Thread: If you have a spare £12,000 knocking around

put me down for 6

they are very lovely and when I win the lottery they will look great in my castle, until then, sigh

lovely! i always wondered why even new globes are so damned expensive. are they really that difficult to make?

How It's Made: Globe : Video : Science Channel shows how one manufacturer does it for one line of globes (I think it's been shown here before). Making a single globe is relatively painstaking work. As the globes get larger, the support structure gets harder and the globes have to e made of comparatively tougher stuff.

See also A Blank Globe and building a 3d world globe for more information on making globes.

If you'd like a multi-function globe for decorating your home, http://www.amazon.com/Sixteenth-Cent.../dp/B001MA1W8G shows one sort of thing that you can get. I find it amusing that it's approximately cheaper to get the bar than to get a real globe. My family used to have something like one of these back in the late 60's and it was interesting to look at and moderately sturdy.

That makes me want to make an old-fashioned globe depicting some other world: Barsoom or Dunsany's Lands Beyond the Fields We Know...

I have always wanted the globe of Arrakis described in Dune...the one spinning under the impetus of Baron Harkonnen's chubby hand.
M