MSRaynsford

The upgraded vale box needed some hinges for the lid so I revamped these laser cut hinges  to be the appropriate shape for the new lid. The lid will still be limited as to how far it opens which is far enough to stay up on it's own but not so far that the lid snaps off backwards.

A custom boxed needs a custom logo and before I accepted the job I ran this trial piece to make sure that the vale logo would come out OK. The Leetro controller doesn't really do greyscale engraving so I used Paint.net  with a Halftone plugin  to convert the image into black dots of differing sizes which I could engrave. The lettering merged into the background so before I removed it from the machine I isolated the text in paint.net and traced it in  inkscape  using trace bitmap  to get me some vector artwork which I could use to draw a line around the text. It really made it pop. I think in the final version I'll turn the power up on the engrave but thunderbirds are go and I'm happy to accept the job knowing I can make it work.

I reboxed my Vale Storage , I wanted to make the mana/coin storage more accessible so that's now in a tray that can pull out from underneath. The other racks sit neatly inside but they've all been moved up to the same height, this allows me to have a bit more storage underneath them. I can stash all my really important things in there. Expect more of this shortly because when the Vale organisers saw it they decided that they wanted their own box and there is a remake already under way.

While cutting Sams new oak leaf design I decided it would be worth trying on Kitronik's Oak veneered MDF material . Real wood veneers are really nice to cut and these designs look great in real wood.

My Friend Sam was lamenting the loss of laser cutter access so I invited her round to use my laser for a day. She makes really lovely acrylic jewellery available under the brand of shinyshinythingsandstuff . It's probably the closest I'll get to having a guest post on my blog, I was busy tidying up the garage around her while she made a whole pile of things for future sale.

The second part of the Basket Hilt  that I sadly missed from the todo list. Cut as a mirrored pair so they can be layered up and have engraved side out on both sides.

Pretty much the same arrangement as yesterday but with a classic American stop sign.