MSRaynsford

Way back in February, Dawn  had the idea of making a cake based lorry in the same style as the Cake cars we're been doing. It was a great idea but I knew to shift all of the additional weight of a trailer we were going to need four driving wheels and motors. The majority of the weight would be spread over the rear of the trailer so those wheels and axles were put in place with bearings to reduce the rolling resistance. The pivot point was again made with a bearing to ease turning friction. Other minor changes included a reversing beeper and a second set of brake lights on the trailer itself (with curly cable between cab and trailer). The whole thing worked well for this quick demonstration. The problems came when I loaded the trailer down with any weight. I ran my tests using 10kg of weight which the cab was able to pull but the steering was totally ineffective. All the weight was pushed into the drive wheels making the steering light, the sheer power of the four moto...

My Kickstarter puzzles  all need to be dyed and oiled before I can put the final assembly together. Obviously they can't be stacked up while they're drying so making a drying rack to store all the sheets without touching each other seemed to be a sensible idea. The whole thing was coated with some spray lacquer to stop the burnt edges of the rack marking the sheets. The whole thing works just as intended. Another tool for the job was made without going anywhere near the laser and it's as simple as a stack of wood. A dozen planks of ply were cut to each hold a single puzzle and it's pieces. The front panel of the puzzle gets glued to the back panel and the whole thing is put on the bottom of the stack. The weight of the boards, stiffness of 12mm ply plus some extra weights from my screw boxes hold all the puzzles perfectly flat while the glue dries. When the puzzle comes out of the top of the stack it's ready for it's paper coating and it can then go ...

From Shadows LRP  ran it's first event at the weekend and by all accounts everybody appears to have had a good time (I was really quite keen to attend but sadly couldn't, true story). I did manage to get all of their currency cut in time though. I had previously made a few sample to demonstrate what was possible and I made a few tweaks on the final set. The colours now run in rainbow order which makes them a bit more cohesive and it allows me to keep the blue fluorescent for a higher value. I also rounded off the corners a lot more, the previous ones were a bit sharp. The tessellating design allowed me to cut whole sheets at a time with minimal wastage and even though there were a few alignment issues with the number engraved on the reverse it was still visible through the window so just about acceptable.

The previous displays I made for Vale were pretty straight forward, an arduino nano  was connected to a DS3231 real time clock chip and at the appropriate time they displayed a number on an LED matrix display . The whole thing was powered from the mains with a 5V PSU. This year they wanted the same thing, but on the nodes, out in the quarry and this mean battery powered and waterproofed, there had to be some fairly significant changes to the system. Firstly, if you want a battery powered item to last for a whole weekend, LED's are a bit of a no go. They're quite power hungry and illuminating a whole display of them is going to eat through batteries. The other problem with LED's is that they can be hard to read in the sunlight and blinding in the darkness. ePaper displays  however can be read in direct sunlight, can be illuminated with a torch and many only consume electricity to change the image. They seem ideal for an application like this. I opted for these w...

I ramble about Vale  on the blog quite a lot, it's kind of hard to explain LARP to someone it's much more about being there than talking about it. I've talked about nodes and games and so on but here is the crux of the whole thing. Vale LRP is played in the vast 170 Acre site of Huntely Wood , it's a former quarry so it has woods, lakes and some serious slopes. There are two camps for two different sides of a war, the shortest route between the two camps is 1km, the long path between the camps is 2km and you can extend that exponentially if you go down all the side paths. Out in the Vale are a bunch of different 'nodes'. These strong boxes contain game items that can be collected at various points throughout the day. This is intended to encourage groups from both sides to wander around the site and potentially bump into each other and ultimately fight over the prizes. Each section of the node is locked with a combination padlock and can only be unloc...

I quite like to be challenged with commissions and this one certainly did that. I was asked to make a black briefcase to hold potion bottles. It also needed some space underneath it to hold cable ties and cards and other things that might need to be attached to the bottles. The whole briefcase had to be black (although I think the brown edges add to the appearance). A red cobra logo was requested for the lid, the red wood was inlaid through the lid so that the logo showed through the lid and could be seen from both sides. The suitcase could hold 50 potion bottles and the lid closed down tight enough to stop the bottles from rattling around. The handle was built into the racking system for the bottles to ensure that it was strong enough to pick the whole case up. The hinges were laser cut which required me to add some small feet onto the bottom of the case to allow it to stand on end.

Another year   on and I got to make the rune tags for the LRP Hospital again. I like to bring a little variation to the design so this year I gave it some shape as well as the year number.