Dice Frame

Now, back to business. Yesterday, I finally ordered a disc cutter for myself. This is a set of dies used to stamp different sized circles out of metal sheets. I have a couple of specific projects in mind for it and I started brainstorming about other uses at lunch yesterday with my husband. He has a major in fine arts and worked a lot with metals for sculpture and took a couple of jewelry classes, too. Every once in a while, we have one of these high-energy conversations where I throw out ideas and he tells me if they're even feasible or not. Anyway, out of this conversation, I came up with the idea for a metal frame with one gaming die dangling between, that would allow the wearer to spin it around. One thing I know about gamers - they're fidgety!

So, to see if I can even do this, I did a little test with some parts I already had around the house. I have hundreds of dice that I drilled holes in, just waiting for a home. I had a couple of copper rings just big enough to clear a small-ish size die. In Tim's work with miniature painting, he's ordered lots of tiny steel rods (they're pikes for little military guys). Since the copper rings are thin, I don't really have a way to put them together, but I did go ahead and solder one of the steel rods on one of the rings (with a die threaded on it). Since I currently only have a large tip on my soldering iron, and this was just for "proof of concept," I wasn't very careful. But as you can see, the solder was sufficient to secure the rod on the ring. When I purchased my soldering iron, I was told that I could get a smaller, jeweler's tip to switch out. I'll probably go by later this week to get one. Please excuse the fuzzy picture - this was the best I could manage today.

Once I get the parts to do the real thing, here's what I want to put together: the frame will either be two metal rings or two open metal squares; the rod will be soldered to one side of the frame; and then the two frame pieces will be sandwiched together, soldered side in, and riveted together.