Have a safe trip and we are looking forward to your return.

Peter took some really nice pictures of his chess set and posted them on the facebook. His pieces are really nice – very clean and sleek. Each piece is made out of two pieces of acrylic fitted together at 90°. I’ll add the thingiverse link when he’s put it up there.

A few years ago, I bought travel Settlers of Catan so that I could bring it with me on trips. Even the travel set is fairly big though, so I just used the cards and port pieces out of the box, and made my own tiles and cardboard pieces. The cardboard pieces are pretty awkward though, and I’ve never really been pleased with them. Today, I made up a little gcode file to cut out tiny roads, settlements, and cities.

If you want to build your own, check out the thingiverse project.

The polymer clay is on the left, and the crayon is on the right.

Here’s a cropped version of the last photo showing detail of the polymer clay. To apply it, I put a small amount of clay on my finger and rubbed it in. It fills really nicely and is easy to clean up. Not sure how well it will stay in though. If you can pull the clay out of the etch by pressing more clay on it.


Here’s the detail of the etch filled with crayon. It’s not terribly even, and is a bit harder to clean up afterwards. I tried using a room temperature crayon as well as a crayon I stuck into warm water. The warmth of the wax didn’t seem to make much difference, though I didn’t get the wax very hot. This method doesn’t really work for spots where the etching is wide.

Both methods make a huge difference in the legibility of the etching. It remains to be seen how durable they are. Other suggestions I’ve read include leaving the protective sheet on the acrylic while etching, painting, then removing the protective sheet. Unfortunately, this acrylic came with a paper protective sheet which bursts into flame if you try this. I’ll post updates on durability once they’ve been out in the field for a couple weeks.