#WIPWednesday, February 7th, 2024

 I am disappointed that last week, I didn't just post a blog with an "After these messages, we'll be right back" gif on it. Oh well, you know how it goes, you get your best ideas two weeks after the moment it would have been relevant. Anyway...

I took last week off because, honestly, I was exhausted. The first week I've had some really good progress on projects, and I was too tired to write about it. So today is going to touch on the past couple of weeks as I continue to prep for a 3D printing library thing in March and the Props for Cosplay talk on May the Fourth in Anderson, Indiana. This show has become especially real as I just got my speaker paperwork emailed to me to get filled out and sent back.

So, what has been done?

First off, I'm pretty much done with the lightsaber project until around April, when I'm pulling them out, making sure they survived, and getting some final detail bits taken care of. You can see the sabers I built in the picture that kicks off this post, with individual photos in the album I made for this blog post. Left to right, we've got Count Dooku, half of Darth Maul (more on that in a few), Mace Windu, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi from both Kenobi and The Phantom Menace, Anakin Skywalker from Revenge of the Sith, and Darth Vader from A New Hope. On the very bottom is Yoda's saber. These were all just printed out of different colors of filament, support material was removed, and everything was just glued together. No sanding, no painting, just lightsabers showing the "quick and cheap" option for "Good, quick, or cheap. Choose two." Darth Maul was the biggest pain out of all of these, because the fins under the emitter all snapped off as I was trying to slide pieces in, and no matter what, I can't get the two halves to line up, so frak it! It's half of the saber. Detail can be seen in the album.

Now that those are tucked away in a box, I've started on a few other pieces. Thanks to ADHD, I currently have three pieces on the workbench. The Aragorn Hunting Knife, BD-1, and the Star Trek TOS communicator have all gone under the first round of sanding and have received a nice glaze of body putty thinned with acetone. The knife blade has been glued together, and I used some UV resin in small amounts to fill in and hopefully reinforce the seam between the two halves. I need to put some serious work into these this month, so I have some stuff to show in Carmel on March 9th.

Finally, I got the Communicator Dice Holders done for two sets of Star Trek Adventures dice. I like how well these hold the dice, and now I just need to get some magnets to keep them closed.

Photo albums for this week include the one made for last week's post, and the one for this week's post.

Before I wrap up, though, I want to ask for some help. Part of my exhaustion last week stemmed from my 2011 Scion xB, the Cardis. On Saturday, we made the final car payment on it. Then, because it wanted to be as cliche as possible, Sunday it started making noises before the power steering went out Monday, apparently due to the alternator going out. We were down to one car last week, and everything got fixed over the weekend. We had the money to get it taken care of, but we really need to replenish some savings. So, if you have the opportunity, head over to Troxell's Trading Post and maybe pick up a print or two. I'm trying to get new stuff posted every few days, and I am starting to fade away from articulated critters and dice towers for the time being and printing some prop kits from Mystery Makers, Big Fred's Customs, and Galactic Armory (affiliate link). So if you have any requests, please feel free to reach out either at my email or on any of my social media accounts, and we'll see if it's something I can print for you.

With that being said, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. Remember, the world sucks out there. Try not to make it suck even more. In fact, try to make it suck just a little bit less. Take good care of yourselves and each other, and I'll see you next week.

Tony