Christmas 2022 Crafts

In 2022, I had a few friends contribute to me in ways I wanted to thank them for at the end of the year. I dcided to try my hand at making handmade gifts. This included a Dice tower for my friend who makes games. A pencil holder, themed to resemble a cabin, had moved to Tennessee recently at the time. the model reactor was for a friend who assisted in some writing for the blog.

Dice Tower

For those who don't know (like I didn't), a dice tower is a piece for games that use dice rolls to do the roll in a contained area. the original concept for tower had a few iterations before reaching final form.

To learn how to edit the gcode and "wind back" the print to the correct layer height using this tutorial.

This is about the layer where the part failed which was about 13/64ths of an inch. From this instruction, you can see the highlighted text starting with "G28" which was where I copied to get the print head to return back so I could then instruct it to return to the correct height, but not ontinue with the initial steps.

Once the print completed. I made a coat of primer to make sure to prep the surface.

This gets completed in the image at the top of this screen of this page. I have a demo of thishere.

Pencil Holder

Making something that would need to be a keep other things in it required making sure it wouldn't tip if someone didn't balance it. If I did this in a future version, I would make sure to add something to weight the base better and cover it with a high friction surface.

Model Nuclear Reactor

I made a small reactor inspired by this reactor and the main features are the truss structure frame, the reactor core, the internal light to simulate Cherenkov radiation, and the water made from resin.

I made a demo here. Unfortunately, I didn't really know how to handle the resin well and I tried to remove some of the excess bubbles by bathing it in hot water and they were too deep to release before it fully cured.

Grill Prep Table

This is something I made for my dad in 2021 which was really my first "big" project in woodworking. I had made smaller items before, but nothing where I had made a frame that would be used for shelving. It's now the side table for the grill and a holder of garden equipment. Originally, I had planned to select a dark stain, but since I used a mix of Cedar for the siding and a treated lumber frame, it already had a natural weather proofing and I decided against adding anything to finish.