About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

L is for Lady Pen


Not a euphemism for the contents of Donald Trump's codpiece, and now known as "Pen Lady", due to the fact she is no longer a pen-  after conversion below; this charming 19th Miss, was one of the more esoteric items in a recent parcel from Peter Evans.

You can see she would happily pass muster at any ball from the Wellintonian age to the late 1800's, taking the Crimea, ACW, Scarlet O’Hara and Wild West saloons in her stride. She's just over 70mm, so a bit on the tall side and she has 'Disney' eyes, but they can be reduced with some fine brush-work.

Hardly a 'conversion' but rather; the removal of the pen's barrel and the adding of a suitable base. I wasn't sure of the plastic type of the novelty pen, and while it was certainly heavy enough to be resin, while sawing it though, there was a distinct smell of polystyrene? I cut from both sides due to the nature of the skirts' sculpting; it also left me with a slight hollow in the middle for the gluing phase.

Equally, while I had a nice piece of opalescent 'turf' - courtesy of my tubs of old game counters, gambling chips and tiddlywinks for just such jobs - I'm not too sure what its polymer is either! It's very likely to be tumble-polished, and either a Bakelite, an early phenolic resin or even a urea-formaldehyde compound of some kind?

So they get the mixture; a couple of drops of styrene-cement on the base, some plumbers-sealant dollopped onto the cut area of the figure, then two drops of super-glue over the styrene-cement and another two over the sealant, then both halves squished together and twisted a few part-turns to get the mix mixed!

A two-part epoxy would do the job just as well, but it's a faff and where's the fun in that? The beauty of the mix is that as it 'goes off' the sealant pulls everything tight and the combination seems to prevent the frosting you'd otherwise get with that quantity of cyanoacrylate.

Not looking too shabby! A useful addition to any collection, and I bet there are a few different designs to look out for, one day I may re-paint her, but for now she'll do - Thanks Peter, I hope you don't mind the vandalism required to obtain the stand-alone figurine!

2 comments:

Jan Ferris said...

Not such a bad sculpt. I wonder what it would like to gnaw on that one?

Hugh Walter said...

Well, it was quite soft plastic, although it looks like resin, I'm sure it was styrene, so it would be a little like chewing on a lollipop, albeit one with little flavour . . . like one of those cheap seaside ones Jan!

H