And pitchforks! Pitchforks for everyone!
LOL! I’m making an aquatic pitchfork (Trident) that shoots fireballs. Hoping to have it finished this weekend.
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When I was a stagehand in college, one of the sayings was that if you didn’t know at least three ways to misuse a tool, you didn’t know how to use it properly.
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really looking forward to pictures of your trident.
My wife worked at a theater for a few years and I ended up getting “volunteered” for inventing a number of weird props (or finding cheaper ways of making normally expensive props).
That first show, they needed torches that were flameless, but didn’t need any explanation of what they were. Also couldn’t be noisy. I ended up taking black Mag Lights, removing the lenses, cutting in half a clear plastic football, adding bits of red/orange/yellow cellophane and scattered in broken mirror bits. I ended up with with a pair of torches that ended up getting kudos in the local newspaper for their review! The theater then started sending me more oddball requests. It was great.
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Innovative, especially the mirror bits! Bound to get attention with a sparkle across the eyes of the audience!
I’m not sure I get these things. They appear to be the slime for adults at present. Minus the borax and other fun stuff. Cool design though, I dig it!
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That and a real Leatherman multi-tool.(And all the various ways to misuse each tool on the multi-tool.)(the cheap ones just break way too easy)
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Inventables is hosting hosted a live “Design a Fidget Spinner” workshop on YouTube today (3/10) at 11am MST:
Preview will be blank until shortly before the video goes live.
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Some interesting variations (and a GIANT fidget toy)…
http://makezine.com/2017/03/13/extreme-fidget-spinner-toys/
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Laser cut & engraved 1/4" MDF stacked to form the trident head. The engraves are filled with blue and silver glitter paint. The handle is a painter’s pole with LED RGB tape wrapped around it and then covered with a fluorescent light protection tube (clear plastic tube slightly bigger than the light tube and is slipped over them before putting the tube in the light fixture so if someone smacks it the tube doesn’t break). painted with frosted glass treatment & flat white paint. The electronics for that light set are mounted in the bottom of the pole and run off a 9V battery.
The lights on the interior of the Trident tines are also LED RGB but are powered by a 4.5V battery pack mounted inside the trident tines’ base just above the rope work. There’s a small micro switch used to turn it on & off. The trident splits into 2 halves to give access to the battery pack to change out batteries.
The fireball thrower is mounted in the upper center tine with channel grooves to allow them to project up & out. The control for that is handheld or can be mounted to the trident handle. Not sure if the director wants a high school kid with the ability to randomly point it at someone and fireball them 
so it’s can be remote controlled by the director instead so she can fire it only when Neptune is pointing it at the cave she wants to blow up.
Video is 15 sec of glowing LEDs changing colors and 5 secs of fireballs 
https://youtu.be/hbCvFGwAmgQ
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I think there’s supposed to be a video here, but I can’t see it. Can somebody confirm?
Yeah. I think it’s too big. Gonna grab a snippet instead or move it to YouTube 
Discourse seems to allow the upload of a video file (mp4) but even a small one (5 sec - 500K) won’t actually run in the browser even though it shows the little control for it.
YouTube to the rescue
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Very nice!
Can’t beat LEDs and fireballs for cheesy stage props
It’s for the musical version of Little Mermaid so I also made a sound activated LED shell (conch type) that Ariel sings into so Ursula can steal her power. But no lasers were used in its construction 
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You had me at “fire ball”
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That is SO cool!
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Theater props are fun to make.
The tech director on this one just called to ask me to build a couple of remote controlled motorized revolves. A week & half before opening. He’s something else (He is tech director for all of Yale’s undergraduate performing arts theaters so he’s doing this every day for a living and forgets the rest of us have a real life & job )
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Oh I hear you on that one. I was building some HUGE doors for a Pride and Prejudice Show. They were fine when I built them ahead of time, but they warped the first day of Tech week.
I had to completely rebuild the doors during tech week. Oh, and also to mention, I had a full-time job and I was a part of the cast for that show?
Everyone else had to be in the wings and dressed the entire time in case the director wanted to run their scene. For my scenes they’d call me in from outside and I’d do the scene in my jeans and t-shirt all covered in sawdust or paint specks… The entire crew was jealous of me 
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A flat was still being painted (later scene) as the curtain went up on the first show ever in a theatre I volunteered at. It was finished in time, but not dry.
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It is amazing the last minute freaking out magic of the back stage people to get things up in time so that the audience never knows something wasn’t quite ready.
Fun story: During the final scene in Romeo and Juliet on opening night, they both had to lay on a “slab” after their death scene. The slab had to be small enough to fit in the backstage area (of which there was little room). As the curtains came down, the slab tipped over and they fell to the stage.
I was one of the back stage crew for that show and I went out and bought knee pads and spent the rest of the shows on my hands and knees UNDER that slab holding it upright for the entire scene (about 20 minutes). Romeo ended up putting his foot on my back so that Juliet could have enough space to not fall off the other side. The Director only knew that the “problem has been taken care of”.
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