Where We Keep All The Books

Like libraries? Yeah, we all like libraries. All of us who would read this, anyway. A good old-school library with old books and wood and plush leather furniture, like the private library at the Biltmore estate, the Morrison reading room at UC Berkeley, or Zatanna's libraryat Shadowcrest.

So last month, I built a Star Wars-themed book nook. Much fun, looks nifty on the shelf, but a bit wide and clumsily constructed in places. I learn a bunch and set out on another project. This one was far more complicated, but I think better thought out.

The library is made from three identically structured bays, boxes about three by four by nine inches cut on the CNC machine, with arch-shaped cutouts on two facing long sides, box-joint edges, and a few holes here and there for various reasons.
 

The platforms for the "balconies" are CNC'd as well, but most of the rest of the furnishings are are 3d printed. The bookshelves are from a modular bookshelf design on Thingiverse. I flipped a few of the shelf designs horizontally, so the arrangements of volumes are even more different than in the original design, and every single spine and scroll is individually painted.

 And there were a few other printed bits: the spiral staircase, the railings, the fireplace, and the table. The floors are images of Persian rugs printed on matte photo paper.

After assembling each bay, I ran a long string of LED lights behind the walls, poking bulbs through pre-drilled holes. 

I had hoped to make an infinite library, but that didn't work out. I've done infinity mirrors before, and the principle is simple: mirror in back, semi-mirrored window film in front, lights in between. The problem is that you need a lot of light, and I wasn't generating enough. Still, putting a mirror in the back makes it look twice as deep as it actually is, which isn't bad.

The hardest part is, of course, finding enough room on the shelves to put it.

Now all I need to do is find this much real shelf space.

Witness The Power Of This Fully Operational Bookshelf

Not long ago, certain persons to whom I am married introduced me to the idea of book nook inserts, basically little dioramas scaled for bookshelves. While they take up valuable space on what are surely crowded shelves, they are quite nifty. So I thought I'd give it a shot.

I had a number of ideas, but the first one was something Death Star-like. Naturally, it was 3d printing to the rescue. The parts are mostly from a Death Star diorama set and and a bunch of Death Star surface tiles from this guy. Print, prime a uniform gray, add on a few accents here and there, finish with a thin, dark wash, and glue to the inside of an improvised box. I added some LED lights (mostly shining through custom drilled holes) and a landing platform for a TIE fighter.

For a first attempt, I think it went tolerably well. It's wider than I'd like (wasn't really sure how it would come out, but I can use this as a gauge for how much narrower to make it), but it does give the impression of Death Star-ness. And I have ideas for more...

The Knight Has A Thousand Eyes

So here's a thing:

This is a technique I saw somewhere and thought I'd give it a shot. The base on which these are painted are small glass bezels, about an inch and a half in diameter. Everything is painted with metallic shades of nail polish on the flat back. Start with the pupil and the dark rim; I used a pin to spread out the polish for the pupil in that more crazed pattern. Then paint on rings of colors coming closer and closer to the center, alternating with scraping lines radiating out from the center with the point of a knife.

These came out nicely, I think, but I have no idea what to do with them. Maybe find some temporary adhesive and put them on Osric.

Green Dragon Dice Box

Hey, new dice box, incorporating some lessons learned from another one I did.

There are just two pieces of wood here (3/4" birch), one for the lid and another for the body.

It's all CNC work to cut out the shape and rout out the internal cells and the recess for the top.
 

The dragon inside the lid is 3d printed, in a matrix of clear epoxy resin, while the edges are 3d printed and painted with copper paint using a green patina finish.

 Button magnet clasps as three corners, and cells for 19 dice about 20mm across and, including the in-lid space, the same depth.

Stick-on felt feet for the bottom. The whole body gets a green stain plus a couple of coats of shellac.

...except for the top, which gets a felt surface and a cut-out for the dragon. With the rails around the edge, it doubles as a surface for rolling dice.

Driven By Steam

Another steampunkish thumb drive.

So: The body is 3d printed and decorated with fake brass-ish color. The wood-looking part is, in fact, actual wood (a thin strip of veneer with some shellac). The gauge has a printed dial, epoxy "glass", and an actual metal needle. And the glass tubes are actual glass tubes, snapped by hand, which is easier than I had expected. Silly, but fun.

At some point, I need to get out the soldering iron and work on things with more lights in them, but not until I can go out to the garage without dying of heat stroke.

More Panic

Our custom-built Castle Panic set keeps getting more elaborate. Right now, it looks something like this:

We've added some external accessories to the set, like the printed "treasure chest" which contains all of the fire markers (flat cardboard for monsters, 3d printed for architecture) and a couple of new cards (new fronts pasted onto cards from worn-out old decks) like the squire here (any color, hits in castle ring).

Lately, though, I've been doing stuff with the monster pieces lately, mostly the big monsters from the Wizard's Tower add-on. I've been reading up on miniature painting techniques, and I've been applying the base-wash-drybrush process to some newly printed pieces, which I believe are all designs by the indispensable Miguel Zavala, glued onto custom bases, which I think I need to upload to Thingiverse. I've also been experimenting with printer settings to give me better-looking minis. The idea, which I got from 3d Printed Tabletop, is slow printing, small layers, high infill. I'm getting it to work well, but these are early attempts which, I think, don't look great as minis on their own. Notably, the layer height I used for this run wasn't a great for the printer I'm using, resulting in a very striated print. I'm getting better prints with some slightly different settings, but ironically I think the more stratified print paints better. It takes the wash better than my smoother prints, so I'm not sure whether or not I'll replace them with "better" prints. Here's what we've got:

That's the hydra.

That's the chimera. I'm pretty happy with the paint job, given the small scale and my very unsteady hand.

And the dragon. This replaces another one which wasn't as good a model, but Alex liked a more colorful paint job it had. Can't blame him, and I might reprint/repaint for that.

And finally, there's Agranok from the Dark Titan expansion. I was fortunate enough to find a mini which closely resembles Agranok (I just left the wings off the pit fiend), but there was an issue with the base. The Aggie's double-sided base is great for a cardboard counter, but not good for a 3d figure. So I modified a HeroClix-compatible base and put a little paper insert in it so we can rotate the base to indicate how many HP he has left.

Philco

After I built the Themyscira-themed picture frame for certain persons to whom I am married, I started thinking about what I could do with a larger-format tablet I've got, larger than an old picture frame or phone, but not so big that the frame won't fit on the be of my printer.

I started looking in particular at old TV sets, notably the Philco Predicta line of the late 50s and early 60s, with their midcentury-modern styling and picture tube separated from the main body of the TV. What I ended up with was this:

The frame is 3d printed, as is the top part of the console, which has a wood veneer facing. The whole thing is attached to a cheap craft store box, which in addition to reproducing the look, more or less, of some Predicta models, provides a necessary counterweight to the 7" tablet. I may print out a few knobs and such to stick on it, but it's kinda fine as is. It is, as with much else on this blog, pointless, but nifty.