Work-in-progress

Arcanists – Ice Golem, basing it up

I lied, before, when I said that other part was the hardest part. This is the hardest part. Putting all of this shit into the base, making it fit and hoping you didn’t screw something up.

Here’s a photo of Gypsy playing with my stuff, before we get into the technical!

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I started by chopping the crap out of a 50mm base. I knew that most of the inner plastic was going to have to come out, so that was a decent place to start. Eventually I got enough out that I figured I could fit two batteries under it…and I was wrong. These are bigger batteries than I thought. I ended up cutting away almost the entire middle part, as well as cutting away part of one of the battery holders itself, before they would fit side by side inside. This part got a little scary, because it was really starting to look as though side-by-side was not going to work, which meant I didn’t actually have a plan for how this would work.

I took some cork, tore it up and set it down on the base until I could convince myself that I only needed a single layer to hide the batteries from the top. I glued the cork down, and nothing else.

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A larger piece of cork to go on top. I needed this because I’ve cut away most of the inner plastic, and I need something to “hang” more cork from to hide the electronics. Once I’ve glued everything down, I’ll glue some more cork to the underside of this large piece.

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Then I got to wiring everything together, and soldering.

I took the legs from before and drilled the wires through the cork to appropriate places. I wired together the two batteries, the resistor and the switch. The switch is placed so that it will be under the longer edge of the top cork, slightly hidden.

After I twisted the wires all up, I touched the LED to briefly create a circuit again to make sure it worked. As I’m working, I do this a lot. I don’t want to find that a wire has broken somewhere after I’m done. Check frequently.

I haven’t soldered anything since I was 16 and trying to install a backlight into my GameBoy Advance, and my dad had to help me. I was pretty certain I have more skills now, even though I haven’t soldered anything at all, really. Hobby skills are occasionally transferable, and the steady painting/converting hands helped to ensure that solder didn’t get everywhere and didn’t melt any plastic or set anything on fire.

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At the end of the session, most everything is good. The circuit works, the base looks good, the batteries fit and it’s all connected. I had to put it on pause for a bit to paint some stuff for a game, but we’re back on track!

 

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