Read this thing online a while back about how some people actually prefer the orange peel texture? Crazy. They said it hides imperfections and makes the paint job less likely to show small scratches. Makes sense I guess. But man, for a smooth showroom finish you definitely want to wet sand with 1500 or 2000 grit. Doing that by hand after 80 grit though. That's just painful. Your arms must have been dead by Sunday night.

That "eyeball the hex shapes" thing is right, the lack of borders actually makes water and desert tiles harder to spot from across the table which forces everyone to pay closer attention and keeps the game moving.

Jerry at the Phoenix hangar knew what he was talking about, that's for sure. @avery721 asked about turning the iron temp down too, which is another good trick I had to learn the hard way. Getting told you're working like a dentist stings, but man, sometimes the truth hurts and helps.

Started messing with a similar trick after seeing a buddy's desk at his woodshop. He labels his bins with little drawn symbols instead of writing out "screws" or "nails". A squiggly line for sandpaper, a zigzag for clamps. It looks like a toddler's drawing but he never grabs the wrong drawer. Makes me think we're all just looking for ways to cut through the noise. Like how I organize my phone apps by color instead of category because it's faster to find the red one for Spotify than to remember if it's under "music" or "entertainment". Your print shop trick proves it again. Sometimes the weirdest system sticks because your brain doesn't have to translate anything.

My buddy Dave did the JMT and had a similar thing happen - his filter broke day 3, stopped worrying about where he'd sleep, and said he met more people and saw cooler stuff than any trip he'd overplanned.