Tuesday, May 15, 2007
After this weekend's Beer & Pretzels (which I'll blog about later this week), I've thought about sorte=ing out another batch of dice towers. They were getting more attention than anything else at the weekend. So, I've put some enquiries out to see if anyone can supply and cut the components at a decent price. If anyone wants one, drop me a line.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
A total lack of activity?
OK, so it's been over a month since my last post, so both of my readers have probably got bored and wandered off now.
It's hard to remember all the completely inconsequential stuff I've done recently. A fair bit of Ebay activity (because I've set myself the task of selling stuff before buying new any new toys this year; so far it's worked well). Some gaming. Nothing exciting.
"Some gaming" started with Baycon at the start of the month, at the close of which I came home with the bits to playtest a new board game. As it's not my project, it's also not my place to talk about it, butthe game is heading for a commercial release later this year or early next. I really enjoy it, but the gamers up at Spirit Games in Burton (where I go most Wednesday evenings to play a game or two) have started backing away when I put the box on the table. The good news is that the game - and the rulebook - are almost finished now, with just some final polish needed on both. Then it's off to the publishers, for them to arrange artwork and components.
I also managed to wheedle myself a copy of Risk Express - one of the first in the UK. Now I know that it's been released in Germany, but Hasbro UK don't have the best record when it comes to picking up games published by Hasbro in the US or Europe. Hopefully the Risk name will ensure that not only will they import the game, but that it will be on the shelves in Argos, WH Smiths et cetera. It's a good little dice game - much more appealing than something like Yahtzee. Risk Express reminds me a lot of another great dice game published a couple of years ago, called Pickomino. Unfortunately the long distribution chain (with everyone taking a cut) meant that whilst it could be bought in Germany for about a fiver, in the UK it was very hard to track down (specialist games shops only) and sold for £20! If Risk Express sells at the same price point as Yahtzee, you're looking at a very reasonable £8 for a more substantial game.
As well as spending time helping out with the rulebook for the playtest game, the other thing that has occupied my spare time this month has been Heroscape, and particularly planning and preparing for the first UK Games Expo. I'll blog something about Heroscape (with pictures) after the Expo itself; for now, it's enough to know that it is probably my favourite game of all time (and I've played more of them than is than my fair share).
The Games Expo is going to be held in Birmingham in three weeks' time, on the 2nd-3rd of June. http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/
The UK boardgames scene is quite small at the moment - maybe a dozen or so specialist shops, very few quality boardgames in the High Street, and a few events that usually pull in 100-200 people. That compares poorly to Germany, where good quality boardgames can sell tens of thousands of copies, and a big hit will clear half a million in a year (Settlers of Catan is the best-known German boardgame export - they's sold 11 million Catan-based games, and there's now a version available for download on the Xbox 360). Germany's main boardgame event is the annual Spiel fair in Essen - for 4 days, the industry takes over an area the size of a Motor Show at the Essen exhibition centre, and approximately 150,000 visitors go through the doors.
The Expo is an attempt to bring a smimilar sort of event to the UK. What has made Spiel so good in the past is the mixture of publishers, inventors, retailers and members of the public who attend. Events in the UK always appeal to a certain sort of person (usually someone who is carrying a few extra pounds, sports a beard or a ponytail, and thinks that cardboard counters are cool); Spiel is very different, with an emphasis on family games and participation. Of coure, it's easy to see why there's been so much success on the continent when you see how much better the games actually are; a quick flick through the Argos catalogue reveals that here in the UK the mass-market games publishers have little to shout about. But there's been a growing appreciation of what can be achieved by new publishers and distributors, and they've been bullied into coming to Birmingham next month to show off their wares. Hopefully the very low entry price will encourage lots of bored families to take a look at what is on offer.
Of course, if it is to succeed, the Expo needs to follow the German model in getting people to actually sit down and play games (rather than following the wargames show tradition, of having people wander around, looking at all the pretty displays). It is only by engaging with the public, by showing them what they have been missing when they first see something like Settlers Of Catan, that things can move on from year after year of Monopoly re-issues, Connect 4 and Risk.
To that end, I volunteered a while back to host a game of Heroscape. Now it's something of an exception - a game designed for the mass market, that is readily available in the UK (OK, it's absent from the current Argos catalogue, but it was in the 2005 and 2006 Autumn/Winter books), which is actually a very good game. How do I define very good? Well, it needs to have lots of meaningful decisions, some (but not too much) luck, lots of interaction between the players, and plenty of variety (in any given game of Monopoly there are probably 5 important decisions made; in a game of Heroscape, you probably make 5 every turn).
In terms of having a participation game for the public, it is important that the game looks good, that it be relatively simple to explain, it should look somewhat familiar, and it must look fun. Heroscape ticks all the boxes - and it's visual appeal is particularly high. We tried it out on the public a couple of times last year, have largely ironed out the kinks in the way in which we explain the game and get people playing, and the reaction has been universally positive (it helps that although the game is simple enough for children, there's enough depth for adults to sink their teeth into).
So I've been planning and thinking about how to show Heroscape to people at the Expo - we had a small trial run at the Birmingham Central Library the week before last http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/library.htm I think what we've got planned should be good fun, as well as having a certain "wow" factor. It's a shame that its left to individuals to publicise good games when they come along, though - Hasbro in the USA has marketed Heroscape much more aggressively, as a result of which it is widely available - and pretty popular.
If you're in Birmingham on the 2nd or the 3rd, do make sure that you pop by and say hi. I'll be the looney next to a table full of robots, vikings, paratroopers and samurai, trying to stop the dragons and elves from taking over the world.
I'll make sure that I do a proper blog post - with pictures - when we're done.
It's hard to remember all the completely inconsequential stuff I've done recently. A fair bit of Ebay activity (because I've set myself the task of selling stuff before buying new any new toys this year; so far it's worked well). Some gaming. Nothing exciting.
"Some gaming" started with Baycon at the start of the month, at the close of which I came home with the bits to playtest a new board game. As it's not my project, it's also not my place to talk about it, butthe game is heading for a commercial release later this year or early next. I really enjoy it, but the gamers up at Spirit Games in Burton (where I go most Wednesday evenings to play a game or two) have started backing away when I put the box on the table. The good news is that the game - and the rulebook - are almost finished now, with just some final polish needed on both. Then it's off to the publishers, for them to arrange artwork and components.
I also managed to wheedle myself a copy of Risk Express - one of the first in the UK. Now I know that it's been released in Germany, but Hasbro UK don't have the best record when it comes to picking up games published by Hasbro in the US or Europe. Hopefully the Risk name will ensure that not only will they import the game, but that it will be on the shelves in Argos, WH Smiths et cetera. It's a good little dice game - much more appealing than something like Yahtzee. Risk Express reminds me a lot of another great dice game published a couple of years ago, called Pickomino. Unfortunately the long distribution chain (with everyone taking a cut) meant that whilst it could be bought in Germany for about a fiver, in the UK it was very hard to track down (specialist games shops only) and sold for £20! If Risk Express sells at the same price point as Yahtzee, you're looking at a very reasonable £8 for a more substantial game.
As well as spending time helping out with the rulebook for the playtest game, the other thing that has occupied my spare time this month has been Heroscape, and particularly planning and preparing for the first UK Games Expo. I'll blog something about Heroscape (with pictures) after the Expo itself; for now, it's enough to know that it is probably my favourite game of all time (and I've played more of them than is than my fair share).
The Games Expo is going to be held in Birmingham in three weeks' time, on the 2nd-3rd of June. http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/
The UK boardgames scene is quite small at the moment - maybe a dozen or so specialist shops, very few quality boardgames in the High Street, and a few events that usually pull in 100-200 people. That compares poorly to Germany, where good quality boardgames can sell tens of thousands of copies, and a big hit will clear half a million in a year (Settlers of Catan is the best-known German boardgame export - they's sold 11 million Catan-based games, and there's now a version available for download on the Xbox 360). Germany's main boardgame event is the annual Spiel fair in Essen - for 4 days, the industry takes over an area the size of a Motor Show at the Essen exhibition centre, and approximately 150,000 visitors go through the doors.
The Expo is an attempt to bring a smimilar sort of event to the UK. What has made Spiel so good in the past is the mixture of publishers, inventors, retailers and members of the public who attend. Events in the UK always appeal to a certain sort of person (usually someone who is carrying a few extra pounds, sports a beard or a ponytail, and thinks that cardboard counters are cool); Spiel is very different, with an emphasis on family games and participation. Of coure, it's easy to see why there's been so much success on the continent when you see how much better the games actually are; a quick flick through the Argos catalogue reveals that here in the UK the mass-market games publishers have little to shout about. But there's been a growing appreciation of what can be achieved by new publishers and distributors, and they've been bullied into coming to Birmingham next month to show off their wares. Hopefully the very low entry price will encourage lots of bored families to take a look at what is on offer.
Of course, if it is to succeed, the Expo needs to follow the German model in getting people to actually sit down and play games (rather than following the wargames show tradition, of having people wander around, looking at all the pretty displays). It is only by engaging with the public, by showing them what they have been missing when they first see something like Settlers Of Catan, that things can move on from year after year of Monopoly re-issues, Connect 4 and Risk.
To that end, I volunteered a while back to host a game of Heroscape. Now it's something of an exception - a game designed for the mass market, that is readily available in the UK (OK, it's absent from the current Argos catalogue, but it was in the 2005 and 2006 Autumn/Winter books), which is actually a very good game. How do I define very good? Well, it needs to have lots of meaningful decisions, some (but not too much) luck, lots of interaction between the players, and plenty of variety (in any given game of Monopoly there are probably 5 important decisions made; in a game of Heroscape, you probably make 5 every turn).
In terms of having a participation game for the public, it is important that the game looks good, that it be relatively simple to explain, it should look somewhat familiar, and it must look fun. Heroscape ticks all the boxes - and it's visual appeal is particularly high. We tried it out on the public a couple of times last year, have largely ironed out the kinks in the way in which we explain the game and get people playing, and the reaction has been universally positive (it helps that although the game is simple enough for children, there's enough depth for adults to sink their teeth into).
So I've been planning and thinking about how to show Heroscape to people at the Expo - we had a small trial run at the Birmingham Central Library the week before last http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/library.htm I think what we've got planned should be good fun, as well as having a certain "wow" factor. It's a shame that its left to individuals to publicise good games when they come along, though - Hasbro in the USA has marketed Heroscape much more aggressively, as a result of which it is widely available - and pretty popular.
If you're in Birmingham on the 2nd or the 3rd, do make sure that you pop by and say hi. I'll be the looney next to a table full of robots, vikings, paratroopers and samurai, trying to stop the dragons and elves from taking over the world.
I'll make sure that I do a proper blog post - with pictures - when we're done.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
We're all going to the zoo tomorrow.
OK, it was actually yesterday. Hey, maybe it's a British thing, but I find that places like zoos, DIY stores and lawnmower museums have an almost irresistable pull on a Bank Holiday weekend. And it's hard to resist when you have a family to entertain and a new lens to play with.
Twycross Zoo is one of those places I went to as a child. Not much has changed - except that they don't do chimps' tea parties, the enclosures are all modern, and the prices exhorbitant. OK, so everything's changed except the location, which is about 25 minutes away.
So me, my D40, and my new 70-300VR went to the zoo yesterday (on the pretext of it being a family day out. The deal was I keep my little girl well supplied with ice creams, and she doesn't tell everyone that Daddy spent the whole day taking photos).
I really enjoyed using the 70-300VR. In an ideal world, it'd be a couple of stops faster, would cost half the price and weigh a third as much, but for wandering around the zoo it did just fine. Actually, if I could change just one thing about it it would be to have it focus closer. I shot about 200 pictures, got maybe 20 "keepers". Most of the best shots were around 200-250mm, but occasionally I used shorter or longer focal lengths. I'm sure that everyone has their own idea of an "ideal" zoo lens, but this worked well for me.
Most of the pictures were taken through glass (actually scratched, mucky perspex, but it's quicker to say "glass"), and some of them have suffered from colour-casts, reflections and a general lack of punch. The sun was strong and the sky clear, and trying to get the sun and the subject and the enclosure windows all in the right place was somewhat tricky (hence the harsh lighting). These are a few of the good ones. No PP, just straight from the camera. (They look a touch "washed out" on my PC monitor, but look fine on my CRT. Neither of which has been calibrated.)
Meerkats on guard:
These guys looked real old - I just forgot to check exactly how old. The giant tortoise:
Bonobos, our closest living relative.
The orang utans were what made the zoo worth the price of admission. The gorillas were just lazing about in the sun (and the photos were pretty poor). The chimps shouted and screamed a bit, but were clearly taking the weekend off like everyone else. The bonobos were pretty active, unlike their chimp cousins. But the stars of the day were the orangs.
The group consisted of an elderly female, two younger females and a baby. The two younger apes spent most of the afternoon squabbling over a sheet that had been hung over a tree to make a hammock. They tipped each other out of the hammock several times before it fell down. Then one of them grabbed the sheet, headed up the tree, and slung the hammock over the branch again. Quite smart, I thought. At one point it did look to get a bit nasty between them, but the old girl strode over and quelled any trouble with a glance.
The youngest was about two years old. At times, quite needy, clinging onto one of the adults. At others, quite adventurous. Sensible enough to stay out of the bickering over the hammock.
Apparently they're going to be wiped out in just a handful of years. Mostly due to our obsession with palm oil (and particularly its use in bio-deisel). Bio-deisel has got to be the single biggest con of our time. Save the planet by chopping down rainforest, to plant a cash crop that gets burned so that some moddle-class morons in their Chelsea tractors can feel good that they're not using deisel pumped from the desert. And still our politicians talk about bio-deisel like it's a good thing.
I swear, this little chap shows more sense (and does a lot less damage) than either our Government or those ghastly 4x4 drivers.
Twycross Zoo is one of those places I went to as a child. Not much has changed - except that they don't do chimps' tea parties, the enclosures are all modern, and the prices exhorbitant. OK, so everything's changed except the location, which is about 25 minutes away.
So me, my D40, and my new 70-300VR went to the zoo yesterday (on the pretext of it being a family day out. The deal was I keep my little girl well supplied with ice creams, and she doesn't tell everyone that Daddy spent the whole day taking photos).
I really enjoyed using the 70-300VR. In an ideal world, it'd be a couple of stops faster, would cost half the price and weigh a third as much, but for wandering around the zoo it did just fine. Actually, if I could change just one thing about it it would be to have it focus closer. I shot about 200 pictures, got maybe 20 "keepers". Most of the best shots were around 200-250mm, but occasionally I used shorter or longer focal lengths. I'm sure that everyone has their own idea of an "ideal" zoo lens, but this worked well for me.
Most of the pictures were taken through glass (actually scratched, mucky perspex, but it's quicker to say "glass"), and some of them have suffered from colour-casts, reflections and a general lack of punch. The sun was strong and the sky clear, and trying to get the sun and the subject and the enclosure windows all in the right place was somewhat tricky (hence the harsh lighting). These are a few of the good ones. No PP, just straight from the camera. (They look a touch "washed out" on my PC monitor, but look fine on my CRT. Neither of which has been calibrated.)
Meerkats on guard:
These guys looked real old - I just forgot to check exactly how old. The giant tortoise:
Bonobos, our closest living relative.
The orang utans were what made the zoo worth the price of admission. The gorillas were just lazing about in the sun (and the photos were pretty poor). The chimps shouted and screamed a bit, but were clearly taking the weekend off like everyone else. The bonobos were pretty active, unlike their chimp cousins. But the stars of the day were the orangs.
The group consisted of an elderly female, two younger females and a baby. The two younger apes spent most of the afternoon squabbling over a sheet that had been hung over a tree to make a hammock. They tipped each other out of the hammock several times before it fell down. Then one of them grabbed the sheet, headed up the tree, and slung the hammock over the branch again. Quite smart, I thought. At one point it did look to get a bit nasty between them, but the old girl strode over and quelled any trouble with a glance.
The youngest was about two years old. At times, quite needy, clinging onto one of the adults. At others, quite adventurous. Sensible enough to stay out of the bickering over the hammock.
Apparently they're going to be wiped out in just a handful of years. Mostly due to our obsession with palm oil (and particularly its use in bio-deisel). Bio-deisel has got to be the single biggest con of our time. Save the planet by chopping down rainforest, to plant a cash crop that gets burned so that some moddle-class morons in their Chelsea tractors can feel good that they're not using deisel pumped from the desert. And still our politicians talk about bio-deisel like it's a good thing.
I swear, this little chap shows more sense (and does a lot less damage) than either our Government or those ghastly 4x4 drivers.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Books
Finished reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. Rather good. Found on the "fantasy" shelves (where almost all of my reading material comes from), it's about a long con expert grifting in a city almost indistinguishable from early Renaissance Venice. With a revenge plot thrown in.
Though I bet my "summon author" spell fails miserably :)
http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/2007/02/summon-author-is-good-term-for-common.html
Right now I've got a big pile of books to get through.
I read George R R Martin's "A Feast For Crows" at the start of the month; at the second attempt. I don't know why I never managed to get into it when I first got the book, as this volume is as good as the rest of the series so far. However, there is a definate "slowing down", both in terms of the pacing of the story and the appearance of the actual books themselves. Hopefully he's not coming over all "Jordan" on us. Though I still hold the Wheel of Time series in high regard, I just hope that RJ manages to get the epic finished.
Just finishing the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next sequence. Silly stuff. And a return to the sort of exchanges that opened the series, after all the BookWorld stuff in the previous two volumes. Not a series that I will feel compelled to re-read in the future, though.
After that, well I'm waiting on the first two books by Joe Abercrombie to arrive from Amazon (who are currently reporting a 4-6 week delivery window, unfortunately). If they don't turn up on time, then it might be K J Parker's previous paperback that gets read next. I really enjoyed her first trilogy and the second was also very good - but she does lose a few points as a result of my suspicion that she might be married to Tom Holt. Not so much because I don't like his books (I don't, but can't hold that against anyone), but because I didn't like him - or his views about my field of work - very much when I met him a few years ago.
I have some Games Workshop "Warhammer 40k" books to read at some point. Bought on a whim because from time to time, their background material could be quite readable - nonsense, but readable (and certainly better than most of their games). They are probably just the thing to read post-lobotomy.
And finally there's Understanding Exposure, by Bryan Peterson, which I am getting through at a rate of a few pages every few days. Highly recommended to all budding photographers who want to move the dial on their camera away from the "auto" setting once in a while. I'd recommend his "Understanding Digital Photography" over this one, though. There's enough repetition of material between the two books to make reading both unnecessary, but either gives a very good grounding in some of the technical aspects of photography using SLR-type cameras. It certainly helped me to understand what I was trying to do with my moon shots the other week.
I don't know if I mentioned at the time, but I was using an old 300mm telephoto lens. This meant that not only did I have to focus manually, I had to shoot in manual mode - setting an appropriate aperture and shutter speed, without the benefit of in-camera metering. Knowing not only what all those settings meant, but how to actually manipulate them to get the image I wanted, was pretty important.
Though I bet my "summon author" spell fails miserably :)
http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/2007/02/summon-author-is-good-term-for-common.html
Right now I've got a big pile of books to get through.
I read George R R Martin's "A Feast For Crows" at the start of the month; at the second attempt. I don't know why I never managed to get into it when I first got the book, as this volume is as good as the rest of the series so far. However, there is a definate "slowing down", both in terms of the pacing of the story and the appearance of the actual books themselves. Hopefully he's not coming over all "Jordan" on us. Though I still hold the Wheel of Time series in high regard, I just hope that RJ manages to get the epic finished.
Just finishing the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next sequence. Silly stuff. And a return to the sort of exchanges that opened the series, after all the BookWorld stuff in the previous two volumes. Not a series that I will feel compelled to re-read in the future, though.
After that, well I'm waiting on the first two books by Joe Abercrombie to arrive from Amazon (who are currently reporting a 4-6 week delivery window, unfortunately). If they don't turn up on time, then it might be K J Parker's previous paperback that gets read next. I really enjoyed her first trilogy and the second was also very good - but she does lose a few points as a result of my suspicion that she might be married to Tom Holt. Not so much because I don't like his books (I don't, but can't hold that against anyone), but because I didn't like him - or his views about my field of work - very much when I met him a few years ago.
I have some Games Workshop "Warhammer 40k" books to read at some point. Bought on a whim because from time to time, their background material could be quite readable - nonsense, but readable (and certainly better than most of their games). They are probably just the thing to read post-lobotomy.
And finally there's Understanding Exposure, by Bryan Peterson, which I am getting through at a rate of a few pages every few days. Highly recommended to all budding photographers who want to move the dial on their camera away from the "auto" setting once in a while. I'd recommend his "Understanding Digital Photography" over this one, though. There's enough repetition of material between the two books to make reading both unnecessary, but either gives a very good grounding in some of the technical aspects of photography using SLR-type cameras. It certainly helped me to understand what I was trying to do with my moon shots the other week.
I don't know if I mentioned at the time, but I was using an old 300mm telephoto lens. This meant that not only did I have to focus manually, I had to shoot in manual mode - setting an appropriate aperture and shutter speed, without the benefit of in-camera metering. Knowing not only what all those settings meant, but how to actually manipulate them to get the image I wanted, was pretty important.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Lunar Eclipse
OK, forgive the broken links of a couple of days ago. I wanted to get something posted quick, and always planned to come back and do a proper job.
We had a lunar eclipse last weekend. The Moon was full, totality was between 10.45pm and 11.45pm, and for once the skies stayed clear. It wasn't even that cold. It doesn't get much better than that.
I stepped outside with the Nikon D40, a 300mm manual focus lens, and the world's worst tripod. I got some nice, sharp pictures at high shutter speed, but as the light from the Moon dimmed I had to use longer and longer exposures - at which point, a thumping heavy lens without a tripod collar on top of Jessop's finest £20 tripod was *never* in any danger of producing good images. Ah well. I clearly need a better tripod and some more lenses. Obviously.
During the longer exposures I was getting a few dots on the screen. I had written them off as some sort of stuck pixel fault with the camera - they were in the same position vis a vis the Moon in each shot. Then I noticed they were in DIFFERENT positions on the actual image. Hmm, not a camera problem then. Turns out that the one nearest the moon is actually Saturn. Neat, huh?
Oh, and I've just realised that I've missed tonight's episode of Life On Mars :(
Oh, and I've just realised that I've missed tonight's episode of Life On Mars :(
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Snow!
Ha - bet you don't get THIS in New Zealand! (Actually, I think that they probably do - in fact, it'll be cleaner, drier, and possibly ski-able. But I bet that they don't make really tall snowmen).
Sorry about the hopeless pic - new camera, left it on ISO1600 by mistake. (GRR - either use MANUAL mode and THINK about what you're doing, or leave it on AUTO. Mucking about in P mode without checking stuff like this leads to hopeless snaps. Ah well.)
Back garden before we started:
Sorry about the hopeless pic - new camera, left it on ISO1600 by mistake. (GRR - either use MANUAL mode and THINK about what you're doing, or leave it on AUTO. Mucking about in P mode without checking stuff like this leads to hopeless snaps. Ah well.)
Back garden before we started:
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Dice Tower Construction.
First of all I started with an outline plan. I wanted something that was at least bigger and sturdier than the first dice towers I had made. I liked the arrangement of rods placed horizontally across the tower instead of the usual fixed slopes, but the original design only worked well with one size of dice and would "trap" larger dice within.
Those early efforts were 3mm thick acrylic - on the limit of what can be scored and snapped by hand. Going up to 4mm thick meant that everything was going to have to be cut with a jigsaw - no worse than score & snap, but still a pain.
While looking at materials on the supplier's website, I noticed that they did a laser cutting service. Not cheap by any means, but it would eliminate the need to lots of tedious sawing. And the laser cutter could pre-form the holes for me, so no drilling either. Of course, to keep the price as low as possible, they needed a CAD file (to send them hand-drawn plans would have pushed the cost sky-high).
So, the next task was to learn how to use some CAD software. While honing the design - both were worked on in parallel. There were wrong steps along the way with both. For example, I wanted a wider tower, but the rod placement got complicated. Too wide, and you could only fit the outline of one tower on a sheet of plastic - I needed to get two out of each cut sheet.
Finally I had a design that looked fine. It would clearly handle a range of dice sizes and it had a fold-out tray at the bottom. There was no chance to "prototype" it - either the design was right, would work, and I'd be happy, or I would be spending almost £200 on plastic fit for the landfill. The designs were sent off, credit card handed over, and fingers firmly crossed.
Disaster In The Making
The courier arrived with a big package a few days later. In it were 4 sheets of immaculately-cut 4mm acrylic, and enough 4mm diameter acrylic rod to make up 8 towers. Time to assemble the first one.
I had used a glue called Tensol-something-or-other for the earlier towers. Superglue is right out - it leaves a nasty "misting" effect around the join. Tensol is a thick solvent that "welds" two pieces of plastic together, taking about ten minutes to set, and over the course of about 24 hours creates an insanely strong bond. How strong? Well, I tried to snap the ramp out of the tatty test-piece I'd done some time before, and the plastic broke down the middle - and not along the weld joint as I had expected.
The drawbacks are that it has to be applied by brush, and then the pieces held together precisely while the joint set. This was OK for the joins of my 3mm towers - none of the edges were truly square anyway - but it wasn't going to be good enough for towers that I wanted to sell. The other problem is that it was very difficult brushing the glue onto exactly the right places - any excess etches the plastic surface. The benefit of using Tensol is that the joint is nice and clear, though.
The solution lay in using the same solvent in a much thinner consistency. The solvent is sold in the UK under the name "Fusion", and has the same viscosity as water. So if you have two closely-matched components, as my laser-cut pieces were, you can just introduce the solvent to the edge of the join and capillary action causes it to wick into the whole joint. As a result, the tower sides can be clamped together and squared up before the glue is introduced, so the finished towers are less likely to wobble! It's also easier to use the right amount of the solvent (though spills have to be wiped up in a split-second, or they will mark the surface of the plastic. Downside is that the joint isn't quite as clear as with Tensol - but it's still very acceptable.
The first tower of the batch was assembled by hand, with Tensol, while I learned what order things had to be assembled in. I wouldn't perfect the process until tower 7 or 8, but that first tower taught me a few things - ditch the Tensol, and use the "clamp & wick" principle; clean all the parts of fingerprints before you glue them together, because it's well nigh impossible afterwards; and also that I'd made a mistake on the plans.
This was a big set-back. Not a total disaster - the first assembled tower would indeed function with various different dice, and the "ramp" made from a row of rods worked well. But I had got the size of the tray wrong - it was 8mm too narrow, and couldn't be assembled as designed. I tried a bodged solution, but it looked like a bodge. There was no alternative - another £80-odd to get a sheet of replacement parts cut.
Unfortunately the Christmas holidays intervened. Instead of having a few leisurely days to assemble the towers during the break, the request for more plastic languished in someone's in-tray until their return to work after the New Year. Ah well. It was all sorted by the end of the first week of January, the replacement parts had arrived, I'd tracked down a supplier for Fusion (and the necessary syringes to apply it - despite the relative ease that addicts seem to have when it comes to sourcing their syringes, a hobbyist faces a much more protracted search, aided by an overly-aggressive spam filter on my email account).
The most tedious part of the assembly process is cutting the 4mm dowels to the right length. It took over two feature films to get them all done (using a simple "measure, score and snap" process). The New Year television schedule wasn't a total waste of time, then.
The only really tricky part is clamping the pieces together prior to introducing the solvent. I tried a couple of different clamps before hitting on a style, and method, that worked. The tray needs careful handling to get the sides on square (and the tiny G-clamps I had were only just big enough to do the job); the tower itself was easier, but had a nasty habit of collapsing suddenly as I made fine adjustments or tightened the clamps up too much.
Once everything is clamped up, actually injecting the solvent is pretty easy. Almost entertaining, even, watching it wick along the length of the join. This is where having the pieces laser-cut would really score heavily - it made straight, square joins much easier to achieve, and the finished edges were straight without being sharp (on the 3mm thick acrylic, some of the edges were very sharp).
15 minutes later, release the clamps. Glue the base onto the tower, slide the rods into place, and use a bit of solvent on both sides of each rod to fix them permanently in place. The folding tray hinges on the bottom rod of the ramp, and was the only really tricky join - it's important to get enough glue in to fix the rod to the tray, but a tiny bit too much and it will start to wick along the side of the tower, and weld the hinge so it won't work. Thankfully this didn't happen to any of the 8 (one got a tiny bit of solvent in somewhere it shouldn't, and the hinge squeaks a bit as a result, but this will ease with some use).
There we are. Job done. Each tower probably took about 2 hours to prepare and assemble, although having got the technique sorted now I reckon I could probably do a tower in about 45 minutes.
By making 8 of them, I had made 7 "good" ones and one that might be described as a prototype. Although it probably had a value (it's mostly square, reasonably tidy, and works fine) I destroyed what worth it had when I attempted to learn some polishing skills to remove some noticeable blemishes. As a result of the disaster that unfolded, leaving deep scuff marks on the back of the tower, I elected not to try to polish out any of the much less noticeable scratches and marks on the "good" towers. Hey, they're plastic. Although acrylic is pretty tough and hard-wearing, they will inevitably pick up a few marks along the way. Mine just come with a few built-in.
Actually, I think I'm over-stating the problem. You'll not notice any blemishes on the finished towers apart from on the test piece. I am, by nature, something of a perfectionist, though. For the same reason, I'm still not completely happy with the joins. Using Tensol did provide an almost invisible bond between pieces; the Fusion bond is good, but visible. I suspect that the solution may lie in controlling the atmosphere in which the bond is made, using applicators which are perfectly clean and unaffected by the solvent itself - a solution that lies way outside my means.
If one day someone wants to order several hundred of my dice towers, the answer will be to out-source production to somewhere that they perfect the assembly. And flame-polish the finished item. Does the world need several hundred deluxe acrylic dice towers, though?
Those early efforts were 3mm thick acrylic - on the limit of what can be scored and snapped by hand. Going up to 4mm thick meant that everything was going to have to be cut with a jigsaw - no worse than score & snap, but still a pain.
While looking at materials on the supplier's website, I noticed that they did a laser cutting service. Not cheap by any means, but it would eliminate the need to lots of tedious sawing. And the laser cutter could pre-form the holes for me, so no drilling either. Of course, to keep the price as low as possible, they needed a CAD file (to send them hand-drawn plans would have pushed the cost sky-high).
So, the next task was to learn how to use some CAD software. While honing the design - both were worked on in parallel. There were wrong steps along the way with both. For example, I wanted a wider tower, but the rod placement got complicated. Too wide, and you could only fit the outline of one tower on a sheet of plastic - I needed to get two out of each cut sheet.
Finally I had a design that looked fine. It would clearly handle a range of dice sizes and it had a fold-out tray at the bottom. There was no chance to "prototype" it - either the design was right, would work, and I'd be happy, or I would be spending almost £200 on plastic fit for the landfill. The designs were sent off, credit card handed over, and fingers firmly crossed.
Disaster In The Making
The courier arrived with a big package a few days later. In it were 4 sheets of immaculately-cut 4mm acrylic, and enough 4mm diameter acrylic rod to make up 8 towers. Time to assemble the first one.
I had used a glue called Tensol-something-or-other for the earlier towers. Superglue is right out - it leaves a nasty "misting" effect around the join. Tensol is a thick solvent that "welds" two pieces of plastic together, taking about ten minutes to set, and over the course of about 24 hours creates an insanely strong bond. How strong? Well, I tried to snap the ramp out of the tatty test-piece I'd done some time before, and the plastic broke down the middle - and not along the weld joint as I had expected.
The drawbacks are that it has to be applied by brush, and then the pieces held together precisely while the joint set. This was OK for the joins of my 3mm towers - none of the edges were truly square anyway - but it wasn't going to be good enough for towers that I wanted to sell. The other problem is that it was very difficult brushing the glue onto exactly the right places - any excess etches the plastic surface. The benefit of using Tensol is that the joint is nice and clear, though.
The solution lay in using the same solvent in a much thinner consistency. The solvent is sold in the UK under the name "Fusion", and has the same viscosity as water. So if you have two closely-matched components, as my laser-cut pieces were, you can just introduce the solvent to the edge of the join and capillary action causes it to wick into the whole joint. As a result, the tower sides can be clamped together and squared up before the glue is introduced, so the finished towers are less likely to wobble! It's also easier to use the right amount of the solvent (though spills have to be wiped up in a split-second, or they will mark the surface of the plastic. Downside is that the joint isn't quite as clear as with Tensol - but it's still very acceptable.
The first tower of the batch was assembled by hand, with Tensol, while I learned what order things had to be assembled in. I wouldn't perfect the process until tower 7 or 8, but that first tower taught me a few things - ditch the Tensol, and use the "clamp & wick" principle; clean all the parts of fingerprints before you glue them together, because it's well nigh impossible afterwards; and also that I'd made a mistake on the plans.
This was a big set-back. Not a total disaster - the first assembled tower would indeed function with various different dice, and the "ramp" made from a row of rods worked well. But I had got the size of the tray wrong - it was 8mm too narrow, and couldn't be assembled as designed. I tried a bodged solution, but it looked like a bodge. There was no alternative - another £80-odd to get a sheet of replacement parts cut.
Unfortunately the Christmas holidays intervened. Instead of having a few leisurely days to assemble the towers during the break, the request for more plastic languished in someone's in-tray until their return to work after the New Year. Ah well. It was all sorted by the end of the first week of January, the replacement parts had arrived, I'd tracked down a supplier for Fusion (and the necessary syringes to apply it - despite the relative ease that addicts seem to have when it comes to sourcing their syringes, a hobbyist faces a much more protracted search, aided by an overly-aggressive spam filter on my email account).
The most tedious part of the assembly process is cutting the 4mm dowels to the right length. It took over two feature films to get them all done (using a simple "measure, score and snap" process). The New Year television schedule wasn't a total waste of time, then.
The only really tricky part is clamping the pieces together prior to introducing the solvent. I tried a couple of different clamps before hitting on a style, and method, that worked. The tray needs careful handling to get the sides on square (and the tiny G-clamps I had were only just big enough to do the job); the tower itself was easier, but had a nasty habit of collapsing suddenly as I made fine adjustments or tightened the clamps up too much.
Once everything is clamped up, actually injecting the solvent is pretty easy. Almost entertaining, even, watching it wick along the length of the join. This is where having the pieces laser-cut would really score heavily - it made straight, square joins much easier to achieve, and the finished edges were straight without being sharp (on the 3mm thick acrylic, some of the edges were very sharp).
15 minutes later, release the clamps. Glue the base onto the tower, slide the rods into place, and use a bit of solvent on both sides of each rod to fix them permanently in place. The folding tray hinges on the bottom rod of the ramp, and was the only really tricky join - it's important to get enough glue in to fix the rod to the tray, but a tiny bit too much and it will start to wick along the side of the tower, and weld the hinge so it won't work. Thankfully this didn't happen to any of the 8 (one got a tiny bit of solvent in somewhere it shouldn't, and the hinge squeaks a bit as a result, but this will ease with some use).
There we are. Job done. Each tower probably took about 2 hours to prepare and assemble, although having got the technique sorted now I reckon I could probably do a tower in about 45 minutes.
By making 8 of them, I had made 7 "good" ones and one that might be described as a prototype. Although it probably had a value (it's mostly square, reasonably tidy, and works fine) I destroyed what worth it had when I attempted to learn some polishing skills to remove some noticeable blemishes. As a result of the disaster that unfolded, leaving deep scuff marks on the back of the tower, I elected not to try to polish out any of the much less noticeable scratches and marks on the "good" towers. Hey, they're plastic. Although acrylic is pretty tough and hard-wearing, they will inevitably pick up a few marks along the way. Mine just come with a few built-in.
Actually, I think I'm over-stating the problem. You'll not notice any blemishes on the finished towers apart from on the test piece. I am, by nature, something of a perfectionist, though. For the same reason, I'm still not completely happy with the joins. Using Tensol did provide an almost invisible bond between pieces; the Fusion bond is good, but visible. I suspect that the solution may lie in controlling the atmosphere in which the bond is made, using applicators which are perfectly clean and unaffected by the solvent itself - a solution that lies way outside my means.
If one day someone wants to order several hundred of my dice towers, the answer will be to out-source production to somewhere that they perfect the assembly. And flame-polish the finished item. Does the world need several hundred deluxe acrylic dice towers, though?
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