In the Interim:
5 January 2012: More on the TSC Supplier's Guide
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In
the Interim
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1976-1978
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1976-1982
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In the Interim, Volume 7, 1982-1983
Volume 7:1 (November, 1982)
In The Interim...
Don't tell me! I already know what your reaction was when you first pulled this issue of TSC from the folder or took it off the magazine rack. What happened to the cover? Where's the color? The answer lies in the other changes that you won't find in this or future issues of The Scale Cabinetmaker. You will find the same number of pages of article content, the same attention to detail, the same use of black and white photographs to explain rather than to simply decorate and the same weight and quality of paper to assure that your copy will hold up throughout repeated use on the workbench. You can count on that, but for this issue and several to come you will not find the color cover which has presented TSC's face to the world since its inception in 1976.
Some of you may remember one of the more successful advertising campaigns ever undertaken in American merchandising back during the war years of the 1940's when the American Tobacco Company dropped one of the printed colors from its cigarette pack design...and "Lucky Strike green went to war." I'm certain that there was some saving in the revised color scheme which left the familiar red and black bulls-eye design but exchanged the surrounding green field for unprinted white. They may have simply wanted to clean up the design with no eye toward budget at all. But in either case, the contents remained the same although the wrapper changed. In one sense we have one the same thing...but not without reluctance and a feeling of trepidation.
The simple fact is that TSC (along with most other integers in the economy) is caught in the contradiction of a period of "dis-inflation": a period when the rate of inflation has decline but specific production costs (paper, ink, postage, services) have continued to increase. What that boils down to is that producers are hard-pressed to pass increased production costs along to consumers without pricing the product beyond the reach of many. The other horn in that dilemma is the prospect of so diminishing the quality of what is produced that no sane consumer would want the product at any cost.
I have known for the past year that short of some general, but unexpected, turnabout in the national economy, this dilemma for TSC could only become increasingly acute. While some of you have volunteered the suggestion that TSC should increase its price rather than diminish its quality, others among TSC's relatively large segment of subscribers in the retirement years have returned subscription renewal cards noting with regret that even the cost of the subscription at the current rate is beyond the budget at the moment.
So our problem has been to find economies in TSC's production that will not threaten the level of quality that we have tried to maintain from the outset but which will contribute to its survival beyond the limits of this current economic cycle. The obvious answer lay in the four-color printing. And so, at least for the time being...or in the interim... "Lucky Strike green has gone to war."
I cannot pretend that any of us here...Helen, myself, Don & Cindy, Bob...like it all that much. We have used the color cover to provide additional information about the content inside TSC--how a project should look when it is done. And I wouldn't attempt to persuade any reader that less is more. But I am convinced that one thing which does distinguish the builder in us from the collector is that when "push comes to shove" the modeler would rather like to know how to build something than to look at the finished product. When it is possible, or on occasions when it is necessary, color will return to TSC. But in the interim we won't tamper with the quality of the how-to.
All of us at TSC extend to you our warmest greetings in this holiday season and our wishes that the coming year will be filled with more projects than you can possibly complete.
Jim Dorsett
Volume 7:2 (February, 1983)
One of the bits of information that resulted from our Reader Survey a year ago is that a significant portion of TSC's readers make at least some miniatures for sale through dealers or at local shows. Some are professional modelers; others simply sell and occasional piece to feed their hobby. Whatever the case may be, if you fit that category there is a most interesting and informative article in the January, 1983 issue of Miniature Dealer that you should read, addressing the question "Should I sell through shows or through a miniature shop?": "Dealers vs. Cottage Manufacturers: How Both Sides Can Come Out Winners." Beginning with the professional guidelines developed by CIMTA (the Cottage Industry Miniatures Trade Association) for craftspersons who market their products, the author, Jane Mitchell, explores the question of direct sales vs. wholesaling to dealers. The Article provides a cogent discussion of factors which can produce and effective relationship between craftsperson an dealer and I commend it to you!
One of the eternal riddles that never seems to approach solution is how to make the breakfast toast an marmalade come out even so that the last piece of one exactly matches the last dab of the other. In the past seven years I have added to that riddle of how to make time, energies, and space come out even in the production of TSC. Over the course of the nine to twelve months before an issue of TSC appears there are a number of projects on our workbench and those of contributing authors. As these work their way down to completion with the bugs worked out, the article is scheduled for publication. Plans are drawn and photos taken, copy is set and Bob Turner designs the article into an eye-appealing space that will fill a portion of TSC's 56 pages of content. Ant that's when the riddle of making things come out even returns to haunt the editor. Some projects that appeared to be well in hand develop glitches and are delayed or some articles which at first blush appeared to call for lesser amount of page space gobble up much more than their share when all the photographs and drawings necessary for the project are laid out. Then having been lulled into a false sense of security and omniscience by a run of two or three TSC issues without problems, the editor's toast and marmalade problem pops up again.
In this issue, the problem was the last installment of the Victorian store series. As you've noticed the installment is missing and will now be concluded in the May (7:3) TSC. Two things happened. First the installation of some operating ceiling fans in the first floor of the store developed some glitches and while I kept promising Helen that I would get to the workbench tomorrow to work them out (while the rest of the store project was on hold) tomorrow didn't arrive until it was too late to complete the project in time for publication in February. And the length of the baby carriage article ate too much of the issue's space to allow room for the mansard roof as well. So while I'm not sure whether the mansard roof and the ceiling fans are toast or marmalade, they are the dab left on this February's plate and will be consumed in May. To those of you who have been following the Victorian store series, I offer a rather lame apology.
Jim Dorsett
Volume 7:3 (May, 1983)
In my entire life, having lived in an array of places, from Montana to Virginia, I have never lived or worked outside the Mississippi River watershed. When we moved to Virginia, I thought that surely would do the trick. But the creek flowing through our property, Sinking Creek, flows into the New River, which after several name changes flows into the Ohio and thence to the Mississippi. And that doesn't change a wit from the location of our first home 30 years ago near Big Spring Creek in Montana, which flowed into the Judith River, which emptied into the Missouri and thence the Mississippi.
When we moved the TSC office from Pembroke to Christiansburg, 25 miles further east last summer, I thought that surely we would finally have exceeded the Mississippi's boundaries. But not quite. Christiansburg straddles the Easter watershed between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains and just 800 yards further east, the water flows into the Roanoke River an on into the Atlantic. What does all that have to do with TSC and miniatures? Nothing directly, except that these arcane facts may presage a set of possible events which will finally see at least the TSC offices moved from the present location (where in addition to the Pembroke phone and address either Helen or I can be reached) to what we hope will become the journal's permanent home...three or four hundred yards beyond the Eastern divide: the old Cambria Depot.
Built in the 1860's as a freight and passenger depot on the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, this old board and batten Victorian Italianate structure has passed through the hands of the Norfolk & Western RR and until a year ago was used as a bulk fertilizer warehouse. Then disaster jeopardized its continued existence: a runaway N&W locomotive smashed in 30 feet of the warehouse, knocking the rest of the warehouse off its footings but leaving the passenger end unscathed. Since then it has sat, derelict and penent, threatened with demolition by civic authorities to conform with local ordinance. It seemed a shame that such a lovely old structure should disappear forever. (How many buildings on your block are put together with hand-cut copper nails?) So we have launched an attempt to save and restore it with the hope of making it TSC's permanent home. So far we have arranged to acquire its remains, but how to find funds for the restoration and preservation of what is left of it is a knot we have yet to untie. But we believe we will...simply because it is one of those infrequent occasions in life when you find something that ought to be done for its own sake. And when we do, TSC will no longer confound you with address changes. Just write to: TSC. East of the Watershed.
Jim Dorsett
Editor's note: Unfortunately, Jim forgot to check the stream to the north on the other side of the tracks. Crab Creek flows west into the New River. Jim and Helen never managed to work outside of the Mississippi watershed, which ends 300 yards up the track from the depot. However, they did finally manage to live outside of the watershed by 25 feet, between 1983 and 1989. The marker for the Continental Divide was located in Helen's herb garden at the rear of their garage. The papers were signed and work started on the depot not long after the column went to press. They sold their house in Giles County, bought a smaller house in Christiansburg, and the difference went to restoring the grand old structure. The Cambria Depot is still the corporate headquarters for Dorsett Publications. (MHD)
Volume 7:4 (August, 1983)
During the first two years of TSC's life it carried a periodic column titled "To Err is Human," listing corrections of the copy that had appeared in previous issues. But with time we gained enough control over the composition/typesetting process through the installation of our own equipment that the number of typographical errors declined (although life will not be so long as for me to outlive the last opportunity to commit a typo!). And we gained enough experience as fledglings in the publishing world to forestall most of the more obvious editing errors that popped up at random in the early TSCs.
However, with the publication of the last issue (7:3), it became grievously and painfully apparent that I should brush the dust off "To Err is Human," power my face to cover the brilliant hues of acute embarrassment, and brave a paragraph or two on one of the grossest and most obvious errors that TSC has ever committed to print. For this issue at least In the Interim has a temporary, or so I hope, replacement.
I might have considered adopting the dubious wisdom in the adage "If you fall down while dancing, get up gracefully, and they'll think it is a new step" (Helen Dorsett, New Years Eve, 1966), but as both author and editor of the piece in which the error appeared that seemed ill-advised. As with most errors, its existence didn't sink in until the words had been carved in stone and were beyond retrieval. Then it virtually leapt off the page...and I began the count-down until the phone would begin to ring and letters to arrive. And they did.
The tenor of the correspondence was the same. "How could a publication to which we look for straight information make such a booboo?" In addition to the correction printed below, about all I can say is that it wasn't as easy as it looked.
As noted in the previous issue, TSC was in the process of moving its offices during the months preceding 7:3's publication. And as the final copy of the issue went into layout we decided that the time had come for us to move our residence from the country into town in order to cut down the time spent in a daily commute and a continuing division of editorial activities between town and country. However, the decision to sell a house is only the easiest part of the entire process, however painful that may have been. For then, urged on by anxious real estate agents, you are made aware of how much woodwork needs to be scrubbed, windows repaired, walls painted, leaking faucets and pipes put aright along with all the other glitches that time and familiarity had rendered invisible to your eyes but glaringly apparent to others.
In the midst of the maelstrom and with the issue due to go off to the printer (already behind schedule because of the office move) we found that the materials prepared for the issue simply would not fit into the required space in the layout. So in extremely short order I drafted, photographed, and wrote an article, "Multi-display Workhorse Transformer", that would fit the requisite space. It was an article that had been on the back burner for a long time...and was based on a number of AC and DC transformers we had built over the years for different applications. But somewhere in the varied distractions of the period the distinction between AC and DC was lost. What was described in the text and in Figure 9 was a 12.6VAC, 3 amp. transformer, but in every instance it was titled a 12VDC unit! (What was shown and described will work just fine for the lighting purposes described. But the mislabeling of the output as DC would cause problems in an application requiring direct current!). For the life of me I cannot explain, even to myself, how this departure from reality happened, but I can extend my apologies for so barefaced a mistake and squirm in the lengthening glow of its memory. And I can offer the following, brief explanation of the distinction between AC, which the transformer in 7:3 was, and DC, which it was not.
In order to change the alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) several alternatives can be pursued, all of which produce a different type of DC. By wiring a single diode into the output current (e.g. Radio Shack 276-1141 AMP 50PIV, 2 pcs.-$.79), half wave rectification is achieved. Full-wave rectification is achieved on a center-tapped transformer through the use of two diodes on the outer taps and a loud resistor on the center tap (actually full-wave pulsating direct current or PDC). And to rid yourself of the unwanted pulsation of the current a capacitor-resistor combination will do the trick. A more thorough treatment of these distinctions is called for, but having just moved our household three days ago, I would tempt fate by saying anything more until life has slipped into a more prosaic pattern.
And I hope that by Fall, this space will once more be occupied by "In the Interim."
Jim Dorsett
