Travelling Range Stick?

[OldGuy59]

I have been on the road lots this summer, and heading out again. I have nice cases for my two paper planes, but I am trying to put together a travelling game set that is as small as I can make it. The cardboard Range Stick is not convenient, nor something I want to entrust to my packing and baggage handlers in airports. So, what to do... Make the stick in two parts!

I wanted to use threaded inserts and do this like a pool cue, but there weren't any small enough to do this with the orange sticks I wanted to use for the finished product. My better half suggested a few ideas (constructive ones, actually), and I came up with the idea of carving a "puzzle" pressure fit joint. Well, orange sticks are really, really hard wood! Carving it and sawing it by hand was very difficult. So, I wanted to try this out on something softer, as a trial. I found some chop sticks in the house, and remembering someone had done up range sticks with chop sticks, thought that this would work for me, too. Bamboo is not soft! It is only a bit softer than orange sticks, but it was easier to work with.

So the sawing and carving began in earnest. And I messed up the joint really bad. I was trying to engineer this in my head, and with 2 dimensional drawings, and that wasn't working. So, carving and sawing was the only way to see if the plan would work. Second try, and I got really close. However, the pressure fit was off (loose and crooked), and without re-carving from scratch, I could try doing just one side (again) to see if that would fix it (not likely). Then I remembered that I have some fine brass rod, and I could pin the loose joint and straighten out the stick, without redoing the whole thing!

Pictures are below:

This is after carving and pinning the two halves. I drilled through one side of the joint into the other side, but not all the way through. Then, inserted and glued a brass rod. Test fitted it, and then cut and filed the brass cut smooth to the bamboo.






This is the comparison with the real Range Stick, unpainted and painted:




And this is how it goes into the box, with the plane:





Hope this is useful to any other pilots who are on the move and need to keep things small.

Signing off,

OldGuy 59 (Mike)

[Oberst Hajj]

Looks really good! I think I would have just riveted (or bolted) two pieces together so that they could unfold to full length... but your way looks much better and is "craftier".

[OldGuy59]

Hmmm.... A folding knife hinge! Why didn't I think of that! With a spring lock, to add some difficulty to the project. Keith! You're a genius.

[Oberst Hajj]

Well, that's not the word most people call me!

[flash]

Like it ! I now see a plethora of range measuring stick options being created

[Doug]

Well done Mike clever idea!

[AlgyLacey]

Or you could just revert to Atillio's original piece of string idea.

[Guntruck]

Excellent idea. I guess another option would be to use rare earth magnets to hold the two pieces together

[Flying Officer Kyte]

A very interesting solution to a frequent problem for travelling with Wings equipment.
Maybe we should make this into a contest as a change from the usual ones.
Rob.

[csadn]

Hmmm.... A folding knife hinge! Why didn't I think of that! With a spring lock, to add some difficulty to the project. Keith! You're a genius.

<AHEM>... elseforum I suggested building a range ruler on a "slide-rule" model; slide out for the game, slide in for storage:



Components



Note how the middle section slides out; at maximum extension, it would be the length of the normal ruler.

[Oberst Hajj]

I had thought about the slide rule as well, but thought that the flip out would be;

1. Easier to make
2. Would be more stable between usage during a game.

If the slide ruler closed even just a few mm with out the players noticing, shots could be missed.

[Marechallannes]

Nice little project, Mike.

Very professional work.

[csadn]

If the slide ruler closed even just a few mm with out the players noticing, shots could be missed.

I figured some sort of latch (or whatever it's called) would be part of the exercise, so that once it's fully extended, it stays that way.

[BobP]

Very nice work. A piucture of a slide rule. I haven't seen one of those in over 40 years. Used it before calculators.