a Custom-built, Steampunk-based light ?

Enema machine?

Complete tutorial

Steampunk

definitely a cool looking light !

:bigsmile:

awsome job on that Rufusdbuck :slight_smile: i remember reading your build on the gun-light.

I like the brass mesh idea. They really did a nice job turning a cheap flashlight into a light saber. Not to bad in the Lady Vader suit either.

I was hoping it would have a green cree in it. :Sp

A good alternative to coal would be lard oil. When preheated, it burns in an Argand lamp like whale oil. Rapeseed oil from wild cabbage was also supposed to work well in lighthouses.
Maybe a coal or oil powered light could use a Peltier thermoelectric diode instead of a steam turbine or piston steam engine. Easier to do on a small scale, and turbines don’t actually scale well to small size and power. I don’t see in Wikipedia about their being used to generate electricity, but they are efficient enough that they must be reversible.

There was a post around here on a girl who used a peltier to power a few 5mm leds using the differential of hand heat and a cool metal pipe.
The problem with peltiers is they need a differential of heat to operate. The bigger the differential the more the electricity. (the opposite is true also, just with temperature), meaning that your flashlight would have to have excellent heatsinking in order to maintain that very high differential. And peltiers are inefficient at generating electricity, so it would be a very low drive current.

Sorry to shoot you down. I love the concept, but we don’t have (to my knowledge) the technology to efficiently convert chemical energy to heat to electricity to light.

As a side note, peltiers are more efficient at generating heat than cooling somthing, there was a post either here or on cpf of “the freezerator”, a –200+ degree freezer powered by pelters, and heatsunk with a garden hose. If I remember right, it was exponential how much water was needed to cool the pelters vs how cold the freezer was to get.

Yes, I think one would have to give up the idea of it being a useful flashlight, which I don’t think is the usual steam punk approach. One could really go 19th Century and use an Argand lamp, a more than half spherical reflector (aluminised Mylar pasted on the inside of a ball) to catch the backwards light and a plastic Fresnel lens.
I saw kerosine Argand lamps on a farm in Norway. They had much less bulge in the chimney around the flame than the flat wicked lamps did. Apparently, with whale, lard or vegetable oil, the ends of the wick smoke. So Argand got rid of the ends by wrapping it in a circle.

I have one of these - brass with a leather strap. It’s sort of steampunk. At least in the materials used.

Well, it sort of looks like an enigma machine. Probably some sort of encryption device?

Hebern 5-rotor cipher machine. Edward Hebern was a horse theif, stock swindler, and inventor of the rotor based cipher machine.

The machine (and the Enigmas) light up the letter sheet with small 4V flashlight bulbs that have a short, squat envelope. This is needed to keep the heat from the bulb from melting the plastic letter sheet. The bulbs are long out of production. I used to make replacements by casting grain-of-wheat bulbs in acrylic resin. Then one of Apple’s founders commissioned a custom run of Enigma bulbs… they sell for around $10 each. Before that, I had seen original bulbs selling for over $100 each!

I’m really looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I’m trying to put together a steampunk outfit or two for a convention in a couple weeks… I’m going about it all rather last-minute, but hopefully it’ll turn out okay. No time to make a nice steampunk light; instead I’m going to paint up some nerf guns for props.

Here’s one example; just yesterday I stumbled across two of this exact model in a thrift store for a couple bucks each, and am deciding on how to modify them (they’re currently still neon plastic colors with logos to sand off):

That reminds me of the detectives gun in Roger Rabbit.

Not a torch, but steampunky, well it would be with older rounded clips.

Linky is here

the maverick is the perfect steam-punk base weapon: easy to find, cheap, and the options are only limited by your ingenuity. my personal opinion is it is a bit overused, but such is the nature of the beast.

If I may offer a few tips: use plastidip for the parts where you want grip/ texture, (plastidip has a spray coat to make it more permanent for heavy use, and comes in many colors.)
use vinyl dye to color the plastic, it comes out MUCH smoother if you do it right. the dye does not stick to the orange barrel very well IMO.
I have yet to see a maverick with a good “copper patina”. With that in mind, be inventive with your color scheme. It will make it pop. Or involve a couple of 5mm leds inside the case as accent lighting. I have done it before with great success.

If you like how it turns out, show us. I need a few new ideas anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

I realize the maverick is overused, but it should be okay for a last-minute prop (in other words, better than nothing).

So far, the plan is to sand off the logos, take it apart, spray-paint with a dark primer, dry, spray-paint each piece with a primary base metallic color, dry, mask and spray some sections again with different metallic colors, dry, spray-paint nearly the entire thing with a dark brown and promptly wipe most of it off with a rag (to add depth with a patina-like look in the recessed areas), then seal it and put it back together. Probably some extra details thrown in there somewhere too, and whatever attachments I happen to find in the next few days.

I’m not much of an artist and am short on time, so I’m going with easy and basic.

Nice Carbide Lamp ! i havent seen one of those in a long time.