Back in 2003 when i made my first stick, you had great stick makers like dreaded fist making the clasic board on a block style with paint jobs that weren’t that great. Plus the woodwork was showing from the outside thanks to seams everywhere!
So i decided to make a big seamless box ( fat midgets coffin?) with a pretty much reflective paint job. This stick was okay, but didn’t play that well because it has shitty happ parts, and the button drilling wasn’t very good. My 2nd stick, produced a year later featured no new innovations but was sanwa with correct button placement.
Now i have this feeling in my belly again, I’m not seeing any innovationin joysticks around here. Everyone and their cousin seems to be making byrdo clones, flat compact sanwa sticks. Whilst they’re all very well made and perfect for their purpose, i’m finding them fucking boring.
Since functionality seems to have been maxed out in conventional designs, i set out on a completely creative whim. I don’t expect this stick to perform better than a conventional flat top joystick, it’s ART. So i’m allowing for a little drop in performance because it’s a fucked up shape. i can deal with it.:looney:
i came up with a design that would be different AND FAR MORE RAD:lovin: than the usual (and very good) designs most people make. My new stick box is completely curved and shaped like a drop of water sliced in half lengthways.
The problem i’m having is i’m not sure how to mount a sanwa stick in this badboy. I can’t simply bolt the mounting plate under the roof as it won’t sit flush. I also can’t have any screws visible from the outside. the wood is also currently 3/4" or thereabouts.
Any one got any thoughts. Oh and since this is v1 of my new stick, true to form, the button holes are already fucked up and too far apart …:sad:
I guess it does look like a bicycle helmet, or the ship from flight of the navigator, or jason’s mask. Doesn’t look much like a joystick box eh, guess i suceeded in my original premise.
Can’t break from the norm and not expect some criticism. That’s fine with me, i appreciate your contribution, but what i really want are suggestions on how to mount within a curved surface. any ideas?
Thanks man, i was thinking that, but i’m concerned the shaft of the stick may not be long enough. Do sanwa or seimetsu do elongated shafts for weird cabs?
It’s an interesting idea. At least it’s something different. I’ve long since thought about doing a completely rounded surface. The problems I had with the idea weren’t from the stick. That’s an “easy” problem that can be solved (see below). The part that make it a no-go for me is the fact that the buttons won’t sit flush on a curved surface. There are ways to overcome this as well, but it would take away from the smooth overall curve that one is trying to make by even starting a project like this.
To mount the stick, just bottom mount it. Using a device like a router or even a forstner bit, you can route out a flat area beneath the surface of the case. Of course, you’ll want the routed basin to be parallel to the tangent of the curve at the point where the shaft will protrude, but that’s not a difficult task or a task that need to be exact given the nature of the stick. Since you’re bottom mounting, the Sanwa shaft is “long” in the sense that if you mounted the mechanism with the flat-mounting plate flush with the top panel surface, it would be 8mm too long. If you take that into account, you have 8mm of leeway to get it to mount correctly. That means when you bottom route your basin, the top panel should be 8mm thick. Again, if it were me, I would remove the mounting plate AND cut off the extra extensions on the base (the 2 pieces that come off making it an irregular shape instead of a square). That will save you the headache of have to make an irregular sized basin. You can secure the stick by using screws going up into the case.
I’m sure there’s some other ways to do it, but that’s how I would handle it. I wouldn’t do a top mount method because as previously stated you would have to build on top of the plate using bondo or other material that makes it pretty permanent. I try to use as little bondo/filler as possible in all my projects.
buttons not sitting flush is a huge problem for me as well. Might I suggest a heatgun and pressure :).
As for mounting the stick, I’d either epoxy the stick straight on or epoxy on blocks of wood and then screw into the wood. Whats the stick made out of anyways?
I’m not too crazy about the shape itself. Looks too much like a bicycle helmet. Props for trying, you can’t expect to hit the jackpot on the 1st try. Hope this’ll lead to something bad ass.
The only other thing I could suggest, is for the buttons to be flush flat against the curved surface, is to sand underneath the ring surrounding the plunger. That SHOULD solve the problem… but would be time consuming and hard to get just right.
If anyone wants to improve the functionality of joysticks, I say, make it so you can rotate the angle of the buttons on your stick… that way people who prefer a lil slant to their sticks can share with people who prefer straight perpendicular lines… but that’s just me.
Really great design, I hope it shows up at Evo so i can see if it’s comfortable at all or not…
But if stick makers have plateaued, then I’m wondering about working with plastics. Not square Lexan boxes, but a nice shaped plastic case like a Hori Fighting Stick, or even a combo of metal/plastic like an HRAP or virtua stick…
Thanks bro, i figured that i wouldn’t be able to go that close to the surface without the shaft length not being long enough. i don’t actually have a spare sanwa stick lying around which is one of the reasons i am farming the question out to some of you more experienced srk’ers. Out of curiosity, is there any elongated shaft sanwa sticks out there?
my only concern is that the outer edges of th routed area will be very thin, not strdy enough for heavy handed players, also too thin to screw into from below without at leasthaving little bumps visible from the surface, or with my luck, a screw poking through
i’m tempted, reduces the risk of me putting a screw through the lid accidently, i would need a longer shaft for this. i could route underneath, stick two pieces of wood to the underside and use the weird hump-shaped mounting plate. hmm
oh and the stick is made of wood, carved from a big block
i’ll have to do that for the buttons, or just thump them until they recess themselves into the wood :lol:
Thanks, and that reminds me of my snowboard bindings where you can slide the binding up and down on the board. dunno how i’d do it on a stick, i guess yo’d have to cut elongated holes and use screw buttons. They always come loose though, at least on my stick! thanks for the compliment, you gotta work hard for it in here, people just too damn good at this nowadays.
Plastics are out of my realm, i used acrylic at once and made a pen rack. it sucked. i also find something much more satisfying when you play on a wooden stick as opposed to a hrap etc, i’m sure lots of people know what i mean.
I’d have guessed it was plastic. The finish is spotless.
Have you thought about how you’re gonna get some artwork onto this :lol:
Hope you’ll keep the thread updated as you progress. If the stick doens’t work out in the end, I’m sure it will give other folks plenty of ideas. :tup:
As far as I know, there are no “elongated” shafts for JLF. There are some other shafts that might work like Wico shafts, but you can’t quote me on that. Ask ponyboy. He knows a lot about wico shafts (they come in different lengths) and he sells them.
And also, Noel aka finkle can make you a custom shaft no problem. Just talk to him about it.
Well because you’v already sanded and smoothed it out I wouldn’t recommend this, but its some food for thought. take the existing shape, take paper towel tubes about the size of the buttons a little bigger but not much. Fix them on and fiberglass the hell out of them. Fabricate an organic box to do the same for the stick - protruding say 6 inches from the top portion of the stick. Get artistic if you want and use fiberglass to makr more protruding ‘limbs’.
…:sad:
:wasted:
