New stuff for 2016

Just in case I haven't said it yet...Happy New Year!

I received a fantastic gift from my lovely wee wifey at Christmas, a Dremel Moto-Saw. It's a sort of light-weight, motorised cross between a scroll saw and a fret-saw...

Now, I am a big Dremel fan - I love my Dremel multi-tool and am always looking for an opportunity to use it for my plastic modelling projects. But the fact is that the speed and power of the multi-tool means that - for cutting and sanding - it melts most plastic, so I reserve it for drilling mostly.

None-the-less, when I saw the Moto-Saw advertised I immediately thought it would be ideal for the resin model conversions I am so keen on. Although this IS a medium that my multi-tool is good for, the sharp angles I need to cut aren't best achieved with it's disc-cutters.

One of my resin model conversions. You can see the amount of cutting away that
can be involved, tricky work with a disc-cutter. My new Moto-Saw will allow
me to more easily and precisely cut into the majority of these nooks and crannies!

Special filter 'pods' can be added to the sides.

Additionally, and importantly, the multi-tool generated great clouds of resin dust. This stuff is exceedingly bad for you and although I have taken some precautions when doing this sort of work - using those cheap paper dust masks - my set-up has been very amateur and far from ideal.

The Dremel Moto-Saw has a proper dust extraction facility, by way of a vacuum cleaner pipe attachment, so this - along with the Moto-Saw's ability to saw into very tight corners - makes it far more suited to working with hard resin. Though, I have also taken the step up into a better quality dust mask as well.

Finally, to make use of the Moto-Saw's dust extraction adaptor I bought myself a basic compact vacuum cleaner from Argos. It's their 'value range' Bagless Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner and although it's only £32 it has a lot of good reviews. Best of all, it's very light and small and is great for keeping in my attic 'man cave' to do the occasional carpet cleaning instead of dragging our big Dyson up and down stairs!

My new vacuum cleaner! Killing two birds with one stone, a powerful
dust extractor for my new Moto-Saw and a means of keeping my man-cave
tidy. Importantly, it's bagless - so if I 'sook' up any model parts, I can
retrieve them (in theory). Unfortunately, this picture doesn't show the pipe
attachments it has.

Well, all very fancy but you might be thinking 'that's a lot of expense for chopping up the occasional resin conversion', and you would be right. Although there are other general scale modelling uses for my new Moto-Saw (it's going to make cutting model bases a doddle, for example) I do have an additional cunning plan for 2016...

Without a doubt, the biggest surprise to me about my modelling hobby has been how much enjoyment I have gotten out of my dodgy conversions and scratch building. So much so, in fact, that I would like to go a bit further AND explore a new medium...This year I want to move into making some 'traditional' style wooden models!

A bit advanced for me yet, but this example gives you an idea about my toy
making ambitions. I'll be starting with something a lot simpler!
 Credit: Toymakingplans.com

Now, I am not sure whether this is within the remit of this blog - I may want to keep it exclusively plastic and resin based - and it's sort of a cross-over with my other modelling interest over on my Molatero Blog. The 'traditional' toy style just seem to work nicely into the 'Funny Little Wars' format...But that's another story!