MSRaynsford

It's the festive season so I made this cute little Christmas tree for another project I was working on. It turned out so nicely I gave it a little revamp and thought I'd offer it up here as well. Hope everyone is well and enjoying the festivities.  It's made from 3mm Poplar ply and assembles with press fit joints. The rings just rest on the branches at an angle of your choosing. ( svg here )  

The Dislocation Puzzle  has a ten digit lock in the bottom of the game, solving the codes of the game gives you the answer to open this lock and it's a fairly standard sort of mechanism (I may release it in some form at some point). Each of the code wheels inside the lock is unique, each lock opens at a different angle so that the wood grain doesn't give away the solution (I'm mean like that). So this means I end up with ten very similar looking wheels produced in quantity during the assembly process. To help me stay organised I designed this little tray to keep all the wheels separated. I've made similar trays before and they're usually quite a basic design, the trays I made for my Lego lack coffee table  are still one of the most requested items on my blog. Over time though the bottom of the trays have warped and come away from the adjoining sections. This is largely due to the sheer volume of Lego but I guess age and children leaning on them have a part to play.

There's just about twelve hours left on my latest puzzle campaign and it's been another amazing success. Three hundred and thirty backers have currently supported me to get this puzzle produced and I've spent the majority of the last two weeks pushing the laser hard to cut puzzles and pushing myself to assemble them. I promised to ship one hundred puzzles on the day that Kickstarter pays and a further one hundred before Christmas but I've actually managed to build two hundred puzzles already. I reckon I've got a further two weeks before KS actually pays out so with any luck I'll be able to get another hundred built and possibly all of them can ship at the same time. Either way I'll have finished production by the end of November (baring laser problems) and the whole campaign can be wrapped and shipped before Christmas which is a big win for me. There's still time to get in on it too, until 6pm this evening when the campaign officially ends. https://www.k

  I've been trying to enjoy my time off after finishing the fulfilment for the Loki project , but time off means thinking about the next project and the new puzzles that need to be designed. While we're still in the process of moving house I can't launch into fulfilment for another big game but I have created this smaller, cheaper puzzle that fits perfectly through your letter boxes. The game is currently taking around 4-5 hours to complete so even though it's small in size it's not small in gameplay. It's also been designed as a prelude to the next big game 'Don't shoot the messenger' so while it's not essential to play this first it does add to that story. If you're interested, the pre launch page is already up and I'm hoping to go live some time over the weekend. I've also managed to squeeze a few puzzles into the prelaunch page so go check it out. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/msraynsford/dislocation-a-mechanical-puzzle-gam

  I rescued this arcade cabinet from a Leicester Hackspace member who no longer wanted it. All of the console components had been kept and the unit was basically a screen in a box with some additional LED strips. I only needed it for a single weekend event so I was fortunate that another hackspace member also desired the cabinet after me and he had all of the electronics components to go back inside it. My job was to simply wire it all up and make something to house it all in. I decided to make a stand alone unit to fit inside the hole where the old joysticks used to be. This 2 player, 6 button arrangement works relatively well, holds two usb input pcbs and a raspberry pi. This means it can be removed and connected to any other TV using the HDMI. I chose fluorescent green Perspex for the detailed artwork. The single lines really catch the light and show up well. I kept the engraving to a minimum on the circle details so that it didn't take forever to cut and the whole thing came ou

I now have a complete set of 4 different pumpkin designs that I'm happy enough to release. I tweaked all the narrow parts to make sure that everything cuts cleanly and all the narrow parts are strong enough. The design is cut from 3mm poplar ply, painted orange. The files for these pumpkin boxes are available for purchase from my Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1303583572/four-halloween-pumpkin-box-plans-gift?ref=listings_manager_grid I'm releasing the basic box shape for you to add your own pumpkin faces too, if you make and design one then please leave me a comment I'd love to see them. ( svg here )  

I wanted these boxes to be coloured rather than plain wood so I reached for the acrylic paints and mixed up a nice shade of orange paint for them. The colour came out nice with some good coverage and uniform all over so I scrapped some off again before it had set. The results speak for themselves and I'm really happy with the textured style for the panels. I made sure to align the streaks vertically on the sides of the box during cutting.