week 1

Assignment: Build a flashlight using any tools or techniques you’d like.  I’m defining a flashlight as: portable, battery powered, and creates light.

For this assignment I wanted to make a mix media flash light that would also have an organic feel to it. At first I was aiming at making a “lava lamp” flash light, but after a bunch of unsuccessful trials and a lot of mess I decided to use one of the 2 pieces of the drift wood pieces that I picked up on one of my trips to Cold Spring, NY. Also, I wanted to become more comfortable drilling and sawing in the shop.

My initial plan was to drill a hole along the length of one of the pieces to make room for the wires, but the problem was that the pieces were longer than the drill bits, and the shape of it is irregular.

I tried 2 optional solutions; the first was to divided it to pieces, drill holes through it and then reassemble, and the second was to cut it along the grain in half and then ‘dig’ a tunnel inside for the wires and use wood glue to reassemble it. I chose to go with the second option.

I found a perfect size LED light that matched the diameter of the drift wood and I wanted to create a push button with an organic shape and feel to it as well so I used clap to cover the original plastic push button I had.  For power I used 2 1.5V coin batteries.

digging inside the drift wood was harder than I expected

used wood glue over night

It took me a while to decide how to finish and tie it all together. Eventually I chose to add glitter and use lacquer coating to add some spark.

FINISHED!

my cat Twiggy seems interested

it shimmers in blue light when I push the button!