDs, and all you have to do is, you know, twist them together and maybe you solder and maybe just electrical tape them. You can buy the LEDs and all you have to do is twist them together and maybe you solder them, maybe just electrical tape them to a coin battery that's already pre-wired with a resistor and a switch and those things are the LED is $4 and the switch is like $6, $10 and boom, you're done. A lot of this stuff is just playing around, messing around and, I think, giving your brain some time to work through problems.
Jake McKee:One of the one of the on the battlestar galactica diorama. If you see it in person, the, the piece that I'm the most proud of, took the longest to solve and it was one of those moments of just pure oh wait, a minute out of literally nowhere. I was cleaning the house one day and just had this realization. But the whole idea of that diorama is that this ship that doesn't belong in the Galactica is suspended. But I knew that suspending it had several challenges right. One was you know it's got some decent weight to it. How do I make sure that whatever I suspend it with is going to hold? That's its own set of engineering nightmares. If I truly suspend it and anybody walks past or bumps the table, that thing's going to be swinging back and forth.
Jake McKee:I knew I had to stabilize it somehow. But also I had two wires running out from the bottom of the ship that I needed to go into the base and not just have wires hanging out right. And so I had this original idea to have a set of springs that the Gundam guys use all the time, right For power cables on the suits. They use a literal spring just to make it look like a, like a power cable. So I knew I wanted to do something like that so that I thought, okay, I can run the wire through the power cable and up to the ship, and then that way it doesn't, it's, maybe it's helping to stabilize it. Then I kept going and kept thinking, okay, well, wait a minute, what if that? What if that spring is wrapped around something that is truly stabilizing, right, that is basically supporting the whole ship. And then everything else I do for the suspension parts is just decoration. I thought, yeah, that wires all the way through to the, to the, to the side of the where one of the walls was, and go down that way, it, just everything.
Jake McKee:I tried brass tubing and bending that and that stuff kept breaking. And even when I get it bent like I wanted it to, it didn't really support the weight Like I wanted it to. And I just kept playing and kept playing and kept playing and thought, oh, wait a minute, there is, there's, you know, big, thick electrical wire, right, that's actually quite firm I'm, I don't know, I don't have. This is one of the calls to Barry where I was like, hey, I've got a tiny little wire coming off the led. Can I wire it straight up to to a much, much, much thicker gauge wire. And he goes yeah, it's all, it's all transmission, it's fine. And so I didn't end up doing that because I didn't need to. I could fit the wire and that big piece of thick gauge wire in the spring that I had made, which was another thing I learned how to do is make springs. But when what?
Jake McKee:But still, when I ran that big, long l shape across the base and then dipped it in at some point, I wanted it to look like it was going from the wall power outlet basically into the ship. It was a decent run, probably six inches or something across the base. It still would tip right and and it wasn't supporting it straight up and down Like I wanted it to, because all of that force was being kind of pushed against the, the, the top of the L shape right, which then, of course, would pull up the edge that was supposed to plug into the wall and tip the whole thing over. And so just took me two months of just not trying to solve it right, just thinking about it digging, you know, let my brain chew on it for a minute and literally one day I thought, oh wait a minute, a junction box, I don't have to have this thing run all the way.
Jake McKee:The actual wire run all the way across from the ship to the wall. Six inches away. I can have it go straight down, bend and then bend again underneath a junction box and go into the base. So it's all basically in one vertical axis and then from the other side of the junction box run it to the wall and that's just dead spring basically. And it worked perfectly. No tipping, very well supported. Hopefully it stays that way over time. You know it seems to have worked. But but literally was just one of those like oh shit, I'm trying to over solve this, I don't have to have it work precisely.
Mike:And so I stuck a junction box over where it dips into the base and looks great, looks even cooler in some ways jag, this, this project, this, the scope of this thing has just got so vast that we just we just can't cover't cover everything in the time we've got here. But we've touched on a lot of it and it's been great. There's one thing I want to talk about Well, two things actually. One's another tool you use that I would like to get a little bit of information on for our listeners. It's this Ultimation, hand-powered sander.
Jake McKee:Oh, yeah, yeah, my new favorite tool.
Mike:Well, let's let's talk about that a little bit. Tell us I I followed the link in your in your blog and you know I'll probably put that link in our, in our show notes, but it's canadian company, I think, and it's a really interesting tool. So tell us. Tell us about this thing.
Jake McKee:So this? This guy in Canada makes these two tools and they solve problems that we've all had. I guarantee anybody who's who's doing modeling has run into the the to the issue. One is a chopper. You know what he calls his, but you know it's the, the big arm with the blade on it that you pull down. It's the big arm with the blade on it that you pull down and chop your styrene or your wood or whatever. And I think we've all had the one that's actually called the chopper and it uses the traditional razor blades. I have never once gotten a straight cut off the ones that I've had in the past.
Mike:They've always kind of twisted as they pulled down and it sort of works, but not great, the thick plastic kind of scoops it out right, it flexes the blade yeah, that's exactly right.
Jake McKee:It flexes as soon as it hits the material and you know it's okay and it's worked for plenty of people for for years. But I've never enjoyed that tool, not once. And I saw I saw these, these ultimation tools, somewhere online. Somebody had mentioned them and I went and looked at them and he doesn't. I mean, I think it's just the two tools he makes and some of the accessories that go with it. But the chopper he has is fantastic. It is a robust piece of equipment I think it's a couple hundred bucks but it is astoundingly good. He uses a different kind of I think it's carpet couple hundred bucks, but it is astoundingly good.
Jake McKee:He uses a different kind of I think it's carpet cutting blades. They're much thicker so they don't bend and flex like like you were talking about, dave the. The arm on it is much longer so you get a little bit more. You know force leverage on it, right and just the whole everything about it. It's beautiful machined metal, it just works wonderfully. But the other one he has is a basically like a drum sander, like you can think of. You know, like the little round drum sanders that are often on the side of, like a belt sander like a desk mount belt sander. But this is just, it's literally a round disc. Uses the same ones you'd use on your palm sanders. But it's literally a round disc, uses the same ones you'd use on your palm sanders, but it's hand crank.
Jake McKee:And at first you think, well, geez, I want something I can flip on and, you know, has the power and all that. His point, that he makes in his sales material, is you don't want that much power for what we do, right? And in fact that's what. When you're sanding stuff, you're trying to create a straight edge and sand that down. When you're sanding stuff, you're trying to create a straight edge and sand that down. The speed is a lot of times what just melts the material, right, or just, you know, just choose up the wood too fast.
Jake McKee:But this hand crank thing is absolutely stunning because it's, again, it's a precision piece of equipment. Right, it's, it's solid, it is not chintzy at all. And when you put that stuff against the straight edge of the platform and you use that hand crank to spin it, everything's on the most beautiful bearings. It's not work to spin it but because you're doing it so slowly, it gets the most precise cuts, precise sands, I should say in that case or with the cutter, most precise cuts that I have ever gotten out of any tool and it's remarkably good.
Mike:Well, I'm going to have to check out. They're not cheap, but they're not awful.
Jake McKee:No, and I think I got like a package for it was my Christmas present this last year. I think it's like 500 bucks and it includes both the chopper and the sander and then several different extensions and whatnot for the chopper to be able to cut larger pieces and whatnot. But I'm telling you they're completely worth it. I printed a stand, I printed a bus the other day and the model came with a little stand piece, but you know that's a lot. That's where a lot of my supports were. So I put that thing up against the sander and literally three rotations and it was. It was completely flat and and I mean precision, like it had been laser cut to be flat. It was impressive.
Mike:Well, I think in all this, that tool and all the other tools you've learned to use in this be changing and how this maker nerd culture has really altered the landscape for scale modeling, along with a lot of other things under that umbrella. But in the things we've briefly touched on tonight, you've certainly embodied that culture and bringing these things to your hobby. What have you got to say about that?
Jake McKee:Yeah, that's a whole series of podcast episodes, but let me give a little bit of background first. You alluded to some of the background, but I've been doing online community work for 20 plus years now and I started that work at Lego, where I built the first relationship with the adult consumers so people at 18 plus who were building with Lego as a creative medium and before I came along the, the company really didn't understand what this weird group of people was was doing, right, and, and at that time I mean it's been a while, but at that time I always talk about this lately that when I first started there, you'd walk into an office building somewhere and you know, there maybe there was one person in the whole office building that had Lego on their desk and everybody was kind of like oh yeah, it's the weird guy in the corner that has that. And now, you know I was just in an office a couple of weeks ago and meeting with this woman that I was talking about doing some business with, and on the way out she's like oh.
Jake McKee:I got to introduce you to this other woman. She's got the you know, one of the new Lego flower kits on her desk and she loves it, you know. So it was this whole big conversation. It was the most normal, standard thing in the world, right, but that's. That's been a journey the last 20 years to move to this nerd culture mindset, right, that so many people are into a lot more nerdy stuff than you know. When certainly when I was growing up, right the everybody kind of rejected this idea of anything that was too nerdy. You didn't want to be seen that way. And now, like you know, all the kids are like.
Jake McKee:Oh, this is so cool. The nerd culture has prevailed. But you know, the, the, the the value of that for for us is that I do think it's bringing out a lot of really interested parties. And you know, we talk about the hobby dying, which is absolutely not and it's it's nonsense. It's changing in dramatic ways, for sure. But you know, part of that feeling, I think, comes from the fact that there's it's so easy to run into people that that have done or are doing modeling in some form and it's not talked about quite in the same way that it used to be, where it was like it was such a big deal. Oh my God, you do it too.
Jake McKee:I've never seen, as I was saying, like, when I was in high school, there was the one guy in town that did that stuff right that I knew of when he painted figures and I was trying to learn figures from him at the time. That I knew of when he painted figures and I was trying to learn figures from him. At the time I just didn't have access to anybody else, and now it's, it's a lot easier to do those sorts of things. But I also think that you know the I've been calling it speed to competency. Right, the speed to competency is is so much faster than than even even five years ago. You know, I learned fusion in four days, with a little bit of introduction and sort of ground setting from will and then access to YouTube and Google and just, I need to do a thing.
Jake McKee:How do I look up the thing? Oh, okay, that's how I do it. Let me try it. That didn't work. Let me go online and ask for help. I did this thing and it didn't work. And there's five answers 10 minutes later saying you try this. Oh, yep, that worked, right, it's just we've got so much better access, you know, and I think trying the the the biggest challenge now is trying to get everybody to kind of slow down and you know, before you just dash off an answer, what are you actually thinking about? What's what are they asking? How are you answering? That Is your. Is your sarcastic sense of humor coming across in the same way that you think it is online, or do you just come across as an asshole and do you need to dial that back some?
Kentucky Dave:Jake, I want you to know that I am going to steal that phrase speed to competency because that is exactly what I have been talking about the last four years, where, with the improvement in kits, with kits being so much better than they were even 15 years ago, and all of the YouTube resources and all of the blogs and podcasts and everything else, the fact that you can go from building your first model to building a really nice-looking model that you can take to the local club meeting or take to a show and it looks like you've been modeling for 10 years that that's speed to competency is exactly the the right description of what's going on.
Jake McKee:So I'm still. Yeah, I think it. I think that makes it makes it a lot more fun. It also makes a lot different, right, I mean, there are times when you know, I look at, you know how fast martin drayton's improving and I think, man, what a jerk. Yeah, I've been doing this for this long. I'm where I'm at, he's where he's at for that short period of time what the hell? Uh, but but generally speaking, I think it is.
Jake McKee:It is really cool to be able to, to see these sorts of things. And you know, a project like this galactica was possible only because I, because I also had enough confidence in myself, because I'd seen other people knock stuff out, you know, and I knew that there's resources, I knew that there's support. And so deciding, I'm going to make something I haven't done before happen on this project, or I'm going to start down this path. I don't feel alone like I did when I was doing this years ago. Right it's, I knew that there'd be somebody there that could help me if I couldn't, if I got stuck in a in a pretty, in a pretty big way. Right, there's. Either, you know, I say there's somebody.
Mike:It could be a YouTuber I'd never met, or it could be somebody in the dojo that I have talked to a hundred times before, but either way I knew there was somebody there that that had my back, so to speak yeah well, looking forward and along this same nerd culture, maker space culture we're talking about here, you can, you can dish on this to the level you want, you can keep as much under cuff of as you like, but you've got a new project planned and you're looking at some Arduino programming. Now Arduino, for folks who don't know, is a little how to describe it. It's a, it's a little microprocessor, essentially Right, and you can elaborate on this. We we use them at work in in various degrees. But I'm real curious into what you've got going on there that you're willing to talk about at this point and what you're actually going to try to use that for.
Jake McKee:Yeah, and I've got some ideas here. I'll share it, not because I'm trying to gatekeep it but because I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing yet. But the the story is that I was I kept seeing the instagram ads for inventorio you know that that website where they were selling these kits of the arduino microprocessor board and a series of accessories to to learn different things, right. So it's got some e-lights in there, it's got some jumper wires, it's got you know a few different, you know different sensors and whatnot. You know the, the, the dials that you can turn up and down like a volume knob, right, just a bunch of different things. But they also have a tutorial, that's, you know, kind of a well-scripted walkthrough and 10 lessons or something about. You know how to kind of get to learn the, the, the programming and whatnot.
Jake McKee:I've always kind of hacked around with programming for for years now and I hadn't done any of that in a while and I kept seeing these ads and you know all these people were doing really cool stuff and it was definitely one of those things where you know, kind of like when I got my 3d printer and I knew I wanted to do at least one project, I didn't know what else might be there, but it seemed like something that was going to be cool and have opportunities. So, you know, I went ahead and picked it up and now here I am doing all kinds of stuff where I'm, you know, really hardcore, thinking about how this stuff works and what I'm going to do with it. The Arduino is kind of the same thing. I knew that. I've been watching these with the. You know, raspberry Pi is one of its competitors. If people have heard of that one, I'd been seeing it and hearing it and thinking about it for a while In doing the lighting.
Jake McKee:The lighting for the Galactica project was pretty straightforward, even though it had I think it's got nine lights in it, nine LEDs. But they're all pretty straightforward, right? None of them flicker, none of them change patterns or anything like that. And I just was thinking, man, I want to have all these grand ideas, as we all do. That's why we all have stashes like we do is the hope that the project ideas will actually make it out someday. But you know I I really wanted to learn some sort of capability for doing different things. And you know I mentioned the. The silent Raider has one red led, but technically. It had a series of them going back and forth, you know, kind of like the Knight Rider, and and yeah, I was thinking, well, how does that happen? And there's ways you can do it without you know major microprocessors like the Arduino or whatever. But I was thinking it'd be nice to be able to know that kind of programming and those things seem to be getting so cheap that that inventor IO kit was a hundred bucks and that was, you know, I don't know what the Arduinos are on their own, but you know, probably not a hundred bucks, but the whole, the whole kit was, was a hundred dollars with all the lights and sensors and everything and it.
Jake McKee:You know, as I, as I started playing with it, I definitely had some ideas. I've got an idea for a box diorama that's in a kind of a 1940 style radio, uh, and so, because it's a radio, I thought, well, I could replace some of those dials with dials of my own. They're not the dials, the, you know, the volume, volume knobs basically, and the tuning knob, um, but I thought, you know, if I've got a knob I can change all kinds of things. I can turn lights on and off. With that, I can turn sound on and off. I can turn, you know the, the songs. You know I can change the songs as though I were changing the radio station on the radio, right it. Just little little stuff like that that I think can add on the radio, right? Just little little stuff like that that I think can add, add some, some oomph and and do it in a way that's that feels a little bit more robust than a lot of the things that we've seen in the past. You know we've, you know Nat's had, you know, a jet, this this last year, as I'm recalling. You guys may remember this better than I do, but you can push some buttons and it made some sounds and that's cool.
Jake McKee:I'm going to take away from that, but you know we're, we're getting so much better and more refined with a lot of the technology. You know the thought was can I, can I do something that's a lot more interactive and and and safe to be interactive with the model kit that does more interesting, more engaging, more deep types of experiences. So it's not just, you know, turn the sound on or off or move the. You move the, the canopy up and down, which are all amazingly cool things. Don't again, don't take away anything from those. But can you keep going right? Can you? Can you make it even more complex than that? And how is this programming environment? Honestly, it's been. You know that kit's nice because it walks you exactly through how to do the basics and the basics of some of the electrical pieces, but also the programming pieces, and it's surprisingly straightforward. I'm confident that I can hack through it well enough to get it all working at some point here soon as I switch over to that project.
Kentucky Dave:Well, I can't wait to see what that project is. Yeah, me too. Switch over to that project. Well, I can't wait to see what that project is. Yeah, yeah, me too. And I can't wait, I can't wait for it to grow and grow and grow beyond even your original idea.
Jake McKee:I don't need that kind of encouragement.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, you can McKee the heck out of this project.
Jake McKee:Yeah, it is funny because a couple of them, the couple of things that I'm working on right now are are so small and I'm trying very hard to like. I've got that. I don't know if you guys have seen that the f-14 fighter pilot. You know it's basically the maverick from top gun bust, but it's incredibly well detailed. I mean it's's just the amount of detail on that thing is stunning. But you know I've got him and I have already glued on the little base piece just so that I can't get any ideas on adding something else to it Too late. Already, painting Can't take it off.
Mike:There you go.
Jake McKee:Yeah.
Mike:Well, jake, we've just scratched the surface on some of this stuff, but I appreciate you coming on Plastic Model Mojo and sharing at least with this level of detail, and I'm sure I'm going to have some thoughts about some of these things and we'll be maybe tapping into you again. But why don't you tell us where your blog is so our folks can go look at some of this stuff?
Jake McKee:Yeah, nice and simple. It's buildJakeMcmckeecom.
Kentucky Dave:That's M-C-K-E-E Correct.
Mike:And then again, we're going to be at Madison, You're going to be there again, you're going to be there and hopefully have this Battlestar Galactica hangar deck in all its glory. Yeah, indeed, that's the goal.
Jake McKee:Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah, that's the goal.
Kentucky Dave:We will definitely have you to stop by the dojo because I would love, over a glass of Kentucky's Finest Bourbon, to pick your brain about both this project and what you've got in store for the future.
Jake McKee:Yeah, sounds fun. I'm definitely down for that Kentucky's finest bourbon part too. There you go.
Mike:Well, all right. Thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it. It's been fun talking to you. We'll keep watching the blog and seeing what you've got going on in the future and look forward to seeing you in Madison. Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks guys, You're very welcome. Thank you.
Kentucky Dave:That was a lot of fun. It just grew and grew and and twisted and turned and had all sorts of interesting bits. I don't think I've seen a modeler try so many different new things or fairly new things to him all in one project. But I got to say he was pretty darn fearless when it came to heck. Why don't I do this?
Mike:I agree with that and it was interesting because I guess we scheduled these things and have some preconceived notions. Yes. And a couple of days before we recorded with Jake I really made a point to get into that blog post about the Cylon Raider project and dig into it and it just became apparent real quick that for a one and done kind of segment we weren't going to get there.
Mike:Yeah, no, there's a lot more to talk about. We just scratched the surface. So, folks, if you haven't yet, we've mentioned the front end of this and during the interview, and I'll mention it one more time wwwbuildjakemckeecom Jakemckee one word, com. If it interests you, go through that and look at all the things that Jake tried new and succeeded with, and I tell you.
Kentucky Dave:Dave, I really look forward to seeing that in Madison later this summer. I am really looking forward to seeing it in person because the photographs obviously were impressive from the conversation. I'm interested to see in person many of the things he described doing and trying in the course of the project and I just love that the project grew from. Well, I'll just put a little. I'll just have a little base that I can, you know, mount this scylon raider on to boom an entire hangar bay lit and 3d printed and foam and plastic, uh, you know, usingricut cutter to cut plastic, just amazing.
Mike:Yeah, bravo. I really look forward to seeing it and I'm going to have to scratch my head and figure out how we maybe make some more segments about some of these other techniques and expansions to his toolbox, because it was really cool, man. Thank you, jake, for coming on the show and sharing that with us. But again, we barely scratched the surface. Like I said during the segment, that's kind of the epitome or definition of scope creep, yep man, but at the end of the day it really created something really cool.
Kentucky Dave:Yep, it worked out beautifully.
Mike:And you know I'm my Battlestar Galactica memory is the original TV series. This was from the, the, the reboot. Yep. Which, uh, it's worth mentioning because, you know, honestly, I I've not seen it, uh, but I can appreciate all the stuff he's doing and I don't think it would have mattered whether it was the original series or the or the reboot. It's a bunch of new stuff, a guy learning new, new things and incorporating, incorporating into a, a new build really cool, really, really cool classic model mojo is brought to you by squadron.
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Mike:Well, we look forward to seeing Brandon and Squadron at Wonderfest coming up this weekend. You know we saw him at Amps and we saw the slice of his inventory he brought to Amps. I'm really curious what he's going to bring to Wonderfest.
Kentucky Dave:Oh, I will be interested to see what's at Wonderfest as well.
Mike:And hopefully we'll talk to him.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, absolutely.
Mike:Well, dave, it's the Benchtop Halftime Report. Lay it on me, man, what you been doing Modeling.
Kentucky Dave:I've actually been modeling the A7M. The SAM has the wings on. The kit was made in 1995, and it's good, but it does not compare to 2023 kits as far as the level of fit, and so you have some wing root issues that have to be dealt with. I dealt with them using styrene rod melted with Tamiya extra thin cement, which is a technique that works beautifully. But the SAM is coming along. In fact, I need to put some primer on the seams just to check the seams before I move any further forward.
Kentucky Dave:The big one I've been making progress on is the BT-7. I got the length and length track done on both sides, and then you contributed a brilliant idea, cause I attacked the wheels on with with white glue so that I could do the link, link and length track, and then the theory was I was going to then remove the track and road wheels as one piece so that I could then paint them separately and add them back separately to the kit. You see a lot of armor modelers do this and Night Shift is doing it all the time. But I was starting to work the track and of course these things are tiny comparatively and I was flexing them and worried that you know I was going to snap something when I happened to be sitting online with you modeling and you had a brilliant suggestion, which was, since I had tacked everything on with white glue, just dunk the model in a bowl of water and let it sit. And that's what I did.
Kentucky Dave:And, sure enough, if you let the model sit for an hour or two, it penetrates into the white glue and softens it up to the point where the track runs and wheels just came right off their pins. It worked beautifully. Thank you for that. I've got the turret almost done and I am hoping. I had hoped to be in primer on the BT-7 by the end of Memorial Day, but given the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and we had a combination of yard work, storms and then cleaning the pool after the storms passed, I got kind of honeydewed to the point where I wasn't able to get as much done as I wanted. But I'm hopeful that by this weekend everything will be together and the BT seven will be in primer.
Mike:Well, that's good man. It's a lot of progress. I'm glad the the water soak worked out.
Kentucky Dave:It did and I should have thought of that. I mean it was. It's so simple that when, when you said it, I'm like, well, hell, thought of that. I mean it was. It's so simple that when, when you said it, I'm like, well, hell, yeah, why wouldn't you do it that way? But it didn't occur to me at all until you said it. So what's your?
Mike:bench look like. Well, there's not an unfinished f8 on it well, okay, fine, do you?
Kentucky Dave:do you want to get into that war?
Mike:no we can get into that war if you want ribbing you a little bit, because it's so, so close it is, it's very close it's close enough that it ought to uh it ought to be done, yeah I'll tempt you to put another feather in your hat for the year yeah, oh, it will.
Kentucky Dave:I Listen, that's going to be done.
Mike:Well, back to me. The KV-85 was waiting on me to start this VMS smart mud thing to get the vehicle positioned right, because that's kind of the next thing that needed to happen for the KV-85 build, because I had to set the torsion bars which we talked about last time Right. Then I had to put it back on the base with the smart mud, get the positioning right, get that all set, then take it off again and then take the tracks back off, take all the wheels off and start finishing the hull. Well, I got the smart mud stuff down, the vehicle location is set and now it's time to kind of push pause on that kit to work on the e16, but to kind of stay with the kv-85 and the smart mud.
Kentucky Dave:Uh, interesting stuff yes, and you had an interesting experience with it I did.
Mike:First off, there's a there's a 12 month shelf life on the container, which is interesting yeah because it's not a very high quality container, kind of kind of bare minimum really. Yeah. So I think this stuff has started to dry out and when I was, when I was applying it, it just it wasn't behaving very nice. It was not sticking very well to the base. I was having to apply it in fairly thick layers to get it to stick, to get it where I wanted it.
Mike:I talked about that a little bit on the dojo, and who was it? It was John Bonanni. He can reconstitute it basically with water and I'm like, well, duh, he has an acrylic material that makes sense. But in my defense, there are warnings on the label about not wetting your model and not wetting tools used to apply with it. So I kind of mentally was like don't add water to this stuff. Yeah.
Mike:But eventually that's what I had to do. You know, I got the vehicle position but when I went to cover the rest of the base I was like, okay, I'm out of this critical kind of phase of the interface between the model and the smart mud and the base and I got to cover the rest of the stuff. So let's put a little water in here and see what it does. So I just put a little bit of water in what was left of the smart mud and it didn't take much at all and blended that in with a spatula and yeah, that will work. So if you've had it on the shelf a while, I'd recommend you do that before you start. Once you're working with it on the base, do not add water to it. I kind of took the dare and messed around with that a little bit. It turns into a mess really, really quick. Stuff is weird. I don't know what it is. Folks who are watching Saturday Night Live in the nineties will remember happy, fun ball.
Kentucky Dave:Yes, do not, do not taunt.
Mike:happy fun ball made from material that fell from space. Yeah.
Mike:Yeah, that's what this reminds me of. It's a. It's really really kind of strange. It's kind of like a. A fluffy cake icing is what it reminds me of. I don't know, I don't know if I'm sold on it, but you know it works. I've got some more to put on the base a little later and maybe put in some more terrain texture. But, uh, for the model, uh, I got it all blended in, it's set and it's ready to go. So again, pushing pause, setting that aside, going to take all the tracks and wheels off the model, I'll get into finishing the hull of the KV, but even before I do that, I'm really trying to push the E to immediately upon purchasing it and getting it home put the container that it comes in in another airtight container.
Mike:That would not be a bad idea, unless you know you're going to use it in a few months. Yeah, it will change consistency over the long haul, so I need to go back and look at my order. I probably could go on PayPal and figure out when I bought it. Yeah. And see how long I've actually had it. But it definitely changed. But it's good now.
Kentucky Dave:So tell us about the Paul.
Mike:Well, I've spent a couple of nights masking the Paul, so I've got the demarcation lines on the fuselage mask. I've opted for a hard edge given the scale. Yeah, mr hughes day gave me some tips on on getting getting that to be a, a uh, what to call it a?
Mike:a soft edge, but fairly, still fairly tight a tight, soft edge, yeah, and a tight feather that was just like one more wrinkle to the project that I was just not willing to do. So I've masked it off. Hard edge. I hand cut the well. Where it gets complicated is the rear fuselage. It does some funky things around the national insignia. So the Henamaru. I actually cut a disc with a circle cutter the exact same size as the decal and put that on first and then hand cut the transitions between the green and the gray with Tamiya tape and worked those in to that disc I'd already cut. So I've got all that masked off. I did the whole bottom side mask for the gray to mask the demarcations on the edges of all the horizontal control surfaces, the wings and stabilizers. All that's masked now I've even mixed up a couple of shades of green. I've lightened the Tamiya Imperial Japanese Navy green a couple of times. I've got pre-mixed just paint. They've not been diluted down for airbrushing but uh, just the color okay what are you gonna thin them with?
Mike:probably mlt okay pretty pretty standard things um I may. I may mix it in a little to me. A gloss with them to hopefully not have to put much of a clear coat over it to do the panel line washes and all that Sure which is coming next. So the thing's masked. I got to get on it. I don't want that tape on there too long.
Kentucky Dave:No, that's right.
Mike:The greens are mixed ahead of time. I got to thin those and get to airbrushing. I'm just waiting on my jug of of Gunzee, mr Modeling, time to arrive.
Kentucky Dave:Well, man, if you get that, you can let me know who has it in stock, because I've looked everywhere for it and I can't find that in stock.
Mike:And then I'm ready to rock and roll. Man, that's pretty much it, Well good.
Kentucky Dave:Well, mike, they keep releasing new stuff. Every time I turn my head, it's new stuff is coming out. Manufacturers are releasing left and right. Again, we say it's the golden age of modeling, and that is absolutely true, especially when it comes to releases. So you got some faves and yawns.
Mike:I've got some faves, I got a curiosity and I've got a yawn.
Kentucky Dave:Oh man, you're doing better than I am. I'm all faves man, that's all right.
Mike:Well, for my first fave, Dave, how about some real space? All right, that's a good choice. Don't shudder too hard, but Eastern Express, Okay, in 1 to 144 scale. Uh-huh Is releasing both the Vostok, yeah, and I guess the pronunciation is Voskhod.
Kentucky Dave:Something like that.
Mike:Something like that Both those launch vehicles in 1 to 144 scale, yeah, which maybe that's fine given the size. I don't know.
Kentucky Dave:It is. I mean there are a lot of launch vehicles in 1 to 144, simply because in 72nd scale they can get tremendously large. I don't know if you've ever seen a 72nd scale Saturn V.
Mike:Oh yeah.
Kentucky Dave:It's really really big.
Mike:So these two rockets, it's kind of cool. I think they're cool because they're not black and white. There's a debatable greenish color on them. Yeah, there's a debatable greenish color on them, mm-hmm, and they look so much different than the American rockets of the era. Yes, kind of interesting those.
Kentucky Dave:What's your first fave, and the twin kit of the F4U that Mr Wallace is very fond of, have announced in the correct scale, 72nd scale, one of my favorite vehicles of World War II and that is the 234 slash. Okay, you got to help me, is it four? Two, two, two, the 234 slash, two. Puma, the eight-wheeled armored car reconnaissance vehicle with, I think, a 50-millimeter gun, yep, and there's some vehicles that just look right, that look cool, right, that look cool. And the puma has always been to me one of my favorite vehicles. And to have I'm sure magic factory is going to do this up right and to have a 70 second scale kit, modern kit, of this vehicle, this will immediately jump on my short list to both buy and to build oh yeah, it's offsetting a matchbox kit yeah, well, yeah, exactly you skipped a whole generation of of 72nd scale armor three generations to get there.
Mike:You, that's going to be tempting for me to not buy that one too. Yeah, and I've got a 35th scale Dragon one in the stash and you've built one already. I've built the Itoleri one, so I get it. Yeah, it's a cool thing. And you know, reifeld, and both MiniArt and Reifeld, have announced a 35th scale version. Yeah, that's going to replace the, the old itinerary kit. So very interesting, very advanced vehicle for the era. Yeah, I can see you getting that one. Yep, absolutely, and maybe me too. Yeah, my next fave is from uh okb gregorov out of uh bulgaria, bulgaria. You know we mentioned them in our 72nd Scale Armor episode 114 with Steve Husted. Yeah, primarily they've been a 72nd Scale Armor source, right. Well, they've got the first two releases in 35th Scale now.
Mike:I think they're the first two I could be, wrong Some early KV-1 road wheels, kv-1, kv-2 road wheels. It's interesting. I've probably got KV road wheels from gosh tracks, who was one of the old VLS companies, and I've got KV one road wheels from uh who's are, and I've probably got some for Royal models and a couple other companies. But it's it's interesting because I think the the knowledge keeps increasing. Folks keep looking at photographs and getting more information and realizing there are more variations and more manufacturer-specific details than maybe they anticipated before Yep and I'm curious what these wheels are going to be.
Kentucky Dave:For some reason, and I have no idea why, I built a KV-2. Or no KV-1. I built a KV-2. Or no a KV-1. I built a KV-1. And for some reason time, I was able to identify seven different, distinct types of road wheel that were used on the KV1. And it just didn't make sense. Why in gosh's name would there be seven different types of road wheels for the Kv1? So I can't imagine how many now, with with all the research and everything, what the what the current thinking is on that subject, but it's, it's really it's fascinating well, I think I'll look into these a little bit more and, uh, if they're any good at all, I'll probably end up with them sure, and then you'll build a kv1 with one of each type of road wheel.
Mike:Well, you can do that too, that's right, yeah that's.
Kentucky Dave:that's part of the thing I found in the research was it was a complete mix and match job on many of the vehicles that there were. You know it was not unusual to see two or three different types of road wheels on one tank. What's got next? Well, this one's for you. There is a company that I have never heard of before called Mulberry Scale Kits, a cowl engine, prop and exhaust for the Heller slash Revell Arado 196. And you know, I don't know if this is 3D printed or resin or, you know, 3d printed, master molded. I don't know anything about it other than that I'd be interested to see replacements, any sort of replacements for the Arado, because that kit is pretty darn old. Whatever way you go, any help you can give it if we're not going to get a brand new kit by Tamiya or Arma or somebody like that, any addition as far as something that might be a good addition. So I was keeping an eye out for you, so that's a fave for me.
Mike:Well, thank you, you're welcome. My next one is kind of a curiosity.
Kentucky Dave:Okay.
Mike:Because it's more of a diorama type detail, so I may or may not make use of it. The company is Doodle bunny, doodle bunny, doodle bunny for wait a minute.
Kentucky Dave:We had war pig previously, and now we've got doodle bunny well, this is not war pig.
Mike:I got it wrong it's like the running out of names for model kit, model companies well, doodle bunny is out of the ukraine and maybe the name is less humorous in ukrainian right. I don't know, doodle bunny, but that's what it is.
Kentucky Dave:135th scale melons, pumpkins and watermelons that sounds like a mini art release they're available both with and without photoish leaves okay yeah you, these are common crops, yes, so in that part of the world.
Mike:So it's pretty cool. If somebody wanted to do the tank crossing the melon field, they got your back, man. Yeah. There you go. You got pumpkins, watermelons or just smaller round melons, honeydews or whatever. Go for it. Doodle bunny, they got you covered.
Kentucky Dave:Awesome, what else you got. I want to give another shout out because I believe I shouted them out last time we did this. I want to give another fave to Quintus Studios, who continue to release 3D interior products in 72nd scale. They do other scales as well, but they seem bound and determined to do 3D interior decals for every 72nd scale kit ever made. They have just recently announced a set for the new Airfix ME410. They've announced a set for all the different versions of the Edward F6F Hellcat, which I own and should build because I've had it for an embarrassingly long period of time embarrassingly long period of time.
Kentucky Dave:And they have announced 3D interior decals for the Airfix Typhoon. They're just, they are cranking their way through basically everybody's 72nd scale catalog and I got to tell you I've seen them in person before at shows and such. But you actually, at Amps, picked up some 35th scale products of theirs. For was it the Gaz AA or the ZIS, zis 5 and 6, yeah, zis 5 and 6 Russian trucks? I was pretty darn impressed by the quality of the product, the resolution and the 3D relief really, really looked good. More power to these guys. I want to see them continue to do this.
Mike:Well, my last one's a yawn. Okay, it's a Haiduc Models out of China. Spell that H-A-I-D-U-C Models. Okay, hi-duck Models. It's a T-34-76 with some STZ-1942 features, but it's a tune tank. Oh, but it's a tune tank. Oh, the upside is it's an STL file, so we're not wasting any tooling capital with this tune tank.
Kentucky Dave:Gotcha. Well, isn't that interesting that there's enough demand for tune tanks that somebody can put the time in to do a 3D print file for a tune tank.
Mike:Yeah, I guess I just want an STZ-42 done for real in 35th scale For real. Yeah. Yeah.
Kentucky Dave:Yeah, it hurts when something comes out and you want it for real and it comes out as a tune model first.
Mike:Yeah, what's you got left, man? That's it for me.
Kentucky Dave:Well, mike, we've gotten to near the end of the episode. And do you have some modeling fluid left? Not much, okay. Well, that must be an indication that it's actually pretty good.
Mike:Well, it's Redemption straight bourbon whiskey. This is Indiana distilled and bottled, which is unusual, Unusual. Now, the last one I had from Indiana I did not like at all. That was a long time ago. That was probably 2020, folks Not revisited in Indiana on the bourbon front for three, four years. Now it's 96 proof, so not too hot. Now, the reason I picked this up was because it was 45% wheat in the mash bill.
Kentucky Dave:Oh, I like that.
Mike:So Weller came to mind, right, and at the price point which is about 50 bucks, it was worth a shot to see if it was even remotely similar to Weller Right, because Weller's about the same price point. You just can't find it in liquor stores in Kentucky. Yes. I started neat, moved to a single rock. It's not Weller, but it's actually not bad. Well, good. It was not quite as smooth as I was hoping for at 45% wheat, but it's not bad. It's good.
Mike:I could see me having this again. Yeah, it's pretty good. So Redemption Bourbon Now there's a Redemption Rye which I think we've had. I think somebody brought us that to the dojo one time at a national convention. But I've not had this before. And yeah, I'm pleasantly surprised, Given it's not from Kentucky 45% wheat. It's not as sweet as I would have expected, it's not as smooth as I would have hoped for, but it's not bad at all. It's pretty good. I would do this again.
Kentucky Dave:Well, good, maybe I'll have to keep an eye out for it and see if I can catch some on sale.
Mike:Well, how's the?
Kentucky Dave:water. I am well hydrated. I got to say the water is good Trader Joe's bottled water and hopefully this is going to make my blood test tomorrow look really good.
Mike:Well, I hope so, man.
Kentucky Dave:And then I can have a beer tomorrow night.
Mike:Here's to an uneventful checkup. Hear, hear, Mike. We are now officially at the end of the episode.
Kentucky Dave:Uh do you have a shout out before we go.
Mike:Uh, I've got a couple. Uh, the first was the commensurate newest show supporter. Shout out. I want to shout out kevin kentner and ned brown and uh, guy, whoever you are, these folks have chosen to support Plastic Model Mojo through their generosity and if you'd like to follow in their footsteps, we've got several ways you can do that. We've got a Patreon, we've got a PayPal portal we can use and we've got Buy Me a Coffee and we've got the Plastic Model Mojo Merchandise Store. If you go to the show notes for this episode and any of the probably the last couple, maybe three, you can find links to all these avenues to support the show, and we really appreciate it. It goes a long way to help us bring you Plastic Model Mojo and it's starting to help us get in position to make a couple of changes and bring you some new things. So thank you very, very much.
Kentucky Dave:Absolutely. Instead of a shout out here, I want to basically take a moment. First to thank all the listeners. Second, to particularly thank those listeners who have recommended us to their fellow modelers.
Kentucky Dave:Mike and I, as we've said before, we started this thing to kind of hold ourselves accountable to get modeling done and it kind of grew from there to be something that I don't think either one of us had any idea of what it was going to turn into. But one thing we do strive to do is bring you as quality a podcast as we can, be that sound quality, be that guests, be that whatever. And we're trying to bring you the best I don't want to call it product, but the best that we can make an effort to give you. And as part of that whole effort, we're looking to try and grow the listener base. We've got tons of listeners.
Kentucky Dave:The dojo is growing like a weed. It's the number of new members of the dojo. It seems to be accelerating and that's all very gratifying. But the best way for us to get new listeners, to grow the podcast, to keep the momentum going, is for those people who are currently listening to recommend us to one of their modeling friends who doesn't currently listen. Everybody out there listening knows another modeler. And if you know another modeler and they aren't listening to Plastic Model Mojo, please do us a favor. We would consider it a personal favor if you would go and recommend us in the next two weeks to some modeling friend of yours who's not currently listening. Please do us that favor.
Mike:And get them to subscribe on whatever app they happen to be using to listen to the show.
Kentucky Dave:Absolutely.
Mike:Well, dave got anything else.
Kentucky Dave:Nope, that's it, man. We're at the end.
Mike:Well, I'm looking forward to Wonderfest.
Kentucky Dave:You and me. I'll see you Saturday.
Mike:Come see us folks, we're going to be there. Yeah, chest board shirts and all got gaudiest, I'll get out. Come find us, dave. As we always say, so many kids, so little time. My friend and I'll see you Saturday. You got it.
