How I Spent The Extra Dollar

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Editor in Chief Bill

writes:

I used a flight stand in the very first picture (the unpainted snowball), but it was too easy to tip the planet over.

I suppose a large flight base might work.

One of the reasons for using the plastic glasses was that I wanted the planets to stand out, and putting them on larger stands than the usual flight stands helps accomplish that. Since the planets are on a different scale than the ships, I think it looks better to have the planets on a different height on the tabletop.

Revision Log
5 September 2006	page first published

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It's the Booze!

Well, not quite. (I don't even drink...) However, I was wondering what to use to mount the planets/suns/objects on, and I remembered someone saying they used cheap plastic glasses. So it was back to the local dollar store...

Yes, you can find plastic champagne glasses cheap. These are two-piece glasses, with the base snapping into the stem.

I'd heard to cut off the top part, and the plastic was very thin, so my first experiment was to try cutting the plastic with scissors...

$The plastic fractures when you try to cut it$

Well, that didn't work. The plastic cuts easily enough, but it fractures all over the place! (Throw that glass away...)

I then tried to cut the stem with an X-acto knife, but only succeeded in breaking off the tip of the blade. (Darn!)

So I broke out the old Dremel, and used a cut-off wheel to sever the bowl from the stem! (It's overkill, but it's fun...)

You get a lip of melted crud along the edges, due to the speed of the cut-off wheel (no matter how slow I set the speed). I used a file to knock the junk off, and level out the top. (Note that if you wanted, you could cut bases to different heights - maybe a taller base for a planet, and a shorter one for a moon?)

I know that some glues don't react well with styrofoam, so to play it safe, I used crafters white glue to attach the bases to the planets.

Theoretically, you could just balance the planets up there. I suppose they'd be easier to store that way, without being attached to the bases. However, I found they were too easy to knock off, so I attached them.

But There's A Simpler Way

If you don't mind a larger base, there's a much simpler way - just flip the glass over, and use the top as the base!

The "plug" from the base can usually be forced into the bottom of the ornament, though it may bounce off again if you don't trim some of the interior styrofoam out. There's usually some wobble to the fit, so I found it best to secure the ball in place with more white glue.

Finally, if you want a really big base, just go to one of those specialty party stores (or save up from your last party?). I found that I could purchase 8-ounce martini glasses for about $0.70 USD each (in packs of ten).

Martini glass (left) and champagne glass (right)

The bigger bases can be useful to mark the gravitational effects of larger objects, or to make certain objects stand out as more important.