MSRaynsford

I have recently been inspired by the work of Diego from the Engravers Dungeon (brought to my attention courtesy of the Laser Cut Stuff blog ). He's been doing some amazing engraving of custom artworks, he's really managed to bring out the best of the wood using different colours but what really caught my eye are the two significantly different colours of laser cut. The large areas are engraved to create the typical 'brown' engraving where the wood grain can show through. The details however have this amazing 'black' engraving effect, he's understandably protective of his methods but it got me thinking about how it's done. The laser cutter has 2 main modes of operation it can trace out a shape and cut it out or it can engrave an area where it moves over every 'pixel' within an image and puts a single dot onto each spot. Fancy laser cutters are able to vary the power of this spot to produce greyscale images, the Leetro controller (what I h

From my little bits of wargaming experience it appears that each of the models sits on a small base which needs decorating which can be done with little disks and there are trays to move whole units of models around at once (even if just for display). My idea was to combine those two things together and make bases and trays where the pattern continues, as though the whole unit were on a marbled floor. Not sure if this is a desirable thing, let me know.

Eli wanted to dress as the Grashopper from James and the Giant Peach  to celebrate Roald Dahl day at school this year. We put together a paper mache mask based on a balloon and cut about to achieve the desired shape. He's very slowly writing an instructable about the process but I thought I'd include it her for the meantime. We did laser cut a monocle for it, which either counts as overkill or finishing touches. He was very happy with the finished result and I got to play with my new airbrush for various paint effects.

Another wargaming build, it amazes me how much variation there is in the way of trays and arrangements and models. It's no wonder there are dozens of companies already doing these things and yet people still ask me for something different. These 25mm trays have a hole in the bottom for a 2mm magnet which helps the models stay in place. 5 slots holds a single squad at a time. ( svg here )

Continuing my work on the craziest cakes ever, Dawn and I recently made this Frankenstein cake for the preview night of Young Frankenstein at the Garrick Theatre . After I faffed around with various lifting mechanisms for a while I ended up buying a large linear actuator from ebay, it's probably overkill but the weight of cake really adds up after a while. I made the arms detachable which is easier for icing. The knife switch actually controls the motion, it's a double pole double throw so flipping it over changes the direction of the motion. Dawn from Dinkydoodle Designs did the hard part of covering the whole thing in cake and presented it to the cast and crew.