MSRaynsford

I am falling behind on this years large projects , I've been working on projects 9 and 10 simultaneously and although neither of them are ready yet this one is slowly coming together. I'm making an Bar top arcade cabinet for myself based on the Clarkcade cabinets . I just got the buttons into the front panel to see what it would look like while I'm waiting for some vinyl wrap  (to hide those screw heads). 

The Glowforge laser cutter is currently crowdfunding itself over in America. It looks like a good piece of kit and I'm particularly interested in the autofocusing Z axis so I signed up fairly early on. There is a section in the forums about things you'd make on the machine, I feel wood veneers are massively neglected for these low power machines so I made this nice sampler to demonstrate what can be done. This box is made from Poplar ply, with a Walnut veneer on the front. The lettering is made from Bamboo veneer, the whole thing was sanded and oiled to finish it off nicely. Here is my referral link if you want to get yourself an extra $100 off the price of a Glowforge laser.

Make has this fun project to make some spooky mummy hands for Halloween. I borrowed one of Eli's arms, wrapped it in masking tape and then cut it free again. They both loved it and it gave us something to do on a wet afternoon.

A quick and simple speech bubble to be held aloft in wedding photos. The inner paper is actually a mask because the bubble will eventually be chalkboard black with a white edge to make it stand out. Guests can then chalk on a new message as they wish. Sounds like a fun idea for wedding photos.

My friend Steph  does some wonderful pen and ink drawings which she posts up to Facebook occasionally. Somehow I missed this one way back in February but as soon as I saw it I knew it would make an awesome lasercut. The artwork is all hers, I just vectorised the lines, by hand, to create some fancy line art. Automatic conversion would make 1 line either side of the pen marks in the drawing and I knew it had to be a single line per stroke to look right. It's made from 2mm ply wood , Mahogany and Oak and backed with 0.8mm birch, I think it would make a nice brooch. Next time I might do the chin in Oak too.

I was asked if it was possible to engrave Wax candles in the laser. So I grabbed a pillar candle from the nearest shop and whacked it under the laser using the rotary attachment. We gave it several attempts slowly turning up the power and down the speed and the answer is 'No' wax just melts and bubbles away without really engraving. I'm sure if we have a silver or gold candle, those are only coloured on the top few layers and you could probably cut that away but plain colour candles don't work.