Wood Badge Beads - Part 2

[Wmcullen]

Wood Badge Beads
Part 2 of 2

Wood Badge beads are used in Scouting to recognize adults' accomplishments in key leadership training courses.
In Part 1 I shared a process to make them from 3/8" dowels.
Here are a few ways they can be further customized.

Custom Dowels
Making a pen and a set of beads from the same wood has been a fun project.
Starting with a nice piece of padauk, I cut a 4" length of board into smaller pieces and turn into 3/8" dowels.

Similar to what I wrote about in Part 1, I drill holes...

Shape the top and bottom on a router table...

Cut apart...

and sand the sharp edges away.

Engraving
An inexpensive NEJE laser engraver is great for small customization tasks.

I designed a 3d-printed bed for the beads (file attached in case it's helpful to others).

The beads snap, more or less, into place

and I customize the text on a pre-measured Photoshop file (also attached).

Summary
The first Wood Badge course was held north of London in 1919.
These beads are a modern interpretation of the original beads Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, gave to those first participants.

Attached Files
The file "WBbeadJigs.zip" contains two files: an obj file for 3d printing and a psd (Photoshop) file with four lines of brief text.

 

[leehljp]

I think you could get rich teaching CAD and 3-D printing! I can "see" that in my mind but never had the time to learn CAD. I understand graphics design much better, but wish I had the same knowledge of CAD.

Excellent work!

 

[Wmcullen]

Thanks Hank.
The seminal sci-fi movie TRON (1982) was a great "Alice in Wonderland" kind of story... but the only truly unrealistic part, I thought at the time, was how the lead character got into the computer and then back out at the end. Everything that happened in the computer seemed pretty believable.
This has been one of those fascinating things to watch evolve over the decades: the ways we ferry things between the real and digital worlds. Using hardware like printers, scanners, digital cameras and now 3D printers, we traverse the river Styx between corporal and ethereal.
I cut my teeth on some of the early 3d modeling and animation programs at college in the early 90s. Unlike the engineers using CAD, I always assumed my models would stay in the digital world. The advent of 3d printers has let me experiment and model with the thought of having a physical product at the end of the process.
Making jigs has been a fantastic outlet.
Best,
Cullen