A couple of desktops

This week I made up a couple of desktop marble runs. See video of the sculpture shown above, below. The first tabletop I built was for my dad. I started with the triangle frame using 1/4" stainless steel so that it would be very solid. The advantage of building the frame and then adding track is that you can attach the track to the frame as you go. I like using just three legs because it is much easier to set it onto any surface, especially and uneven one, and not have to worry about it rocking/swaying around when the marbles are rolling. I really liked how the "talking heads" looked and worked on the large wall hanging sculpture #64. So I recreated it for these desktops. This arm lowers the marble down to the track below it, and holds any other marbles back. One by one they are dropped. The advantage of this is that you can roll several marbles in a row and they will not fly off at the tipping arm because the arm was not yet fully back in the upright position when the next marble gets there. This means you don't have to worry about spacing the marbles out. It also serves to slow down the rolling marbles so you can watch them better, and it lengthens the time the marbles are actually rolling.

The one shown below is: 14" wide X 14" deep and 19.5" tall.

60ft of wire was used to make this desktop sculpture. Most for track, some for supports. There is 18ft of track with 1 tipping arm, 1 horizontal gate that flips around when the marbles roll into/under it, and marbles on track. The marbles on track add a nice visual as well, with a nice *click* each time a marble rolls into the stationary row of marbles. Really like it? Buy this one for yourself or someone you really, really like : ) $250 includes shipping in US.

See more info here at my website: Tabletop #08



These are great, fun little sculptures that don't take electric power, and are portable so you can show it off to everyone! I gave a smaller version of one to my mother-in-law and she took it work. She said people would come down on their break to play with it. She works at the contractors desk at a lumber store so she needed something to keep the guys quiet while she worked up their quote. She says it works fabulously.