This is my busy season and this year I’ve been super busy and cannot get to the bench. I had just before this lost some of my mojo to build right in the middle of a couple of GB’s. Since I can’t afford to take time to build as I need to drop everything at a moments notice and be on the phone I can’t build or paint. However, I did find a way to monkey with kits and still be able to walk away. And It’s had a great unexpected side effect in turning on my building juices again.
Basically I have a ton of kits, somewhere north of 325. They are all out where each one can be seen so I don’t lose track of them. But, I still forget which ones I have and I don’t like that. So, I decided to catalogue my stash and I began to build a spreadsheet for this but that became more than I wanted. I know about Scalemates, but I’m not interested in that. I looked around and found a program that you pay for that will let you add your stash kits, reference materials including web links, paints and such. It’s VERY VERY flexible and modifiable to whatever I want from it. Best part is now I have all my stash and paints on my PC for referece and it includes an APP for my phone so I always have everything at my fingertips. LOVE IT.
The side effect is that by touching and photographing EVERY single kit and accessory I have, both for certain kits and just in general, is that now I have lit that building fire inside once again because I realized that I have some really wonderful kits and handling them really makes me excited to build them. It’s like buying them all over again.
It took my about a month to get them all added to the list by doing 20 ish kits per day to the database. I also reorganized it all and placed like kits together and seeing what’s there is super easy and it looks better. So glad I took on this project, it was worth it in many many ways.
Oh, it’s not lost motivation . . . it’s the realization of just how much money I’ve sunk into this particular hobby. My ‘stash’ at this point amounts to all of sixteen kits, some already started. But to finish them is going to cost a bunch of bucks.
There are may ways to enjoy this hobbby. I went through the scalemates data entry a couple years ago and it’s the only way I can go through my stash thats in a warehouse somewhere in San Diego. Having the forums, magazines, my stash reviewable (and the growing stash since I moved here to AZ) is getting me through this patch where I can’t really build.
I’d be interested in the name of the software you decided on.
It’s kinda pricey for software, but it is so big and customizable I felt it would fit my needs well. So far I am blown away by how good it is. I like that I can put in my stash with pics of each kit as well as whether or not it is built, where it came from, how much it cost, when it was produced. It just goes on and on with options. It also allows for reference material to be added like books and web articles, etc. And you can add your paints as well if you wish.
I have finished adding the stash and I am now adding completed kits with pics and will soon add my books and paints. The paints are gonna take a while, I have loads of paint. Very happy I went with this. I feel tons better having it all listed in a database now.
Yes, I have found that having the expectation of uninterupted bench time (4 or 5 hours for me) is key to this hobby. Currently, the only time I can expect to get that is after all the kids go to bed, but now I am finding it harder and harder to work on models late at night…