cold winter indoor projects

[turnofftheradio]

This winter has been brutal. I just can't seem to drag myself outside to finish any projects and when I do, everything fights me and if its plastic it breaks. So I find myself inside too much with too much time on my hands. This is what happened.

My wife really hated the knotty pine basement, I got to take over some space if I painted it...



painting the knotty pine is knot fun. there are a lot of seams and routered edges and a ton of nooks and crannies that try to make unsightly drips. I used a primer and a satin paint.


then came the part where I take up space. I made this table, 4'6x12' its a good sized table.


After digging through boxes in the attic I located what I was looking for. most of this stuff I had in a box that had not seen daylight since 1992. I missed this stuff and feel like a kid again. The super international set is new, thanks to the happy wife!

 

[bluegoatwoods]

Well......you've made better use of this horrible winter than I have. Nice job!

 

[turnofftheradio]

Well......you've made better use of this horrible winter than I have. Nice job!

Thanks! It's been years since I ran a slot car. They are faster than I remembered. much more missle-like when I was younger I had a great table in my parents basement that I worked on for years. I tore up most of the models into their individual pieces and tried to intentionally break the small stuff in clean pieces that could be later re-assembled. Its a real trip down memory lane as I remember building and breaking down the models, many lost memories have come back as I see and build them. Everything survived fairly well. I have much work to do on the train tracks and scenery building. I have only plastered flat walls lately, no hills and mountains...

 

[Ludwig II]

I had a Scalextric Lotus back in 19mumble. I fixed a Beetle body on it. It was quite realistic. The back end hung out everywhere and it kept falling over.

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Nice setup For me it's Lego when the Winter weather is just too bad for play outdoors.

 

[2door]

Slot cars! Man, I remember when they were big. We had a track near our neighborhood. 30 feet long and a big, banked figure 8. That was a huge hobby for a while back in the early 60s.

Nice work on the basement remodel. My wife has been wanting us to do that for a long time. Maybe someday. I'd like to do a train layout. HO or smaller. Building the scenery was always more fun than running the trains.
Thanks for sharing.

Tom

 

[maniac57]

I also grew up with a slotcar layout in the basement. My Dad bought out a closing hobby store and built a HUGE track. I so wish I still had some of the Riggen racecars and handbuilt chassis he had, they would be worth thousands today! He would keep the good stuff hidden and only let me see them when we raced. I spent YEARS trying to beat his handmade brass full floater! My personal fav was a Willy's coupe Aurora AFX car with a super detailed injection molded body. That thing drifted so sweet with the hard rubber thick tires! He had all kinds of stunt track with jumps and weird stuff. We even had a drag race setup with rails and funny cars...talk about missiles! My buddies would beg to come play at my house, but I was always in trouble and seldom got to share the fun.
Several years later, I added a bunch of HO train stuff to the layout, including a working crane for loading and all the gadgets I could find. I absolutely guarantee that layout severely dented the juvenile delinquency problem in my area.

 

[turnofftheradio]

My brother in law got me an autoworld car to play with. They make a 3 gear thunderjet replica, like the old stuff. A little smaller chassis, horizontal motor, little to no traction magnet. Its basically just like racing the old stuff and is a ton of fun. More technical than fast.

Now I see some people have made some neat-o computer programs to time the track with optical or magnetic reed switches hacked into the printer port. I seem to have a ton of useless to nearly useless computers that should make a great donor for that project. Who doesn't love data?!

I'll have to snap some pics of the layout. but most of my favorite buildings survived including the awesome old school 7-11, the union 76 gas station and the howard johnsons.

 

[CTripps]

I wish I had a bit more space.... I have an old crate in the garage full of toys from back in the day.. I can't remember everything in there, but I know most of my old train set and my AFX slotcars and track are in there.. probably jumbled together with a lot of very well played with (hence monetarily worthless) Star Wars stuff.

Alas, I live in Vancouver, and have to go outside to just change my mind.

 

[turnofftheradio]

I wish I had a bit more space.... I have an old crate in the garage full of toys from back in the day.. I can't remember everything in there, but I know most of my old train set and my AFX slotcars and track are in there.. probably jumbled together with a lot of very well played with (hence monetarily worthless) Star Wars stuff.

Alas, I live in Vancouver, and have to go outside to just change my mind.

It's come to mind since I opened these to question why I saved this stuff without using it for so long. My advice is to open your boxes and play.

 

[CTripps]

I would, but I doubt I could find the square footage to pull things out.. the wife's taken over the back room for her projects, so that's a problem. I would love to see the reaction of the cats to the old slot cars though.. problem then would be making sure they survived being smacked off the track.

 

[turnofftheradio]

I would love to see the reaction of the cats to the old slot cars though.. problem then would be making sure they survived being smacked off the track.

the cats or the cars?
I have two cats that regularly test the limits of both the structure of the track and my driving skills. I've considered putting a mouse body on a chassis just to see what chaos ensues...

 

[Blakenstein]

This winter has been brutal. I just can't seem to drag myself outside to finish any projects and when I do, everything fights me and if its plastic it breaks. So I find myself inside too much with too much time on my hands. This is what happened.

My wife really hated the knotty pine basement, I got to take over some space if I painted it...



painting the knotty pine is knot fun. there are a lot of seams and routered edges and a ton of nooks and crannies that try to make unsightly drips. I used a primer and a satin paint.


then came the part where I take up space. I made this table, 4'6x12' its a good sized table.


After digging through boxes in the attic I located what I was looking for. most of this stuff I had in a box that had not seen daylight since 1992. I missed this stuff and feel like a kid again. The super international set is new, thanks to the happy wife!

Nice Table!!!! Love what you did with the walls, great work!! and Love that slot car lat out. Speaking of winter projects, well,....here is a pic of my winter project.

 

[CTripps]

the cats or the cars?
I have two cats that regularly test the limits of both the structure of the track and my driving skills. I've considered putting a mouse body on a chassis just to see what chaos ensues...

Probably both... and it'd be one of the other cats doing the cat-smacking (MY TURN!)... we have five at the moment, it gets a little 'tense' around here once in a while.

 

[2door]

Nice Table!!!! Love what you did with the walls, great work!! and Love that slot car lat out. Speaking of winter projects, well,....here is a pic of my winter project.

Blakenstein,
What the heck are we looking at here?

Tom

 

[maniac57]

Blakenstein,
What the heck are we looking at here?

Tom

Looks to me like panning for gold...

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

But you wouldn't do that during the Winter would you? Unless of course there's something about the new mysterious hobby of indoor gold panning that I haven't heard about

 

[maniac57]

Bring buckets of dirt home and do it in the basement. There's a gem mine somewhere in Arkansas that basically sells buckets of dirt and you rent a sluice to look for gems.
I think it's bloody brilliant!
Want some good gold dirt myself!

 

[Intrepid Wheelwoman]

Bring buckets of dirt home and do it in the basement. There's a gem mine somewhere in Arkansas that basically sells buckets of dirt and you rent a sluice to look for gems.
I think it's bloody brilliant!
Want some good gold dirt myself!

Somehow it takes all the romance out of doing it indoors. I mean I know panning for gold the traditional way could sometimes be an uncomfortable business living miles from civilisation in a leaky tent, but I suppose you could always do it sitting in front of an appropriate mural depicting a wilderness river scene.

The district where I live used to be a gold mining area, but it wasn't alluvial gold all ours was in quartz rock which involved using stamping mills and extraction methods using mercury and other chemical processes. There's a working mine museum in the next town and they are still managing to find a little gold in their mine which pays for the upkeep of the museum.

 

[2door]

This gives me an idea. Gold mining was big in Colorado and lots of people still pan today. It's a big tourist thing. Maybe I should offer buckets of Colorado dirt on ebay.
"Pan for gold in the comfort of your living room" Real Colorado dirt. $29.95 per bucket,
plus shipping.

Tom