Puddingwrestler's Perfidious Playthings, or: Alliteration and Carpentry FTW!

puddingwrestler · May 05, 2016, 02:21:26 PM

The only reason spheres do not exist is that I could not work out how to build them.
I'm going to play with some devilish shape ideas on tuesday, including flattened cylinders.

Weaver · May 05, 2016, 11:36:35 PM

How about a sphere with two flats on it that arn't perfectly parallel to each other?

(In case you're wondering, yes I really am sitting in a black leather swivel chair and stroking a cat at the moment...)

puddingwrestler · May 06, 2016, 04:14:32 PM

Quote from: Weaver on May 05, 2016, 11:36:35 PM
How about a sphere with two flats on it that arn't perfectly parallel to each other?

(In case you're wondering, yes I really am sitting in a black leather swivel chair and stroking a cat at the moment...)

You mean you ever sit in any other manner?

Weaver · May 07, 2016, 02:25:57 AM

Well I used to sit on a swivelly tractor seat sometimes, until a few days ago:

The cat's neither white nor persian, in case you're wondering. 'Cos I'm a rebel....

zenrat · May 07, 2016, 04:44:37 AM

He's making all this up you know. He really sits on a motorcycle stroking his luxuriant moustaches..

puddingwrestler · May 07, 2016, 10:06:48 PM

And now, a quest appearance by Scale Reference Cat!

puddingwrestler · May 10, 2016, 04:22:02 AM

Today I built the remaining Toppollo components. The arches and curves are not perfect - I need practice with the scrollsaw. I find I prefer the bandsaw, but the blade is much deeper so less manoeuvrable.

We don't have a sanding drum, so smoothing of the insides of the arches had to be done by hand with sandpaper wrapped round a dowel. This took a lot longer than power sanding, and cut down on porductivity.

I have also started two biplanes. The fuselages have been bandsawed to shape and sanded. The cockpits are not yet smoothed and shaped, but I cut a wing so I could get an idea of how things would work. Next week I'm hoping to get the cockpits smoothed and install the wings and tail surfaces.

I'm making two of these - one to have wheels and the other to have floats.

Also tonight, I used one of the 3D printers to print some parts which are going to be used to build a sort of DIY mutoscope.
Or 'what the butler saw' machine. I'm planning to use these to help me teach history of film and basic animation principals to Yr.9 students.
Except, you know, without the 'what the butler saw' aspect.

Scale reference cat refused to pose for any photographs with today' progress. He is busy demolishing his dinner.

NARSES2 · May 10, 2016, 06:25:16 AM

Wonderfull work

Rick Lowe · May 10, 2016, 10:17:40 PM

Fortunately, the items are a bit more durable than your usual products, otherwise cat might have tried to demolish them also...

"Cusses, Wood! Not fair, Hummin! Tho could still use as scratching posts..."

Cool ideas and nice execution.

puddingwrestler · May 10, 2016, 11:43:31 PM

One of the cruisers had some deep pits in the funnel - Scale Reference Cat has been godzillaing it up and trying to eat it.

Rick Lowe · May 12, 2016, 01:06:11 AM

After a bit more fibre in their diet, maybe?

Cats - just when we think we've got a handle on them, it breaks... or they chew it off...

puddingwrestler · May 12, 2016, 01:30:57 AM

Further tests have been carried out on Toppollo at Gippsland Gamers.
We introduced the curve, arch and obelisk. This made for a heck of a lot of pieces, so we then experimented with removing the cube and oblong. This meant most of the remaining pieces fell into the 'troll piece' definition. Which made things interesting.

puddingwrestler · May 12, 2016, 11:18:19 PM

And now... the new and imporved Toppollo pieces IN ACTION!

Brad cunningly places an obelisk inside an arch...

Oakley's hair attempts to place a block where no one can see it.

The tower becomes... interesting.

Tim very carefully places a block on high.

Scott is either amazed by the tower, or distressed by Brad's amazingly high pitched squeal. We may never know.

By this point, we'd removed the cube and oblong to make things more exciting.

The curve quickly became the troll piece of choice due to it's difficult shape, and very light weight making it easy to place, and very hard to place on.

Our might tower gets mightier.

The arch balanced on obelisk point is also a favourite move now.

NARSES2 · May 13, 2016, 06:28:45 AM

Looks fascinating

puddingwrestler · May 31, 2016, 04:34:24 AM

I return!

And I have not been idle.
For a start, both biplanes are now up to the point where I just need to glue them together. This will happen soon, but I'm a bit short on clamps.
This afternoon's woodworking session gave rise to the following:

A two-tone roadster. I glued the wood for this together last week. It's pine and something I found in the back of the woodwork room. That is the technical name for it. The headlights are some sort of screw-hole blanking button thing from Bunnings. It's designed to take the same figures I built for the biplanes - one is seen beside it. The heads are wooden beads from a craft shop, the rest is stuff I cut on the bandsaw and shaped on the sanding disc.

The roadster is waiting on wheels. I tried using a hole saw drill bit, but the results are not great and roll badly. I've just been shown how to use the school's CNC router mill thingee, so I'm planning on having a go at using it to make wheels during the coming week. I have a lot of wheel-y toy ideas, so I need a way to get good wheels and I am too cheap to buy them...

This is going to be a boat. Trust me. There will be a wind-shield made from wood glued on infront of the figure, which will help it look a bit taller. At the moment, the figure kinda sticks out a bit...

I had a bit of spare time and spare wood, so I've done a few glue-ups ready for next week's session. The thing not in the clamps is going to be a small VW bus. The others are all parts of a toy train. There was another carriage, but I wrecked it experimenting with the idea of drilling holes all the way through for windows - they were too close together and tore large chunks out of the back of the block.

Also, Toppollo has been displayed to the public at Little Wars. I wasn't really demoing it or anything, but there was spare room on the table I was running Hero Kids on, so I set it up and played a few games with friends.

Scale Reference Cat is currently trying to talk me into using my woodwork time to build him a mighty stronghold, which shall be named Castle Purrstein (to go with his holiday home, Schloss Floofenberg).

He informs me he is not a Whoovian, so we've rejected this one.

I'm thinking something like this.
He's thinking something like this:

We may end up compromising on something like this.

Sigh.
A woodworking catowning whiffer's work is never done.