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“The Hill”
This hazard has turned out to be quite a nasty one. “The Hill” is a steep slope that has three possible exits at the top. The middle one will lead your
disk on down the track where the other two exits will bring your disk back in front of the steep slope.
The hazard will be 2 straight track pieces long. I will use only one straight track since most part of the track will disappear under the hazard itself.
Fist I will built the slope itself, completely out of styrodur. The slope itself and the tracks that will lead the disks back to a spot in front of the
hazard will be glued on the styrodur frame. While building the basic form I thought it would be fun to make a track that goes through the slope.
Once the tracks where glued upon the frame I tried out the first disks in order to find out if they would slide well.
These are very rewarding moments when you see that all your disks behave in a way you had planned.
The base on which the hazard will be glued is two tracks long. I did use only one straight track because it would be a waste of using a second track
while this one will be mostly covered by the hazard. The on track I used was plit up in 2 pieces and in between I used pieces of hardboard to fill out
the space in between the two track pieces. I carved out a layer out of the track pieces in order to get the slope nicely levelled with the surface of
the track. I did this at the front and back side of the hazard. The backside however has a slimmer slide downwards so I had to carve out less material
out of the track piece.
Gluing the ramp itself was rather tricky. The plastic tend to bend back in to its original form. What helped was the use of a hot bath for this plastic
piece. Once it got really hot it became also more flexible. Now I can glue the ramp better on the styrodur with the help of a lot of pins that I pushed
through the plastic in to the foam underneath.
After gluing the plastic parts and after adding the railings at the side I started testing the hill. I had to find out in what way I had to make the
wall on top of the hill. Without a wall the disks would fly from the ramp over the hazard through the room. A wall alone wasn’t enough. The disks bounce
off from the wall and actually jump back. So when I added a small roof on top of this wall, the disks that did bounce back did not fly through the air
anymore but came sliding back down.
Finally I painted the entire project black and made the railing yellow again so this hazard blends in nicely with the rest of the track.
19th of November the ultimate test was there. A games day with quite some Carabande players tested the range of new hazards.
I had to leave early that day and could not get my hazards back at that time. Too many people where waiting still to test out and play on the tracks.
I could no get a bigger compliment.
I am always interested in new ideas, so when you like what you have seen so far but think that there is an even bigger/better hazard to be made,
then please tell me about it. I might even take up the challenge.
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