[Icehouse] Pieceniking made Difficult (was: Pieceniking made Easy)

[Brian Campbell]

On Jan 22, 2007, at 12:37 PM, Elliott C. Evans wrote:

> Brian C. wrote:
>> 2) Could you demonstrate a cool pieceniking project that would be
>> easy to do at home?
>
> You could paint patterns on some pieces, like Zarf did -
>
> http://www.eblong.com/zarf/icehouse-painting-2.html
>
> It still takes some equipment, but no power tools.

Yeah, I should try that out. Part of the motivation for pieceniking  
is to get heavier, more solid pieces, for playing Icehouse with. I  
need to give the sand-filled ones another chance; maybe get two  
stashes and hope that I can get one stash worth of non-leaky pieces  
out of it. I was just experimenting on some of the good pieces from a  
stash that had several broken pieces and a missing piece.

I'd like to try making a wooden set at some point, but I need access  
to a wood shop for that. I'd also like to try a polymer clay stash,  
but I've heard those are a real pain to work with. I played around  
with eMachineShop a bit to see if I could get any metal pieces custom  
machined, but the only design I could figure out that worked with  
their software was a very expensive version of Minimice. Does anyone  
have any more suggestions for cool pieceniking projects?

I've been trying to figure out a good design for making my own giant  
pieces, now that you can't get the cardboard ones any more. How did  
MiSuBa make his giant foam pieces? Did he cut them himself, or just  
find a place that worked in foam and would cut it to his spec? How do  
you cut foam with straight, even enough edges to make a decent set of  
Icehouse pieces? And would it be at all possible to make stackable  
foam ones? I'm thinking that you might be able to get sheets cut into  
triangles with angled edges that you could glue into a pyramid, but I  
don't know how I'd get the pieces cut that way or what I'd use to  
glue them.