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Welcome to the Workshop!Like the TARDIS, almost anything could be in here! Click on a picture to see it in greater detail. |
The Flux Capacitors
I walked into the AutoZone for muffler clamps, and there they were! Cool
plasma-neon tubes, regularly $24.95, on sale for $2.00 each! (Who
could resist?) Suddenly, my parts demanded a project, and what better than
Doc Brown's time-traveling necessity, the flux capacitors? I built the
rack from scrap wood, and wired the tubes into my car's running lights.
Once again, I am in on one of the world's greatest inside jokes.
The attractive model is my youngest daughter Katie,
who thinks the tubes are
so cool!
The Ping-Pong Ball Crossbow This
project came about after a 2003 trip to the Ohio
Renaissance Festival. They had a dozen game booths, from "Drench the
Wench" to axe-throwing, but there was a tiny "Shooting Gallery" that used
pistol-type Ping-Pong Ball crossbows. Really crude design, but a cool idea...and
the gauntlet was thrown down. "Wouldn't it be cool," said I, "to
make a full-size crossbow, fairly accurate to the middle ages, with Ping_Pong
ammo?"
I did a network search, and found By
The Sword, a cool site where you can go buy some pricey faux-authentic
crossbows. I mimicked the simplest design, and voila! It shoots
about 30 feet with fair accuracy. The crossbow model is my daughter, Bethany
the Pirate Princess.
The TARDIS "Doctor
Who?" you say? Exactly. This unassuming British Police Box is the exterior
of the good Doctor's timeship, the Time And Relative
Dimensions
In
Space
vehicle. In the ageless BBC action-adventure program (you say "children's
program" and I shall send you a nasty email!) the alien Doctor travels
from the beginning of time to the End Of It All in this amazing device.
Oh, well, all right. Not in THIS one exactly. This is a four-foot-tall video tape box I built from cheap white pine six years ago. The original was $400 from some insane fan organization, and hey, in that way I have, I said: "Shoot! I can build one of them for under a hundred!" (And I did.) Two others exist, in the hands of my brother Jim and my Best Buddy Jay. I stained and varnished the interior, and painted the outside cornflower
blue, just like the original. The "jelly-jar" light on top is the plastic
from a cheap bottle of Kroger "designer" water, and thanks to a 555 timer
chip, the roof-top light flashes when you open the door. And no, sadly
it isn't bigger on the inside than the outside like the original!
The Enterprise 1701-D This
was a major modeling project I did about ten years ago. The portholes are
lit with fiber-optics, and the running lights, strobes, tractor beams and
impulse engines are all LED-driven. The blue glow of the engine nacelles
is particularly cool. No bulb or tube would glow evenly, so I found a company
called Lightsheet
Systems that makes a special glow-sheet that you cut with scissors.
A tiny transformer in the model takes 5V electricity and steps it up to
a low amp, high output supply that drives the fluorescent sheet. This picture
doesn't do the effect justice. Looks just like neon in person, though.
Vulcan Shuttlecraft This
one dates from 15 years back, with the same techniques. A 555-chip timer
drives a pacing circuit to make the inside surfaces of both engines strobe
properly. Impulse engines are two similar LED timer circuits wired slightly
out of sync, and another timer drives the LED's for the running lights.
The Blaster This
one is from my college days; the gun body is an accurate plastic replica
of a German Mauser pistol from an imported kit, and the barrel is turned
wood. Add in some airbrushed weathering, and you are ready to go Stormtrooper
hunting! The muzzel-flash is done with two alternating LED triangles,
and the gun includes a really cheesy sound effect that I haven't had time
to replace. (I don't carry this at Cons because it looks too much
like an actual handgun; it's not day-glow orange like the toy blasters
they sell!)
The Arcade Controller I
made this for my eldest daughter, and loan it out every year to the summer
camp at a local daycare. Using the same techniques found on Tron's
Game Grid (my MAME arcade box), I built this simple controller as a
plug-in to a computer. Includes sloped wood case, an arcade quality trackball/mouse,
one player joystick and arcade buttons. The guts of the joystick are wired
to a cheap Gravis 4-button controller, while the actual stick and buttons
are from Happs Controls.
The Gaming Table A
major project from back when I had time to game. The table is made from
a 3' x 8' sheet of oak plywood, and is decorated with a Sword of the Spirit
motif. The tabletop rests at a low 18" off the ground for those late night
wargamming sessions. Since any cool thing is made cooler by lights, the
jewels in the handle of the sword are 12V indicator lights from Radio Shack,
and are turned on by the glowing button in the hilt of the sword. There
are also two 6" x 9" stereo speakers in the base of the table for just
the right mood music. (Night on Bald Mountain is great for hunting Orcs!)
The Tri-D Chessboard This
was made in 1976 when I was working on the first draft of the Tri-D Chess
rules. It is accurate to the original Starfleet Technical Manual design,
which means that you can invert the attack boards (unlike some of the cheaper
boards you will find at SF con's today.) It features a metal rack and lathe-turned
walnut base. The three main boards and the four smaller attack boards
are clear, 1/4"-thick Plexiglas, and the red squares are spray painted
on the clear plastic. Fully playable with the up-to-date, modern form of
the game, the Federation
Standard Tri-D Rules. |
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Last Revision on 03-08-12 (Old Earth) © 2012, Andrew Bartmess URL: http://www.yestercade.net/console/workshop.htm |
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