The Maker Faire is finally coming to the Houston area. We wont be able to have a pond this year for many reasons.. they cant subsidize at all, too few members, JANUARY - might be very cold... etc. So I think I will do a presentation on the big stage. I want to do a 'Gallagher meets MWCI' type of demo showing either a bank of guns or better yet a ship - shooting various items in a box. So first I need to make a good demo box but it should be large enough to allow for the rear of the ship and the target. I can get some thicker lexan for the front and then a plywood back/shower pan liner as suggested. I am not sure how visible the lexan would be but I can put a webcam in there as well to give a better view. Targets?? What would 'shred' to get folks all worked up? I thought about a chocolate bunny that would disentigrate, a twinkie doesnt.. too bad. A convoy ship.. but you have to patch it.. fix damage, a balsa square with a bullseye.. boring.. In the spirit of Gallagher what else can I shoot up that would be destroyed by the bb's? A watermelon would just take holes and it woudl take many magazines to make bad damage. Tomatoes? Plastic model? Any ideas? I will be making special videos and such for this so any ideas are appreciated. Thanks, Johnny
They make clay disks for shooting with BB guns. those might break apart nicely, try a local tractor supply that is where ive seen them in oaksboro.
I've been to almost every Maker Faire the WWCC has battled at, and recruited at several other hobby shows and conventions. Here's a few pointers I picked up along the way. Ships and videos are always the best thing for a show. Without ships and video, anything else you display will be incomprehensible to potential new battlers. Show someone a diagram of a cannon, they go "huh?" Show someone the diagram while pointing to the cannon in your ship, and they go "cool!" Some even go "cool, I want one too!" Get as many ships as you can. Good things to look for: ready-to-battle ships, with fresh sides and fairly good detailing. Battle-damaged ships, showing holes in the hull and other wear-and-tear from combat. Consider having one side partially patched, to illustrate the repair process. naked ships, ready to battle but with balsa sides off. Partially constructed ships, showing the various stages of construction and the various different materials and techniques available. Get them in that priority, if possible. If a picture is worth a thousand words.... get video. If possible, show videos of the battles. There is plenty of good recruitment-type stuff out there on youtube. You can bring a laptop, or an ipad or similar. Or you can bring a small projector. Try to have speakers so people can hear. It's amazing how much people can figure out just from hearing the *bang* in addition to seeing the splash. Remember that the video serves two purposes: to attract attention, and to show people what our battles are like. But ultimately it's up to you to explain everything, answer questions, and invite people to join. Make sure you're pointing people to the video to explain something, rather than fighting the video for people's attention. Other stuff. Gadgets like a cannon-in-a-box, bilge pumps, etc. These can be cool, but they are very specialized tools. Don't build one unless you're certain that the time invested in building it will greatly boost your recruiting effort, above and beyond what preparing more ships would do. A thought. Take a battle-damaged transport ship, and place it in a big, cheap, clear-sided fish tank. Let it sink from its damage. Let everyone see it sit on the bottom for a couple minutes. Then pour it out, and show that everything still works. Then do it again every few minutes. Consider letting a visitor drive the transport while it's sinking. Bonus points if it still drives when fully sunk. I did this with my destroyer Z-25 at a convention, I drove it around a duck pond while sunk. Worked wonders. Edit: for targets in a gun box, crackers tend to fragment nicely. Saltines or Triscuits. CDs also work well if you hit them squarely. I shot up a whole stack of old AOL CD's at that convention. The computer club even brought out an ancient, dead laptop. The keys from it made beautiful debris. Paper targets with caricature ships or bad guys. Anything that makes big, visible flying fragments or makes a loud *thwack* or *ding* noise. If you're doing a presentation in front of an audience, consider shooting up the transport for the fish tank mentioned above.
We didn't actually have a gun box at the San Mateo Maker Faire. The only time we planned to build one, they asked us to battle instead. What we've done instead is to bring several cannons separate from the ships, that we can show off the different basic types. Last year we even had a couple that were disassembled, so we could show the more inquisitive visitors how the valve works. I have seen a few photos of gun boxes at other conventions, but don't remember who made them.
