» Such Cutting Remarks Monopoly in Lights

Such Cutting Remarks

So, first round of acrylic cutting is pretty much done, although I may want to redo some of the pieces. I’m using a white acrylic that’s about 1/8 inch thick for the actual spaces, and tried to get these things cut to a pretty tight tolerance. Here’s how they look laid out without any actual support.

Not too bad, although I’m disappointed that it seems like my measurements for the property spaces didn’t quite line up with the measurements for the others. I may have to shave down the lower parts of them to make it all line up well. (I’d rather not make the color bars any smaller than they are; those tiny pieces are fiendish to work with.)

That being said, I may be recutting the color bars anyway, if I can find enough material. The ones that I cut this time didn’t come out quite as sharp as I’d hoped. I was doing an initial rip cut on the table saw, then doing the final cuts on a miter saw. Unfortunately, when the miter saw completes its cut, these pieces are so small they fly away, and this tended to involve the blade making contact along an edge and leaving a gouge, which doesn’t look very nice. I’ll probably hold off on doing any further cuts on this material until I have the actual base ready to go so I can make sure future pieces fit snugly.

If I do recut the color bars, I’ll probably end up redoing them more in line with how I cut the Jail/Just Visiting space. I went over a few possibilities, and ended up building a small jig to carry the piece through the table saw. I used a couple of pieces of scrap acrylic (clear) to sandwich the white piece between, set the fence and the blade to the exact width and height of the cut, and used the miter gauge to push it through upright. This gave me a cut at the right distance and the right depth to cleanly slice out the jail space and leave a pretty L-shaped Just Visiting space. This resulted in a much cleaner cut than the miter saw was making, and kept the remaining piece from flying across the garage.

One more shot to wrap it up for today, showing some dynamic perspective!