MSRaynsford

It's Panto season and like previous panto seasons it wouldn't feel right without at least one crazy rushed cake contraption. This year the Theatre Royal  are putting on Cinderella so Dawn  decided to make a fancy carriage cake for them. Once I have designed a frame strong enough to hold a massive chunk of cake it only felt right to fit bearings into the wheels and have the cake able to roll along the table. It looks like the cake might have been trying to roll away in this shot. Cake and Public

As part of the revamp of the vale machine, I was asked to make several new panels. I had an idea for a very large hatch that could be used to send big things in and out of the machine. I wanted it to have a sturdy metal feel so I decorated it up in metallic paints with rust effects. The whole hatch is hinged so it lifts up and allows things (or people) access to the inside of the machine. When/if this gets used it'll be fun to see what happens, for now it's bolted shut with a few hex bolts so it's not immediately easy to open.

From Shadows Larp recently ran it's third event and I had the fun of making quite a few different props for them this time around. First up was this set of rad-field generators. Most of the shaped pieces are laser cut, the vertical poles are broom handles cut in half and the fluorescent orange core are stacked gears that were cut out of the cake rings . Texture was added to the base plate but refocusing the laser to make 5mm wide beam, this was quick and easy and showed through the paint finish. The whole unit was primed with grey paint and then sprayed loosely with army green cans, the lack of complete coverage actually gave it texture and interest. The poles were sprayed with metallic silver paint and the gears with the most fluorescent paint I could find. The upper part of the unit was only inserted loosely into the base so they could be dismantled for storage and removals. One lucky feature is that the two sides slotted together to take up half the space in sto...

A lot of the time I just make what I'm asked to make without delving into the details. These gaming tokens follow along those lines (Although I have been promised the rules at some point). They're cut from 9mm poplar ply to make them nice and chunky and I even managed to find 18 different colours to try for these sample sets. Each game requires 4 sets of 12 so I ended up making 4.5 sets for sample.

I made a second hive set  for a friend, this time I used Indian Rosewood dye  for the second colour. I like the colour in general and think it will make a great addition for my puzzles and other items. In this case though the colour is a bit too subtle (after sanding) and I would have liked something stronger. It's another nice set complete though and a gift for a friend.

I've been meaning to make a set of Hive Game Tiles for some time, it's quite simple to learn and it's very portable. I intend to introduce new people to the game too so I thought it would be quite useful to have a brief movement hint on the back of each tile too. These tiles were cut from 9mm Poplar ply, stained mahogany for the red tiles and then sanded a coated with some acrylic lacquer. The first red tile was sanded back a bit too hard but once I made all the tiles the same I quite like the look. The insects are engraved and then outlined, the text is just a low power cut using a Hershey font. ( svg here ) Each tile was sanded to within an inch of it's life using 800grit wet and dry paper, this makes some really fine sawdust that snuck into all the gaps of the tile. After becoming light headed from blowing the sawdust out of the gaps I realised that I now have an airbrush/compressor that can do that for me. I took a video of all the process too beca...