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If golf balls are ok, how about ping pong balls?

Ping pong balls would also be fine. They are sporting/gaming items and perfectly legal.

Ooo, Nerf darts, great idea!

Idea I have is a Tesla Powerplant structure inspired by RedAlert 2

Golfballs, cup, sprinkler pieces, old flashlight, used printer cartridge, and pink foam.
2 part epoxy.
This is turning into much bigger piece than original design drawing.

....This is turning into much bigger piece than original design drawing. ....

This is me...every time i plan and start to work on a new terrain piece...

Also...one hell of a gorgeous sketch you did!!!

I can't decide if I want to enter this round, or if I do what to make. Pretty busy these days, I might just watch this one. Good luck, all!

Also...one hell of a gorgeous sketch you did!!!

Thanks man, that is kinda what I do

Trying out the Air-Dry-Clay Das to fill in the gaps.
Might shrink and crack. well see.

That is shaping up nicely.

Wood-Glue brushed on all insulation- foam sides for spray painting.
Worked quite well.

Got Whole bunch of "rings" for the coils.
Unfortunately the selection of sizes to pick from is small.
Even a local dedicated plastics shop had very small and overpriced selection.

I think I will go with the Styrofoam rings.

Very nice progress mothsniper, a nice collection of materials you've gathered too.

I've finally gotten started on my piece. It's a small round table that people have been playing cards on, the playing cards will be made from really playing cards.

Starting materials:


The table top as I connect the craft sticks:


The table top after shaping, and with a wash to act as stain.

 Mothsniper wrote:
Got Whole bunch of "rings" for the coils.
Unfortunately the selection of sizes to pick from is small.
Even a local dedicated plastics shop had very small and overpriced selection.

I think I will go with the Styrofoam rings.

have you looked after curtain hangers? in DIY shops you might find smaller more appropriate ones...i found there some for my own needs...

Nice progress folks !

I too have some progress to repord on my arena, adding the main features to all four quarters of the thing :




To fulfill the LoER's gaming related material, I bought some cheap casino chip trays :


That I integrated into the walls. It does not show well right now, as the things are transparent, but they should make nice alcoves where to put statues :


The second tray is located right below an extended terrace, hope the thing will hold...


I still have to flatten the arena's inner walls, but they now have two doors :



Half of the time already gone, better keep building...

I've worked some more on the card table. I feel a little bad that I only thought of such a simple piece. I am approaching completion (though the required element hasn't been added yet), so this is likely my last post here on the competition thread.

I attached some small sections of craft stick on the bottom of the table that I will ne nesting the table legs in


Here I attached the table legs, made from bamboo skewers


Used a brown wash to strain the rest of the wood, like the table top. Here the table is posed with some D&D figures for scale:

Clever ideas guys.

Basing on 4 individual boards let you have a big center piece, or something on the sidelines and the card table with cards made from cards is a brilliant 4th wall breaking bit of terrain.

 Viktor von Domm wrote:

have you looked after curtain hangers? in DIY shops you might find smaller more appropriate ones...i found there some for my own needs...

Viktor von Domm, I have not thought of that... that is a good call indeed! Shower curtains might have larger variants in the diameter.
Well, these styrofoams rings grew on me at this point, because they are so light and easy to install, and they turned out to be the cheapest, 1$ for a pack of 6.

 KernelTerror wrote:
Nice progress folks !
I too have some progress to repord on my arena, adding the main features to all four quarters of the thing

KernelTerror, Epic progress indeed, that is an intense arena! Did not realize how big it was until saw that guy next to the trays.
I am guessing 60X60 cm boards?
I can see this arena with those balconies fit right into Tatooine architecture.

 Syro_ wrote:

I feel a little bad that I only thought of such a simple piece.

Syro, don't feel bad! Because now I wish I could scale down mine.

Speaking of scaling down... not going so well.

1 - Decided to make 3 objective markers type structures. Turned out that 2-Part-Epoxy doesn't hold on to the smooth plastic surface.
Should of though of that... before drilling out the hole on the top... because everything flaked off.
Now the plastic pieces are scored with a rough file. Should hold better this time.

2 - Figured out that these tiny plastic tubes bend very easily when lightly heated, and hold the shape in seconds when cool.
Trying to bend multiples pieces at once failed because the tubes spread out the heat to the pieces next to them and just over melting the tips into oblivion...
However, the longer pieces worked-out quite well and will get used.

3 - I needed a way to cut thin pieces of plastic and small sections of balsa-wood to make details for this Tesla Tower. Ended up making this simple cutting table today.
The L bracket has a bit of give and could be adjusted for exact 90. The 90 and 45 will be drawn on table and the pieces would be held by hand, I don't think I need a rail of guard for pieces that small. And the blade is glued with 2-Part-Epoxy, should not be hard to pry off the old blade and glue in a new one if need be.

That cutter is an amazing piece...got one from a friend industry made as a gift...but yours has that stoneage coolness to it!!! best part is the carved lever...epic!!!

You might use some screws for a quicker and easier change of blades...you will sooner than you think need to change them...

As for your glueing woes...baking soda and super glue...or for that matter pva and super glue...a truly nasty combination to inflicting your will on almost any matter...

And also also: i recently got me good glue gun...hot glue is rather trustworthy...if as you mentioned you prepare the surface a bit with grooves or file them...

 Viktor von Domm wrote:
That cutter is an amazing piece...got one from a friend industry made as a gift...but yours has that stoneage coolness to it!!! best part is the carved lever...epic!!!

You might use some screws for a quicker and easier change of blades...you will sooner than you think need to change them...

As for your glueing woes...baking soda and super glue...or for that matter pva and super glue...a truly nasty combination to inflicting your will on almost any matter...

And also also: i recently got me good glue gun...hot glue is rather trustworthy...if as you mentioned you prepare the surface a bit with grooves or file them...

Screws yes, however I need to make a holder and cut groove in the handle for the blade assembly that will not split the wood, for now I am not sure I will be able to find good pieces for that from my metal scrap pile. In future for sure.

Baking soda, I forgot about that one!
I have a hot-glue gun yet the heat will melt the insulation foam... but it does grip even the smoothest of plastic surfaces. Perhaps brushing on a layer of wood-glue on to foam pieces to prevent the melting and using the glue-gun.

Update

For the structure it self, the gaps are filled in with Das-Air-Dry-Clay around the curved structure and painted.

For the smaller tesla top, in addition to the "golf-ball", some small chess pieces are utilized
Tops melted slightly and dented with marbles.

Some sort of sphere will go on top, something easily pinable and easily paintable.

Thanks Mothsniper, and wow you've been busy. That's a lot of progress. Keep up the good work. That's really cool that you built that cutting table, I like it.

 Syro_ wrote:
Thanks Mothsniper, and wow you've been busy. That's a lot of progress. Keep up the good work. That's really cool that you built that cutting table, I like it.

Keeping up the good work

Cutting bases for the smaller teslas.
And the details.

Fantastic stuff guys. To those who signed up but have not hit a final concept yet, would a longer time line help?

Also, I updated the link to the competition in the first post. I had it linked to the previous competition in error.

Viktor von Domm had the great idea of me adding drinks to my little table with the card game. This is the progress on them so far. They are made from styrene tubes capped with green stuff for the actual drink inside. I bend very small styrene cylinders around a craft stick and applied heat to make the handles.

Cool! Dang...I'm helping the competition

 Syro_ wrote:
Viktor von Domm had the great idea of me adding drinks to my little table with the card game. This is the progress on them so far. They are made from styrene tubes capped with green stuff for the actual drink inside. I bend very small styrene cylinders around a craft stick and applied heat to make the handles.

That is a very clever way to make handles.
Will there be tiny miniature playing cards on the table?

-----Update
A mixture, of: woodglue, mod pudge, acrylic paint, pigment, dirt from outside, twigs and ground leaves, decorative sand, and paper towels, is applied around the structures to provide texture and help secure the pieces together by encasing everything in a hard shelf.
Because the 2-Part-Epoxy is good, and glued in cardboard base is good, and Das Air-Dry-Clay is good, but it possible for those concrete sections to snap off the round shape with enough force. Now, they are not going anywhere.

This is the last progress update on the Tesla Tower as it is close to completion

 Maniac_nmt wrote:
Clever ideas guys.

Basing on 4 individual boards let you have a big center piece, or something on the sidelines and the card table with cards made from cards is a brilliant 4th wall breaking bit of terrain.

Thanks a lot Maniac ! Exactly, either one single arena, four separate weird looking buildings. And if I even get bored at some point, I can add straight sections to the thing so it looks like a racing circus. And I can just remove one section to place the camera.

 Mothsniper wrote:

KernelTerror, Epic progress indeed, that is an intense arena! Did not realize how big it was until saw that guy next to the trays.
I am guessing 60X60 cm boards?
I can see this arena with those balconies fit right into Tatooine architecture.

Much appreciated ! 40 by 40 cm only actually. But yeah, quite eager to see how the balconies will turn out !

Did some progress this weekend, starting by smoothing the inner walls of the arena :


Also added some walls and more plaster to the interior of the opened section :


And finally, all sections now have external floor texture, and the columns were jointed to the walls, again, with plaster.


With all these steps done, I still have to find a way to do some clean seats for the entire thing. For which I do not have a plan yet, should be fun ^^ !
After that, I should be able to basecoat.

@Viktor von Domm: Heh heh, thanks again Vik

@Mothsniper: Thank you, and yes there will be tiny playing cards on the table. In fact I just made them tonight (though not fully finished). I keep thinking that I'm very close to finished with my entry so I'm not posting on here anymore. If you don't want to wait until the end of the contest to see them, you can check out the tiny playing cards on my P&M blog. Very impressive how sturdy your piece should be after the work you put in, it sounds bomb proof

@KernelTerror: Good progress, I'm looking forward to seeing the balconies also.

 KernelTerror wrote:

Much appreciated ! 40 by 40 cm only actually. But yeah, quite eager to see how the balconies will turn out !

For the seating instead of clean plastic molded seats, unless available, how about making seating out of plaster or foam like rock benches, or wire-brush over a foam to make them wooden planks
Have you though about the color scheme for the arena? Gray concrete, brown wood, tan stone, ets?

@Syro_ - Mmmm I would rather leave it unspoiled, and will wait and see nice pictures of everything on the DAY!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
And some more progress... I think I am overdoing it at this point.
Thought to have 4 rings (O-rings) go around the top pin getting smaller in diameter.
In my mind the only secure attachment for them rings are the pins and superglue... after attaching 2 larger rings... yeah... I think I will skip the consecutive decreasing 4 layers of tiny rings. That would be a day of work by it self.
AAAAAaand i broke all of my drilling bits.

Thanks Syro !

Good idea MothSniper, maybe I can build a tool that would let me replicate the same bench shape in plaster over the whole thing....
The Arena will probably be in the same dark tints as my previous entries, but I'll try to add more contrasting notes, such as on the columns, arena sand or the benches...Still need to decide on which colours to use.
Excellent progress on these coils, RINGS FOR THE RING GOD !