MSRaynsford

A variation on the bigger boxes, practice definitely makes these things easier. I need to start learning some parametric drawing programs like OpenSCAD  but in the meantime I stuck with lengthy redraws. This box follows very similar construction guides as the other boxes but is slightly simpler internally and has about half the volume. The logo on the top was acheived with multiple passes at different powers and then outline to increase the definition. A nice little box I'm very pleased with. ( svg here ) As I sat and worried about how I was going to catch up on project 52 and I looked for inspiration on my lists of ideas I realised I had actually started a dozen projects and not finished them yet. It's given me a little burst of activity this week but I still have to finish 3 projects a week to get to the end in time. Busy times. 39 Projects/ 46 Weeks

We play a lot of board games in our house and Settlers of Catan is a firm favourite. (It's a great introduction to the world of German style board games, if you don't know what I'm talking about just buy it anyway and you won't regret it). There are 6 stacks of playing cards used to represent the different resources in the game and these can become a bit jumbled when placed on the table. A couple of people have already made card trays and this one in particular came from a thingiverse item .  Even though I started with an existing design I ended up redrawing 90% of it (so it's now also worthy of a 10 hour project). I rounded the corners off the rack and tilted the whole thing up at a slight angle to hold the cards better. I changed the material size (3mm instead of 4mm) and I had to clean up the images for each of the wood veneers (It still had remnants of the watermark all over it). Each wood veneer is a different material and therefore cuts/etches differ...

The last time I was buying Hobarts laser ply  I ended up with quite a few warped sheets and some big knots, I wasn't impressed and I've steered clear of it for a while. Because HPC is still out of their nice ply and I was buying things from Hobarts anyway I thought I'd give it another shot. These sheets are much better, relatively flat and a very nice surface. It's proper 3mm instead of 2.7mm and it's sturdy which means I have to cut it at 12mm/s instead of 25mm/s. It would have its uses where you need something solid and strong. I'm beginning to appreciate all the different types of wood for what they are and I'm building up quite the library of materials.

A significantly smaller achievement, I revamped the second marble machine at the same time as the first one  and I removed the screw and nut that was forming the handle opting for a wooden one instead. This kit is available for purchase through my shop  http://msraynsford.myshopify.com/products/marble-machine-2

In a throw back to an  earlier project (#7, wow did I really make these less than a year ago). I took on the challenge of revamping my first marble machine. I've been to half a dozen maker faires this year and it became apparent that the original design had a few quirks. You can draw an arrow on the handle to indicate which way it should be turned but nobody looks at it. The result was balls spewing across the table. The balls were quite sensitive around the spiral and a little bump or a slight angle would cause the marbles to skip some of the track. The nuts and bolts and screws are quite unattractive and they take time to bag up in the kits (plus add cost) The whole machine felt a little lopsided because the spiral stuck out to one side. The revamp addresses all of these problems but it took significantly longer to do than I was expecting. I had to redraw every single part of the machine and rearrange the cutting layout for the new pieces. The result is a machine th...