Good times at the bench

I've loved workbench photos since the moment I happened across the very popular and long-running thread on Hyperscale.  Here were these oddly fascinating glimpses of other mad scientists' secret laboratories, with their arcane and ingenious organizational elements, an endless variety of tools and supplies, and very often a huge, looming stash of kits surrounding or even dwarfing the work area.  Guys with six, seven, ten partly finished kits lying around, homemade spray booths, antique stereo gear, cats, empty beer cans...just great eye candy.  So finally today I remembered to grab the camera when I headed down to the paint shop.

Most of the basement is unfinished and crammed with stuff, but this corner sees some action from time to time.  You can tell I had a cleanup recently.

Spray booth made from an old rangehood, vented outdoors, and homebuilt workbench made from two old solid-core doors that were in the basement when we moved in.

Iwata HP-CS clean and in pieces.  Love this airbrush.  Easy to use, works great, never gives me problems.

Dragon 1/72 Ha-go with yellow disruptive stripe masked and second colour sprayed.  This kit was really fun and quick to build; a short week of evening sessions and it was down in the paint shop.  Using Tamiya acrylics as I just happened to have all the colours, and they spray beautifully.  After this photo I spent an hour masking with more Blu-tack, followed by five or six minutes spraying IJA Green...and twelve minutes cleaning the airbrush.

Tamiya 1/72 Shinden with fuselage hinomaru area undersprayed white.  This is such an old kit, I don't know why I decided to build it when I have three of the Hasegawa Shinden in the stash.  Fit was generally poor and it took weeks of fill/sand/repeat to finish building.  Using mainly White Ensign enamels, which I was lucky enough to get before they stopped shipping internationally.  Had bad experience trying to use Mr. Surfacer as a primer, but moving along better since.  Decided to model this one in flight, so I scratchbuilt a blurred prop that hasn't made it down to the paint shop yet.