Make and Mend

Yesterday was largely occupied with spousal duties which in this case involved a trip to a social event,  not of the wedding variety, an hour & 1/2 away along backroads. Today we gave ourselves the day off. So "make and mend" in modern navy lingo but also in another, older fashion as in making things and mending personal effects.

In my case, my wargames table.

Last year, I set myself the task of building a sit down solo wargame table. Experiments have shown that while various sizes of grid square are best for various things,  4" was the best all around size for me. I also found that while smaller grids could be made to work, 12x12 was the smallest that I was prepared to accept. At the same time, 12x4" was too wide for a sit down table but that  12x9cm was just possible if one stood up to reach the farthest row. It was one or the other so I chose the sit down table and proceeded.  Suddenly I could realized that I could recover some lost wall space for shelves by moving one of my bookcases to the middle of the room and using it to support one end of the table as I had done previously. So I adapted the plan .

Once all was done I was happy with the result but it was painfully obviously that while you could perch on a tall barstool you could not sit comfortably and play. It was also obvious that the table was about 6" shorter than the bookcase it rested on and it didn't take long to realize that with the table being several inches higher and geometry and my shortlegs being what they are, I was no longer able to reach all the way across the table, even when  I stretched my utmost.  So much for the sit down table, I might as well have left the table at 4 feet wide! Ah well. No way to stick the trimmed  bits back, press on.

Several games later I had proved to myself that the table would indeed work but that my suspicions were right. The grid was a VERY tight fit for many units and much, if not most, of my secenery needed adjustment or replacement.  I started thinking whistfully of  4" squares and looking at various scraps lying about waiting and  suddenly I thought "why can't I stick a bit on the side? I already patched back on a 2" wide strip?"

Restored to 5ft x 4ft.
An initial overcoat of paint dulls the old grid and I'm almost ready to start adding a new grid to be followed by detailing later. I need to get it playable by tomorrow night to get ready to host an imminent pbem game.

So that's how I spent the morning.  Luckily, being a pack rat I stil had a strip, never even painted, that I had cut off the original 4x8 sheet when building the 6x8 table in 2009, and some more bits of the 1" pine shelving that frames the top, and some metal brackets from a long gone 1979 water bed. (Did I mention pack rat? Its both nature and nurture)  Needs a bit of crack filling but its had an overcoat of random green and in an hour or so will be ready for the new 4" grid. Its only an extra 2.5sqft or not quite 10% expansion but the modified table looks ginormous to me now even though its the same number of grid squares.

I might not be so hot at planning but improvising, kludging and mending, I can do.