Greetings from Mexico!

This doesn't have anything to do with miniatures and gaming, but I am presently in Mexico. The city of Pachuca, to be exact. Business or pleasure, you ask? Well, considering that I am here to do research, I guess both. My research is part of my business and is still (though, sometimes a struggle) my pleasure. I've been coming here to the university and to do field work almost annually, for the past 9 years. Usually I come for two weeks, but for a number of reasons, one of them being budgetary, I could only manage one week.

Sorry, no pictures yet, I just arrived. One thing that I hope to do that is mini-related, is to get lots of pictures of various shops and building for ideas for for constructing new 1/300 buildings. I wanted to get some in Mexico City where I landed, but my camera was packed with my baggage in the trunk of my colleague's car. Plus, I was rather zoned-out from the flight (I still am).

Hopefully, I will collect a lot of data for my research, and get some good shots of interesting and useful architecture.

Modern River Monitors Update

I haven't completed the plans of my river monitors except for the shape and size of the hull. I decided that I didn't want to use foam core board again like I did on the patrol boat. While visiting family in Chicago this past week, I used my father's scroll saw to cut out the hulls. My father, until he had to get on coumadin, was an avid woodworker with lots of various tools. Unfortunately, all my father had on hand that was right thickness was an old sheet of pegboard. I went ahead any used it. I decided to cut out two hulls in case I flub one of them up. After tracing the hulls onto the pegboard and cutting them out, I corrected any slight errors due to cutting and smoothed the sides out using various riffle files that he had. Even though pegboard is made out of pressed fibers, they came out looking pretty smooth, and I don't need to cover the sides of the hull with paper like I did with the patrol boat.

My next step will be to finish up the plans and start working on the rest of the boats.