I have such sights to show you!
I finally got around to making these alphabet blocks, inspired by a friend’s demonspawn toddler.
They’re a bit larger than I’d originally planned, but that intricate tracery was just too fine to work with at a smaller scale. I think this is a good compromise.
The box itself is sapele ply from Laser Wood Supplies; the gold is laserable, self-adhesive gold foil from Johnson Plastics Plus.
It took a few tries to get the hang of working with the pricy adhesive foil. I learned early on that Glowforge’s Set Focus option can misbehave with black or reflective surfaces. I loved the look of this on black acrylic, but the foil bonded so strongly to it that weeding the delicate parts was virtually impossible, at least with my clumsy sausage fingers. It peeled the finish off of black MDF, so that was a no-go as well.
Pre-finishing sapele ply with Howard’s Feed-N-Wax turned out to be the perfect middle ground for adhesion, and weeding the little bits of foil became a very satisfying process.
I’ve got a bit more work to do, namely covering the joints and edges with gold foil. And future iterations will probably make this a simple puzzlebox with a concealed lid and space inside for, oh, I don’t know, metal chains or something. But all in all, I’m pretty happy with the results.
A nice win to close out the year!
