MSRaynsford

The Empire game year is 383 this year so I had a bit of a chance to play around with the hospital runes  I normally cut for them. The base rune has two diamond shapes which look a bit like the gaps between 383. 

The From Shadows team requested a large countdown timer to count 2 hours, I offered a full 99 minutes instead to save myself an extra digit but I think this giant RGB seven segment display fulfils the brief well. I opted not to use a real time clock chip because it only drifted a few seconds over the two hour period which is close enough. The illumination is provided with WS2812 LED strips and the controller is the ESP8266 so if I desperately wanted accurate timing I could always implement an NTP server and connect to the local wifi. Again, I wish I'd taken more photos of this project in action but I may well get another chance if I build another one for our local ninja warrior training gym . 

Coming in very highly on my overdue project list is this Futuristic control panel for the From Shadows event that happened over a month ago. I was rushed and wish I had photos and a video of more of the details. I don't even appear to have photos of the separate parts. The brief was for a control panel that could be split up into parts that were acquired throughout the course of the weekend. I wanted to take it a step further and split it up into parts that make the panel functional when connected back together. Two large hex bolts on the back could be removed, without tools, to provide access to two compartments. The first compartment was designed to house a 'battery', the second compartment had some exposed connectors. When the battery was inserted into the first compartment and the the connectors bridge with the appropriate loop power was supplied to the front of the device. The switches in the bottom left hand corner have illuminated LED's, flip both of...

The next prop for 'From Shadows' was this teleport return device. Units teleport into hostile territory and this is the gadget to teleport them all back again. This one has some added electronics to make it more interesting. A big red button activates the device once the small switch has turned it on. The whole thing counts down from 10 before flashing some lights to signify it's active. A nice big handle on the top makes it easy to carry. Although it's large it's pretty lightweight because it's poplar ply. The whole thing was painted with metallics and sprayed with varnish to make it water resistant. 

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...

With another successful kickstarter firmly in the bag I'm not stuck in the fulfilment doldrums. I've just about nailed a quarter of the puzzles in the last week and now that KS has paid out I'm good to do the shipping. It always surprised me last time just how long it actually takes to bundle orders into envelopes and label them all correctly. Whole days were spent making sure the right things went into the right bags. Hopefully I'll be a little more efficient this time round and then it's just onto more and more puzzles. The most common tier was for all eight puzzles so in theory I have half as many customers this time round anyway which should make things a bit quicker. I've been having some interesting ideas and experiments with the machine too while doing all this cutting so I should be able to squeeze in some more sensible posts as soon as I get this stack moving on to their owners.

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.