I’ve decided the first prop I’m going to have a serious attempt at making is going to be Marisa’s mini hakkero, this is a fairly simple thing that can be easily be thrown together with 3mm birch plywood (possibly stained) with some backlighting through diffused acrylic and a couple of parts cast from pewter (I did consider Aluminium, but I don’t have the right gear for doing intricate Aluminium casting).

Anyway, for now I’ve got as far as designing the front panel and machining it to check that its more or less the right size and each section is a good proportion.

I did find it to be a bit on the large size, my (quite large) hands could just about hold it comfortably, it definitely did not want to be any larger. The section that is held will also by around 10mm smaller than the front panel anyway.

I’m probably not going to get any more physical work done on this for a while with being away from the tools I need to complete it, but I should be able to get the design complete ready to be machined, cast, soldered, and anything else required in mid September.