Here’s a few pictures showing off my work area. There’s still some work to do, as I’m still trying to ‘fit’ into a new room, a new house. This is the second attempt at making my space in this new house and I feel better already, though I still need a bit of extra light (a neon tube on the wall over the desk).
Here’s a wider view showing off the second ‘hot’ desk, normally used by the Mrs or the kids. Both the Panther and the Gladiator are the Mrs’ s latest projects. Above tha desk, on the wall, the board hold another 15 or so projects of mine…
Here’s a part of my reference collection, with a few kits that I recentlt bought and haven’t found their way somewhere else for semi-permanent storage! On show here are the main book collection, and on the left, the magazine collection (all indexed! - the index file can be seen in the lower left corner of the first pic.)
And here’s the other part of the reference stuff. The files at the top and in the middle contans numerous bits of info taken from the web; the larger files at the bottom numerous scale drawings of past, present or future jobs for my customers. The PC is located just behind this book shelf.
HEY,
I cant imagine how long and how many kits it took you to get a reference library like that. But you said something about customers, so i take it you build kits for people. Well, i guess you have to have a good reference source. Nice job man.
Life’s not always been so easy, Guys! I too have worked from table corners, the worst being when I first came to the UK, building models on a little table in a crowded bedsit…
Although I’m pretty happy with the current layout, I’ve had better too! When I was at my parents, for about 3 years before we got a telephone (!), I had a fairly large room on the ground floor with lots of natural lighting. That’s when I built those huge dioramas with the six 1/48 Blue Angels Skyhawks, the nine 1/72 Patrouille de France Alpha-Jets and kits such as Monogram’s 1/72 B-36, B-52,… From the corner of the table phase, I’ve kept the habit of working on small scale and small models… LOL
As far as reference go, before England, I was librarian of the model club I was member of and had pretty much all I needed (including a monthly budget!). So all you see there has been collected since 1991. England is a great place for second-hand books, and many of those you see there have been purchased on the cheap.
Brian, the idea is to remind me of things that have to be done, but it does not always work… In there are 1/76 scratchbuilt ADGZ and Panhard 165 hulls that have been started 4 years ago… As may have seen, the Doyudha Concorde I got from you is still in the work room, which is still a positive sign… Once a box go up in the loft, it takes a lot to get it out of there!
There’s only two mags I buy every single issues of: FSM (of course!) and the French mag SteelMasters. Other than that, I have a pretty big stash of Military in Scale, Scale Aircraft Modelling, Flight International, Military Modelling, Air International, Militaria, Replic, Minitracks, SpaceFlight News, and fewer numbers of many more other mags such as Airliners, Fanatique de l’Aviation, Avions, Militaty Modeler, plus some IPMS mags from Belgium, Brazil, the US, England, Canada,…
All are indexed by subjects, in alphanumerical order of aircraft manufacturer, and I have separate sections for AFVs (by countries -users not origins- and type of vehicles), for cars and other civilian vehicles (by manufacturer), for ships (by country of origin), artillery, spacecrafts, SF/Fantasy stuff, modeling techniques, aces, air forces, battles,…
i have all but 3 of the FSM’s.
do you have/ use the ‘indy’ CD index for FSM?
i find it pretty handy.
other than that, i have a lot of SAE (Scale Auto Enthusiast) since mid 90’s,
all but 2 AFV Modeller
and some scattered issues of other magazines.
but i need to do some kind of index for everything but the FSM.
it’s not much use having the info on hand if you can’t find it!
I have never used the CD index. The system I use was developped while I was librarian at that model club, and I still use it to this day, after over 20 years. I guess it could be better on a PC, but transfering 15 years of index work onto PC would just be too much for me…!
I’m still missing a few FSM issues but one can find them at model shows under the tables, and it’s become a past time hunting them down the ‘slow way’.
Anyway, indexing mags has completely revolutionised the way I model and the way I keep all those mags. I could not imagine sitting on a pile of documents that big thinking where the heck did I see that picture of a South Patagonian Fokker triplane, you know. Also in terms of keeping tracks of reviewd kits in different magazines, I find it very useful, because I like to have as much info as possible before I start a project. Now my books are not all indexed, but some are, the ones I may just forget about, or those featuring very special things. For instance, most of my airliner books are indexed, again through a separate file by the name of the airline, in order to find those oddities… And I have a cross-reference with the main aviation index under the type of civil aicraft in case I forget the name of the airline…
