Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Getting Hammered part 4

Today I wanted to focus on a few of the many ways a Hammered Game Tables table, and the GM caddy can be personalized.

Dan Fisher, the big kahuna at Hammered Game Tables, enjoys doing some wood burning to add designs to the tables of his customers. Those designs can be just about anything, taking into account limitations of the materials, and your budget.

When I was discussing the upcoming purchase with Dan, he asked that I put together a list of things I enjoy. Among those things on the list: Original Star Trek, Babylon 5, and a myriad of other entertainments, but what really stuck out to Dan was my mention of the African Serval. Dan asked to see pictures and of course I obliged by sending him three. This is the one that became the decoration for my GM caddy.


The personalization did not end there. I was already working on a slightly dwarven themed table due to the success Dan had in locating the cast iron drawer pulls and coating them with copper leaf, so I asked if he could burn the blog name on the two short ends of the table and put copper down inside the runes.
Under the right lighting the runes seem to have a slight glow, which is no surprise when you consider how the light reflects off of the drawer pulls.
Getting back to the GM caddy. Another customer of Hammered Game Tables had the great idea for putting crenelations or battlements along the table side of the GM caddy. Having gotten a look at it, I was intrigued. Not intrigued enough to add a dice tower as well, but enough to break down and request my caddy look that nifty too. While the majority of my table and accessories are made from Alder wood, the battlements are actually Oak. Take a look at the more open grain, makes for a nice contrast to the tighter grain of the Alder wood.
Before you write the battlements off as mere decoration, this add-on can serve to hold up all sorts of pictures using some 3M poster stickies, including the wanted posters all DMs want to issue for their adventuring party. Let's see, adventurers wanted signs, missing persons notices, rumors of treasure, the list goes on. What player can resist reading the stuff the DM leaves hanging right in front of their noses? "This morning I memorized Explosive Runes!"

As mentioned before, it is easy to configure the inner workings of the GM caddy to suit your needs.

All along the ramparts at the top of the caddy are places to keep pencils, glass beads, etc.
And of course you can stage some miniatures up there to intimidate your players.

Next up . . . another look at the dice trays, snack caddies, and cup holders.

1 comment:

TheHandyDM said...

The crenellations really add both form & function to the GM Caddy. Quite clever.

I'd love to see Dwarvish runes on one side of the table, Elvish on another side, then maybe Halfing on the 3rd, etc. I wonder if some luminescent stain could make the runes actually glow under the right conditions. Would be a cool effect.

Also, it looks as if there is a groove at the top of the caddy for pencils/pens, similar to what was suggested be added to the Player Caddies. So it seems as if something can be added. In the words of this earlier idea, "include a raised strip of wood just inside the drawer with a depression for holding pencils so they do not roll around when opening and closing the drawer."

Definitely would want the battlements on my GM caddy and the pencil holders on my drawers.