Projects Archive
How to Make a Large Flash Diffuser
Making nice photographs when all you have for lighting is a bunch of tungsten shop lamps can be a real challenge. It is particularly hard to photograph polished brass under these conditions. So this weekend I set out to build a flash diffuser to improve the quality of the photography
Telegraph Clacks out RSS Feeds
When I was a boy my father brought home from work a telegraph sounder replica kit. He was the director of the library for a local college and the sounder kit was one of several museum quality reproductions of 19th Century technology the library had acquired. The lovely brass
How to Make a Cheap Lightbox
For many of my recent projects I have found myself in need of a lightbox so I took a couple of hours from working on my latest project to put together this one. I used a piece of glass from the old Xerox machine that I bought for ten dollars
Thoughts on Building a Steam Car
December 1, 2006 I want to build a steam car or perhaps a steam motorcycle. Why? you ask. Oh, just for fun, I reply. The first step in a big project is research. I ordered the Essential Steam Power Library from International Correspondence Schools, circa 1906. Lindsay Books
Copper Plating and Etching Altoids Tins
UPDATE: There's some great information on this page and it's comments, but I've recently published a far more comprehensive article here: Etching Tins with Salt Water and Electricity With this project I wanted to try a number of new things: Magazine pages as cheap toner transfer media Copper electroplating Etching
Electrolytic Machining of Brass – Part II:
After the perhaps overly optimistic attempt at electrolytic machining in Part I, I decided to try etching parts from thinner sheets of brass. Sheet with thicknesses of .010 and .015" were chosen and I used the advanced image search feature of Google to search for black and white appropriately steampunk images.
Electrolytic Etching of Brass
Update: I'm often asked about the thickness, type, and source of brass I used for these journals. I am very lucky to have a local place, Metal Source, were I buy most of my supplies. I used 22 ga. (.025") brass and any alloy will do. In a
Electrolytic Machining of Brass, a Clockwork Trilobite
I have been having great success etching brass plate with a solution of copper sulfate and an electrical current. The depth, quality, and speed of the etchings have been quite controllable and it seemed to me that I might be able to etch completely through a piece of brass. This capability
A Clockwork Guitar, the Steampunk Stratocaster
I have a Fender US Highway One series Stratocaster, which is a half decent guitar, but looks just like a million other Strats. I had been planning to replace the pick guard with a black mother of pearl guard but my experiments in electrolytic etching made me think I'd
Putting an Angle Lamp Back in Oil
One of the tragic realities of Angle Lamps is that many have been electrified in a crude and destructive manner. Below is such a lamp. I bought this lamp on eBay thinking that it was solid brass. I intended to move the burners from a tin plate Angle Lamp