Gaming tables

Spontaneous Projects is a chronicle of all of my projects, a reference for me, and a way to prevent others from making the same mistakes. 

The commercial options for gaming tables are pretty expensive, but I was able to find a second hand coffee table that looked convertible. The main requirements were a padded lower cavity, and the ability to be used as a normal coffee table. Hopefully I can do a similar thing with a full size table at some point. 

• First remove the glass and measure the base for the gaming surface. Cut a piece to fit out of fairly think MDF, 16+mm prevents bowing. 
• Cut support rails for the base, MDF offcuts work fine. If you can remove the glass supports so that you can drop the base in from the above, do so. 
• Attach the supports to the inside of the frame, ensuring that they are level. 
• Drop in the base and cut a piece of neoprene or felt to fit. Neoprene is a much nicer finish, and is water proof as well, so I recommend it if you can. 
• To cover the holes in the frame I also added side bumpers, just gluing on a small strip of neoprene black side out so it disappears

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Disc Dyeing

I've recently taken up disc golf, and decided to customise a few discs now that I have some decent plastic that will take dye properly.

Materials

Discs - In this case I had a few premiums, DD biofuzion and Discraft Ti and I did a few practice runs on DD classic blend
Dye - iDye Poly, in red and black. each mixed in 500ml of water and kept in mason or equivalent jars between uses
Contact self adhesive covering
Acetone - for wiping stamps
Stencils
Exacto knife & cutting board
Light table
a pot large enough to fit the discs.

The process

Print the stencils, prepare a piece of contact that is at least 5cm more than the diameter of the disc. Either trace the stencil onto the contact, or cut it out directly using the light table.
Remove the areas that you want to dye, and leave the others in place. I'm still working on the best way to keep the geometry for small pieces intact. In this case I cut the contact from the front side, added masking tape over the top, flipped the new mask and removed the pieces to be dyed entirely, then the backing paper from the remaining sections.

The disc can then be lowered onto the contact, placing it in the desired location if possible, a clear bench might assist in this process. Flatten the edges of the contact around the stencil, and make sure to do the edges of the previous stamp as well.

Put the 500ml of dye in the pot, and ensure that there is enough to float the disc in. Heat the dye until it steams slightly then turn it off or down to prevent burning.

Wash the disk and mask to remove any residual glue, and to ensure that there are no air bubbles when you dip the disc. Slowly lower the disc into the pot, and allow it to float there. Readjust it occasionally to check the progress of the dye and to ensure that all areas get dyed properly.

When the dye is as dark as you want, remove the disc and run it under cold water to remove excess dye. Peel the contact off and wash again. I haven't yet found a good way of removing the gunk left behind by the contact.

Ti Buzz, plain green originally, now with a black gecko. It dyed nicely, and looks original, although there were a few areas where the masking leaked and the dye ran. 

BioFuzion Tresspass, grey colour, with a black dyed star destroyer. A lot of runs and issues on this one, but it turned out well anyway. 

The two Classic blend Wardens were dyed mostly for practice, I'd heard that they were unlikely to dye properly, in the case of the red dye on the white warden, it took a lot longer, and the red was still very faded. The black dye went over the blue nicely. Unfortunately I got the stencil backwards and didn't notice...

I'll post again with a progress report when I see how much and how they fade.