The Little World

Like the people who write school history books in Moscow, I often wish I could predict the past. I could make some sense out of the things that I have retained for either far too long or not quite long enough…

Of course, some of the people reading this post will laugh at me. I hope. I’m talking about the builders, collectors and hoarders who have done it big-time for decades and have the sort of goody pile that Wagner wrote about in the Ring saga. The model-making dragons with the legendary stashes of kits, bits, and shit. I know people in the re-enactment hobby that make my poor efforts look feeble.

But I can at least claim the prescience to retain the best pieces from my earlier life. In some cases it has been deliberate, but others just amounted to laziness and lack of opportunity.

a. The big box. This is the heading image. This cost a week and a half’s wage in 1968 when we had to buy it to enter third year dentistry at the University of WA. We’d already been soaked, stung, and reamed for two previous years of equipment and materials that the University didn’t provide. Instruments, machines, models, skulls, etc. The third year saw us into operative work in both a technical laboratory and a student clinic. The big blue box was that colour to match the decor of the clinic and the instruments we had to pack in it were to save the government the bill.

After three more years of clinical learning, most people graduated and sold off the big box to a new student. I was up the country when I graduated and had no more contact with the faculty. I parcelled out what was left of student instruments to the various surgeries I worked in and stored the box at home because I couldn’t be bothered selling it.

It now is the central repository for many of my modelling tools. The drawers are perfect for a variety of bits and accessories and the whole thing can shut up and locked if needed. You couldn’t buy anything like it now for ten times the price I gave.

b. The junk lamp. God knows where this came from but it was free and it’s been around for years. Big, heavy, awkward, hot…and the best illumination I’ve ever had over a painting bench. It totally outshines the Planet lamp over the drawing board. Coming out of summer it will be a comfort and a treasure in the cold shed in July.

c. The cat box. We have about four of these containers – three of them had never been used for cat litter trays, and when they were to be tossed out by a zealously cleaning wife I saved them.

The wooden platform is a mould that I once used to form hardtack biscuits on…honest, folks, you couldn’t make this stuff up. As I rarely march with Sherman through Georgia any more, it serves as a cutting platform inside the tray. It might seem awkward, but the opposite is true. The external blue tray serves as a catch-all for the parts as they are cut from the sprues. I do not lose little bits on the concrete floor any more.

d. The washing-up baskets

You see these at the rear of the cardboard tray ( itself a discarded wrapper from the new kitchen we had installed ). When the new sink went in the old dish drainer went out, but I snaffled the cutlery baskets to store paint mixing sticks and sandpaper blocks in. I’m sure there is a purpose-made caddy or storage system available at the hobby shop – probably made by Tamiya or Creos – to do the same thing but that costs money.

e. The same picture – cat tray, et al. shows a plastic graduated cylinder that used to be central to my home darkroom. together with larger types, it measured chemicals and water and was provided with a wide plastic base as proof against tipping over. I now employ this as well as the larger ones as brush holders. The brushes look disreputable, but the holder’s a beauty.

f. You might be wondering at the cabinets behind the bench. Old bookcases due to be discarded on the roadside. The bench itself is a jarrah frame my father made for his workshop some 43 years ago. It long ago lost the MDF top but when our front door needed replacement the old one came into the workshop as a bench top.

Come to think of it, the only thing fresh in there is the coffee every morning. Everything else, including me, is old, cheap, and dirty. And that’s the way I like it.