The Little World

If there is any simple thing I want to make my scale modelling experience better it is light.

More light, brighter light, cleaner light, portable light, steady light, etc. No room in an Australian house seems to have a ready supply of it, even with the window blinds open. At night we are at the mercy of glow-worms.

General living is catered for – we can eat dinner or move down the hallways well-lit. We can sit in the lounge room or the john and read. But when we sit at our benches the light from the ceiling obscures more than it illuminates.

My workbenches now have at least two lights on at any one time – in some cases they are Anglepoise types or goose-neck lamps from IKEA. They used to be extremely cheap and long-lived so I have a few spares socked away. As they need a mains socket, however, they do me little good at the public library modelling club.

There I have come to depend upon a light that I bought for photography. It’s called Lume Cube and contains a battery that recharges in about two hours. The light sits on a cheap tabletop tripod with a ball head. There are 10 levels of illumination power but I only ever go to No. 2 so the battery will go for many hours..

I can position it looking onto my cutting board and then swivel it around so that it shines on the line my knife or saw will make. Overhead lights never show this clearly. It has made all the difference to being able to assemble small parts for landing gear within wheel wells.