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4.02.2010

yakkity yak



I've been very lucky to be able to participate in a great number of Model Rail Radio podcasts over the last couple of months. The audio police have yet to come banging on my door in the wee small hours demanding that I stop hemming & hawing while I talk.

Topics vary widely, from benchwork to DCC to planning to updates of various ongoing projects. Content is largely generated from listener feedback; I'm never quite sure what will be discussed.

light work

Imagine my horror when I took the module set to the most recent exhibition, only to discover that the scenic work I'd done was completely the wrong colour under proper lighting conditions. So much for 'making do' with what I had.

Installation of two single fluorescent fixtures, equipped with daylight tubes, over the modelling bench in the shop has revealed exactly what I suspected; namely, that it's a miserable dark pit. I'll need at least one more single fixture to provide ambient light just for the bench area.

The daylight tubes certainly render much better colour than the mishmash of incandescent bulbs which were in the track lighting that I tore out. In addition to the overheads, there are two daylight incandescent swing arm lamps pointed directly at the bench's work surface which are the all-important task lighting part of the equation. There's no sense in mixing colours from the various bulbs in the shop itself so I'm trying to install all 'daylight' sources regardless of fixture.

A tawdry chandelier (? = don't ask) still has to be removed, and three or four more fluorescent fixtures will have to be installed to provide ambient light the lathe & mill end of the shop. Proper task lighting will still have to be situated at each tool to brighten the jobs at hand.

It may seem like a lot of bother to swap out light fixtures and add a bunch of goose-neck or swing arm lamps but, in the end, if you can't see what you're doing the jobs will be that much harder to complete.