…about the importance of keeping a clean workspace. No matter how hard I try, my workbench gets cluttered to the point that I have less than a square foot to work in usually. This evening while I was using some MicroSol to apply decals to a kitbashed engine I’m working on, the clutter caught up to me- my brush caught the lip of the bottle and sent half of the contents spilling onto my engine, my decals, my table, and my pants. It looks like the stuff dries invisible, so I dodged a bullet on that one. But before I do any more work, I’m going to have to clean my table off!
Wikious,
I can relate to that problem. I had a similar mishap a few years ago when I knocked over a bottle of Testors Liquid cement onto an engine house I was assembling. Unfortunately, I didn’t “dodge the bullet” like you did. [xx(] However, better a engine house than an locomotive, I say.
Yep, a clutter-free working area minimizes the risk of the unexpected. Glad to hear that your mishap had minimal consequences. [:)]
Tom
I can relate. In my case, a bottle of Scenic Accents glue spilled over my workspace. Luckily, it only engulfed the figure I had been painting for the last half hour (it still looked like a zombie), but it was a pain in the *** to clean up.[banghead]
Been there. With plastic solvent on my first ever P2K freight car kit. Wasn’t a pretty sight. Here’s my cure for that scenerio…
Haven’t spilled a drop of anything since. A block of wood would work almost as well as the foam but I think the soft foam absorbs the shock of the occasional bump.
Yes sir…Spilling paint (or whatever), loosing parts, locating lost tools…Just part of every day life in the Trainroom!
I am continually fighting clutter!! And even worse, when I clean / straighten it all up and put things away…I can’t find what I’m looking for a day or two later!
It seems to always be the same story playing out in my head: It was on the workbench for well over a year (and most always in the way, I might add) before I put it away for safe keeping so I would know where it was and it wouldn’t get lost. Right!! I have truly spent DAYS looking for the “this or that” was now in its “safe keeping place”.
I did however recently spend time putting together some wonderful additional storage space in my “backshop” along with sorting, labeling, storing like items (detail parts for example), items slated for specific projects stored together and even did some prioritizing of some projects. It may help, or I may just have more drawers to search through for the “this or that” that I filed away yesterday! Time will tell…
I’ve never made a mess…[:-^]
Swamp land for sale!
Dean-58
You are the man!
I saw this when flipping through unrelated posts a couple of weeks back. You must have had a shot of your workbench or something. I went right down to the workroom and cut a bottle-sized hole in a sandwich sized slab of 1" Medite. Best gluing tip yet. Thanks, rolleiman.
That photo came from my brick building clinic where I explain how I paint and assemble them.
http://www.rolleiman.com/trains/clinic1.html
Enjoy…
Been there. Done that. Except I usually spill the bottle of liquid cement, somehow with disasterous results. About a month ago, I spilled the bottle and didn’t realize I had doused a stack of Smalltown sidewalks I was getting ready to weather. Naturally, I didn’t discover this until the cement had dried and fused the stack together. Lots of fun seperating and repairing those.
Count me among the chronically and incurably disorganized. At the start of the MR season I proudly posted how I had cleaned up the layout room and had everything put away in its proper place. I vowed to myself I would never allow it to become that cluttered again. Of course, I was lying to myself. The layout room is now as messy as ever. I am doomed to work in these conditions. No matter how hard I try to reform, I always relapse. I’ve given up hope.
Mine was a total disaster zone till recently…
All clean![:)]
Sure Is clean… Can’t see Anything in your photo…
Yup! It already has a few projects on it…[:-^]
I didn’t come to griefs with any model railroad equipment but I once tipped a brand-new bottle of Microweld® over onto my last book of checks. I did this on a Saturday when I couldn’t get to a bank to get any counter checks. This happened at a time of the month when I was required to pay a lot of bills and so for the next week or so, I had to use counter-checks until my new supply of checks came in.
Lesson: put the cap on all bottles of adhesive when you ain’t usin’em and don’t use your workbench as a desktop. I would like to have said “don’t pay your bills” but then who wants to watch television in the dark.
Corrolary: Never wear ‘good’ clothes when doing any kind of painting, even minor touch-up. One evening right after I came home from work, I grabbed a jar of Floquil UP Armour Yellow, and shook it really hard to get it well mixed. Of course I didn’t check first to see if the lid was screwed-on all the way…!
my workbench gets cluttered to the point that I have less than a square foot to work in usually.
You need to switch to a smaller scale. That way 1 sqft will be more like 10 sqft 
Must be the military in me, everything has it’s place. I spend time setting up and putting everything away for each “session”. Of course those “sessions” only last 30 minutes, but no mess…
At least so far.
That’s kind of creepy- I had almost the exact thing happen to me last winter; same paint and everything. The only difference is instead of getting it all over my clothes, my hand and arm were a nice shade of yellow for the next few days. [(-D]