Looks like another rabbit hole, who'll admit it?

So the wife and my daughter came home with this today.

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In case it's not clear, it's a dollhouse. In fairness, it doesn't say it on the box but it's every day, all the time, 150% a dollhouse.

We were in Hobby Lobby a week or so and they showed me these all excited and all the paraphernalia and the stuff that goes with them and I have to admit it looked like fun building it and putting together all the miniature stuff. It occurred to me that it sounded like a rabbit hole that some of the SRP members could fall down.
So, let's see who's secure enough in their masculinity to admit it?????

Honestly, i've alway thought i would enjoy making minitures. I've heard that a well done miniture can bring as much as the full size funiture. But what would my friends think? (says the man who is a non athletic, non competitive, artistic type) :)
Maybe i could make a log cabin for my G.I Joe?

Well, there's all kinds of "Hobbies" that are just money pits. Some of those miniature house things are designed more for kids and some are designed for very serious hobbyists.

Yeah, now if i built it and then played with it, that would just be weird. :)

Now we need to build super tiny straight razors to go into the tiny miniature bathroom along with tiny brush, strop and hones...

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Originally Posted by rodb

Now we need to build super tiny straight razors to go into the tiny miniature bathroom along with tiny brush, strop and hones...

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Waaaayyyy ahead of you there on that chain of thought.

I used to have a rather elaborate HO train layout, complete with background scenery, buildings, figures, cars and trucks, weathered rolling stock, etc. That was 30-40 years ago before my eyesight got too bad to do the detailed work required.

I built a doll house kit for my granddaughter. It was about 24×30 on a plywood deck painted green for grass with bushes. Painted and walpaper walls including floor and cieling trim. Gingerbread moldings on the outsides with fake brick siding. Carpeted stair case. Etc, etc...

Damn thing took me 3 weeks to build. Then the wife bought low cost furniture pieces to put in it. So much money wrapped up in this thing. She played with it for a month at most. It took up a corner in the living room just sitting there. One day i came home and noticed it gone. The wife took it to goodwill.

It was fun to build but after that it was just something in the way.

When I get finished goofing around with the full sized versions, it could be a lot of fun. I think that the hard core miniature collector and fabricators will be quite certain that they are not doll houses though. I think that if I had time it could be fun to get into the details of architecture, sort of like the miniature boat builders, it’s all about the details.

Using the term "miniature" for these dollhouses makes me smile. Here are some other terms it brings to mind.

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Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Using the term "miniature" for these dollhouses makes me smile. Here are some other terms it brings to mind.

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Wow Paul.

I'm Gravitationally Challenged, Economically Challenged, Energtically declined and according to the the card in the car, I'm also Physically Challenged.

Thats a few from the list the list, what did I win?

There are well established and prolific miniature tool makers, some of which have web sites of how to. Paul Hamler, John Maki, and Marco Terenzi come to mind. There are even miniature knife makers, Joseph Rodgers was well known for their miniatures. Wayne Driskill is a renown Collector/Dealer of miniature firearms that handles only museum quality miniatures and is an expert in the field. He also has a list or several arms miniature makers.

Paul has a remarkably interesting YouTube channel. His scaled miniatures are very collectable. He also makes scaled miniature rifles and pistols with removable magazines. There are others that have made custom and production runs of miniature tools mostly hand planes, over the years and they are highly collectable and command equally high prices. The detail is stunning on most of them.

Recently there is a guy who with his daughter made a Woodworking shop for her Barbie and posted on Instagram (Barbie of all trades).

A bunch of the online/social media woodworking/makers got involved and are now making scaled miniature tools for the Barbie Workshop. It even made the pages of Lost Art Press. (An Interview with Barbie of Barbie Woodshop)

His site is amazing, the amount of detail he has put into it, he has even reduced photos and posters to scale in the background of the shop. It has become a thing. He and his daughter also make stop action videos of Barbie at work in the shop, yet another slippery crevasse,

Hamler’s site is addicting and a lot of his processes and tools translate well to razor restoration, as he makes many of his specialty tools. (Paul Hamler).

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Originally Posted by RayClem

I used to have a rather elaborate HO train layout, complete with background scenery, buildings, figures, cars and trucks, weathered rolling stock, etc. That was 30-40 years ago before my eyesight got too bad to do the detailed work required.

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There is an antique store in my area that was at one time also a Christmas House. Fabulous and large place. On the second floor they had an entire room approximately 750-1000 SQ ft with a train set up like you described. It had mountain passes with tunnels, water features, elaborate bridges, a turntable, the list goes on. I could stand in there and watch it for hours.