MSRaynsford

I make a lot of things out of wood because it laser cuts incredibly well, it's cheaper than plastics and you can glue it together. I've tried quite a lot of glues and I really like this Weatherproof Exterior glue from Evo-Stik. I've been buying it in smaller bottles with applicators but recently discovered that Rapid Electronics sell it in 2.5 and 5L bottles, suitable for refilling all of my smaller bottles. The glue grabs within a few minutes and sets solid and clear overnight, I'd definitely recommend getting some.

My extractor fan always sat at an awkward angle where the inlet needed to be on the wrong side and the outlet was best pointed vertically. I previously achieved this using some shelving brackets but it was always a bit wobbly. While I was laying the floor I noticed that they were bent and the whole thing was touching the floor so I upgraded to this wooden stand instead. The fan is now held firmly in place again, better than ever before. The whole thing tucks in neatly behind the new machine in the garage.

The floor in the garage was just sheets of plywood which has served me very well over the past few years but it was starting to look a little worn. In my week off I laid a nice new wooden floor over the top of it. It was fun juggling all the stuff from the front to the back of the garage and finding it all new homes but the floor is in at least and looking good. I still have to sort all the junk that got moved up onto the shelves and hidden around the house but it's a good start.

I have a few relatively big cutting jobs to do over the last few weeks. They keep the laser busy while I'm free to answer emails, sort paperwork and all the other boring jobs that occur as part of life. Hopefully many of you will have noticed the not so subtle changes happening to the blog too as I try to get this sprawling monstrosity of 1200 posts into slightly better order of things. I'm not allowed to mention most of these projects yet but the posts are written and waiting for specific dates. I have however been cutting some more Hex Terrain Toolkit which seems to be a very successful project for Ross.

These white on black counters were much simpler than the others. The actual numbers on the dial still had to be done with a paint infill but the actual symbol and lettering was engrave so they show up white enough to not need painting.

I read on the internet about a few different techniques to infill acrylic with a different colour. I've done some previous painting where I engraved the protective cover off the acrylic. I found that engraving that protective sheet can be a bit hit and miss, sometimes it engraves fine but other times it just appears to melt so I prefer to peel it off now. I tried to apply some vinyl transfer tape which engraves better, this was effective but it seems silly peeling off one sheet and applying another. I settled on a compromise between the two. Since all the numbers and words around the outside are cut using Hershey text , instead of engraving they cut cleanly even through the protective sheet. The engrave in the middle of the item is done by first outlining the engrave with enough power to cut the sheet and then peeling the sheet off from the place that's going to be engraved. The idea is to do it in a single piece so they will be no weeding, the engrave can then be done ...

I was asked to make some wound counters for a war gaming friend, the counters need to go up to 30 and still be a sensible size so I based them upon my Tigris Counters . I didn't want to use magnets in the middle though so I ended up gluing the parts together instead. They work well.  I used white acrylic paint to provide high levels of contrast on the lettering and image.