MSRaynsford

It's almost as if we bought the Blacknose laser based on the fact it would fit in my car so neatly. This is JustAddSharks  demo machine that we actually bought a long time ago  but now it's finally been liberated and replaced with a new demo machine so that it can be put to work in my garage. I'm not entirely sure how things are going to fit in there yet but it will be better once I get rid of the HPC3060. If anyone wants a second hand HPC3060, 50W, 300x600mm  now is the time to speak up (msraynsford@gmail.com), I'll be hoping to get £3000 for it (£3900 brand new). It will be cleaned thoroughly and it will come with brand new, spare mirror, lens and laser tube.

Eldritch has done an fantastic job painting and latexing the sword I laser etched for them. The hilt is also laser cut and looks absolutely amazing, apparently the gold and blue was a real pain to paint but it was definitely worth the effort. I'm loving working with them to make these beautiful things.

There are blogs of other makers that I really enjoy reading. Chris Holden of Nerdclub (http://nerdclub-uk.blogspot.co.uk/) is well worth reading while he endeavours to make futuristic interactive style board games using war gaming models. I can't wait to see a working prototype in person. Anyway, this evening he was working on some roof shingles for a building that he was going to laser cut. His usual laser cutter is currently out of order so I stepped in and surprised him by doing the cuts for him tonight in several different materials. My favourite is the bottom row using 0.8mm spruce veneer and bit more delicate but the thickness is more appropriate for the scale.  

I've been trying to etch a phoenix for Eldritch , it's not been going so well because I can't get the right level of detail, this one was interesting though so I thought I'd post my mistake. I think what happened is that I engraved around the outside of the phoenix to leave it standing proud and then I managed to engrave the phoenix anyway. The result is a little bobble around the outside of the shape presumably where some of the foam expanded on the first pass and then was no longer under the beam for the second pass. It's an interesting effect I'll just wait and see if Simon can do anything useful with it.

I cut a handful more castles for the Nissed Pewt Tavern . I believe these will be details added to chairs but I'll update when the finished pics come through. Not sure if I ever followed up the finished signs so here it is again, apologies if you've seen it before.

I had a custom request for a double wide useless machine with wise/unwise and a few other engravings around the edge. It's actually a really fun little machine and I love getting the chance to put other peoples ideas into action. The customer was very happy with the final item and so am I, I'm thinking about fixing up a kit and putting it into the store.

Inspired by this water effect  and ending up looking very similar to this design  I sliced a 3D model of a landscape using 123D make and then basically redrew everything in inkscape once I had that basic shape (for some reason 123D make decided to round off the corners of my cube post slicing). It's cut in 3mm laser ply and 3mm blue tinted perspex. As each layer of perspex is added the colour deepens and you get this nice depth effect.