Creation of a Homeword - Interlude

I've been squirreling around in my basement, trying to coalesce or coagulate or co-something-or-another all of the junk I've collected over the years.

Some of my junk.

 I've been waiting for this moment, really.  Early in the ork days of 1988 I started to modify junk to make my own models.  The first model I built was from an empty NyQuil bottle I fished out of the trash, glued on two pill bottles for engines, and attached wires to hold the orks on.  I wish I still had that model, even though it was crap.

Over the years I got rid of my "trash models," including several "Speed Stick" tanks made from underarm deodorant toss-aways.  My days of 40k waned in the early '90s, and my collection of random ork figs and their fleet of propylene glycol powered skimmers disappeared after being abandoned at a friend's house.

The idea stuck with me.  I had made my own "tanks" with legos as a child; and played with "little green soldiers" manning those tanks.  I always loved a game where I could build my own things. 

Uline catalogs, Hillman stickers, and a newspaper clipping from the heady days of Kim Jong Il.

 Since picking up the hobby (habit) again in 1989, I've always kept an eye out for the possible conversion.  At the time I worked at a hardware store in Milwaukee.  Immediately the old-school 40k player reignited when the manager and I started playing again.  We started making terrain from all kinds of things that were lying around in the basement, old gutters, mis-tint paint, concrete, really anything we could get our hands on.  In the Hillman aisle of nuts-and-bolts-for-5 cents-a-piece I put together my first Zzap gun, since they didn't have a model for orks that I could find at the time.  I also started picking up things that could possibly be used for conversions and model building, even the stickers and labels that would go on products or display counters.

Anyways.  I've been collecting junk for years now, keeping it in boxes.  I've been tearing out pages from chemical supply catalogs, or office supply ordering forms, and saving newspaper clippings that have interesting graphics on them.

Last few nights and tonight, I've been getting it all together and laying it out on the table, preparing for the day where I and a few brave epoxy tubes ready to give it all will dive into making some really gritty terrain for JYLN-55.

All the stuff that has "roundness" to it.  Yup, I kept the air-pump to the inflatable mattress that blew a bearing, there's a few smoke detectors in there (radioactive!) and a ton of stuff I've found while bike-commuting to work.

I guess the point of this is:  I'm always collecting stuff for 40k, 24-hours-a-day.  I'll stop and pick something up that other people will throw out, I'll even tear stuff off of televisions or appliances that are sitting on the curb, or in my house but not working.  Almost everything, when covered with black primer, washed in boltgun metal and set out of scale looks like something from the 41st millennium.