Morning Richard, I started replying last night to your post of yesterday, but it was too hot to think!
I'm glad my comments struck a chord - likewise. I too have sometimes thought about quite who we write these things for and I've certainly thought about the fact that others just get on and do things I spend a long time considering, planning and worrying about. When I first got back into modelling - having done all my previous work long before the internet - I used forums for research but told myself I'd never post my own work... But as you say, there's great appeal in communicating our ideas to others who do similar work (it often clarifies my thoughts, just to set them down on 'paper') and great value in learning from others' work too. My build thread on here is (so far) mainly summaries of older builds (I will start some new builds on here soon) but the thread I have on RMWeb is a warts-and-all account of my current (and several previous) builds and like you, I've spent ages agonising over things, back-tracked sometimes, and been gently steered by lots of very helpful people. But in the end, the models I've produced are far, far better than I could have achieved all on my own, through the help and guidance of lots of more experienced people who are very generous with their time. It's great to see your work appreciated by people who understand what you've doing, and, as another reason for posting, people who are less experienced and haven't tried something we've spent ages fiddling with but finally achieved will find the thread and draw inspiration.
I'd agree too that sometimes - only
sometimes, mind - thinking about things can tip over into procrastination. But I've lost count of the times now when I've been a little unsure how to do something - I just haven't felt I quite had the best way of doing it (or perhaps
any way!) - and I've let it sit at the back of my mind for a day or few, only to have the solution pop up, totally unexpectedly, after 'background processing' has done it's thing. I love that system, when it works! Now, is that over-thinking? Or procrastination? No, I think it's using our brains to solve a problem in the best way we can. Providing of course we've been getting on with other parts of the job in the meantime...!
Measuring gaps with a feeler gauge; seeing the gaps in the first place; seeing little else for a while whenever you look at the model; realising, weeks or months later, that you can't definitely remember the exact location of the gap you thought looked so awful without referring to photos of the build: all part of the process!
As far as dismantling goes, several people - with far more experience than me - have strongly advised designing sub-sections that are held together by nuts and bolts, not just for possible future work but also to aid painting and I intend to do this much more in future. I only began to understand the value of it late in my current loco build (very much a learning process too!) so only the cab roof is detachable, but even that has made a whole lot of other jobs much easier...
And regarding instructions, I find an odd process takes place the more I study them, whereby I start to understand more and more as I re-read and study what appear to be quite simple sequences of fixing bits together. Partly it's because by reading the whole thing like a booklet, you start to realise which tasks that occur much later in the build will be affected by aspects of the early stages. This is something I've learned in my current project, where small errors I thought fine to accept early on caused issues later (moral there: never settle for 'nearly right'!); and where later tasks were made more difficult because I didn't take steps early on to allow for them - a detachable boiler, for instance, would have saved a lot of work!
To avoid re-reading things you've done, I tick off each section in the instructions with a pencil...
This morning's photos look excellent
