Mjöllnir Lamps for the Roadster

Some projects take a long time. Sometimes I start something and then put it aside, in this case for more that two years! When Make:TV came out to the workshop to shoot a profile of me in July of 2008, one of the projects that I worked on for them was a coach lamp for my car. I built one lamp for them and just finished the other lamp today. Watch the video for the beginnings of the project and then click through to see some details of the construction and the completed lamps. 

I've named them Mjöllnir Lamps because my fellow SPWS contributor Annie (who is a Viking) says that they reminder her of Thor's hammer.

The body of the lamp is made from a pair of brass goblets that I cut in half and soldered back-to-back. An abrasive wheel on the drill press at it's highest speed made quick work of this.

The rest of the components were standard lamp parts taken from a variety of donors. I grab every single solid brass lamp that I find at the dump. A length of steel tube was used to align the parts for soldering.

Note the lamp I made in 2008, how tarnished it is! 

I cleaned up the lamps with a 7" buffing wheel and rouge.

The lenses for the lamps are these large glass jewels that I got from Michael's craft store, they're glued in with clear silicon. Once dry, I trimmed the silicon and put a bead of black butyl rubber windshield caulk around the lens to give it more of a finished look. 

A tape handle helped me to drop the lens into place.

I had a set of red and green pilot light lenses so I used these for port and startboard side marker lights.

The jewels actually do a very good job of collecting the light from the 12 volt 10 watt bulb. I will be running the bulbs on half voltage by connecting them in series. I like the dimmer look and I'm hoping that they will last forever this way as changing a bulbs will require un-gluing one of the lenses, not an easy task.

I'm rather pleased with these and I'm excited to debut the car at the Steampunk Industrial Revolution Con in Nashua New Hampshire in March 2011! You should come, I'll have the bus there and it's going to be a party!