An upgrade to the squid jars

Way back in 2008, I filled a big jar with mineral oil for the lovely Manon and put a candelabra light bulb in it with other stuff so it looked like a giant squid. A number of years later, I did a smaller version. 

They both looked pretty cool when well lit, but there was something missing.

Recently it came to me. 

I had some cheap LED lights that didn't work any more, but when I got out my soldering iron and wire strippers, I managed to get them working again with an old transformer (don't let anyone tell you to get rid of those things). 

An old tuna can worked perfectly as the base for the smaller jar and a biscuit tin from Dollarama perfectly fit the larger jar. 

The squids now go very nicely with the lava lamps on top of the piano.

The Lava Lamp Crisis

The incandescent bulb's heat is bad for global warming

For about ten years, Canada has been announcing that incandescent bulbs are being phased out and last August the United States banned the sale of most incandescent light bulbs.  

The sales ban is to help fight global warming. Incandescent bulbs use more energy to produce the same amount of light as LED bulbs. This is largely because much of the energy in incandescent bulbs goes to creating intense heat. If you've ever touched a turned-on incandescent bulb, you learned this the hard way.

But some things we like use this heat

While the heat makes incandescent bulbs less efficient for lighting, it makes them useful for heating things. For example, old Easy-Bake Ovens used a 100-watt bulb to cook Betty Crocker treats.

And I need incandescent bulbs to heat the wax in my lava lamps and create the spooky flowing movement inside them.

It seems that Hasbro has developed a heating element that can replace the 100-watt bulb in an Easy-Bake Oven. But a heating element alone won't work for a lava lamp because you need light to see the hypnotic flowing lava. Without an illuminated incandescent bulb, a lava lamp is a dull bottle holding a dull lump of wax.

The right bulbs

After some research and experimentation, I have the following recommendations.

For smallish lamps (16" high, 3" diameter):

• 25 watts
• E17 base (the "intermediate Edison screw", smaller than your usual bulb)
• R14 or R39 shape

[While it is easier to find 40 watt bulbs with E17 bases and an R14 or R39 shape, I suspect it is a bad idea to use the stronger wattage. It might also be unwise to use a globe-shaped S11 or a cylindrical T8, but I'm prepared to do it when my R14s and R39 burn out and can't be replaced. I did once melt a hole in a plastic-based lava lamp using an S11 globe-shaped bulb.]

For the larger, original lava lamp (16" high, 4.5" diameter):

• 40 watts
• E26 base (the "medium Edison screw", the size used in most bulbs in your house)
• R14 or R39 shape
  

A tip

If you get excited and think you've found some R14 shaped bulbs with E17 bases for a really good price at Rona and then two days after you get home with your super cheap bulbs you realize that they are actually 40 watt bulbs that are only good for your big lava lamp that needs an E26 base, I have good news. You can order E26-to-E17 socket adapters on Amazon that work just fine.

Getting bulbs while they last

Every time I've been in a hardware store in the past few years, I've checked for bulbs. Often, there have been none but when there was one or two, I bought them. They haven't been cheap. It has been many years since I've seen a suitable bulb in a grocery store or a dollar store.

Right now, the only places I've been finding suitable 25 watt bulbs are Canadian Tire and Amazon.

Canadian Tires has the a Noma R14 E17 25w bulb for $7.49. 

Amazon has Haraqi R39 E17 25w bulbs at $14.99 for six ($2.50 each).

Lowes, Rona, Home Hardware and Home Depot don't seem to have any suitable bulbs.

In closing

My best wishes to any of my fellow lava lamp lovers. I'll be happy to share any news I get on this crisis with you and will be grateful for any news you have for me. And while I hate to talk about future projects, I have been thinking that it's time for me to make my own lava lamp (and could use any tips on where I can find perchloroethylene.)

 

Lightbulb Art - Shade 2

Last weekend, I put together a new lightbulb shade out of burned-out Christmas lights. It is similar to the one I made for the bathroom in 2007, but it has several innovations.

• Instead of filling the bulbs with oil, I filled the bulbs with fruit-flavoured gelatine - cherry, lemon and orange. I want something non-toxic and inexpensive with a high index of refraction. The oils I used last time have these properties, but even after 5 years, the oil still sweats out of them. Also, if a bulbs smashes, I figure a blob of jelly will be less messy than a puddle of oil. But, maybe mold will grow in them. I hope if it does it will be artistic. Either way: Science!
• I used fewer bulbs, but this time, I was more careful about placing them to block the light of the working bulb from people's sight-lines.
• Little jars with coloured marbles - very popular with certain fans of lightbulb art.    

Uses for lightbulbs: wedding bouquet preservers

If it has been more than a year since you got married, your lovely wife's wedding bouquet might not be doing so well and she might be thinking of not keeping it any longer.

If so, you can use an emptied light bulb to protect at least some of the dried flowers.

The trick is to use one of the bulbs that you've emptied for your lightbulb art where the metal screw-in plug part has come off. This gives you enough of an opening to put a rose blossom inside the bulb.

For the base, use a piece of the tree root that was dug up beside your house when they fixed the foundation.

With your bulb, wood and flowers:

1. Give the wood a few coats of the varethane that your lovely wife used on the new stairs. 
2. Drill a hole in the wood that is just bigger than 1" in diameter. 
3. Put the dried blossoms and flowers in the bulb in as artistic a way as you can. 
4. Put putty in the hole. 
5. Insert the bulb in the hole. (If I did this again, I'd put grains of rice in the middle of the hole so they would absorb excess moisture.)
6. Secure the bulb with elastic bands until the putty dries.
7. Display the finished piece somewhere that does not get direct sunlight. (Maybe because there's no rice inside, or because I did it on a humid day, when the bulb is in direct sunlight, condensation forms on the inside of the bulb.)

Lightbulb Art - Another Rock Bud Vase

One way to get a lightbulb art rock bud vase is to remain married for 50 years and bring a rock from Grand Bank, Newfoundland to your anniversary dinner.

Lightbulb Art - Rock Bud Vase

All you need to make a bud vase like this is:

• 2 wire coat hangers (one for wrapping around the rock and part of the other to make a hook for the bulb)
• A good-sized rock from Newfoundland
• A burned-out and emptied light bulb

It makes a good present for someone who has everything because probably they don't have one of these.

Links:

• DIY Hollow Out A Light Bulb [TeamDroid]
• Bud vase
• Lightbulb Art - TV Screen
• Lightbulb Art - Window Hanging
• Lightbulb Art - Shade
• Lightbulb Art - Giant Squid

The Astronaut Love Triangle Mood Light

It seems that instead of blogging, I'm continuing to make stuff.

I've had this heart-shaped mood light up in the hall way for about seven years. It didn't occur to me that it could be used to make a real-lfe Astronaut Love Triangle logo until after I realized it would be easy to make an Astronaut Love Triangle rocketship from a broken bullet-shape lightbulb (along with bits from other broken lightbulbs, a bit of a cork, rubbing alcohol and hot glue).

The radiation warning is made with electrical tape on the orange plastic that went over a car's hazard light.

I gorrilla-taped sheets of aluminum from pop cans to the back of the heart to prevent light from spilling out.

Back during the holidays, I printed some black and white copies of the logo on an overhead acetate (remember overhead projectors?). The plan had been to turn them into stencils, but I wound up using larger versions for my stencils. I clipped out one and set it in the top so I'd have another version of the logo projected on the ceiling. I used a square of plastic from a club soda bottle to keep it rigid.

The rocketship is hung with elastics that the mail man has left with us.

The radiation hazard warning is hung with a plastic coil from one of the calendars that Kaye's school gives the students every year.

I'm afraid I've got a bunch of other ideas of things to make so it may be a while before I get to all the great legal advice posts I've been wanting to give you.

Lightbulb Art - Giant Squid

I was playing around with putting dead lightbulbs in liquid instead of putting liquid in dead lightbulbs when I noticed something about one of the skinny bulbs that Manon gave me. It looked a lot like the head of a giant squid.
And Manon likes giant squids. (Well who doesn't, but Manon especially likes giant squids.)
So I made her one to go on her desk. All the parts were scavenged except the mineral oil.
The tentacles are copper wire (from a broken slide projector power supply) and broken glass (mostly smashed windshield from an accident on Gladstone, and a few pieces of assorted glass collected at the Westbound bus stop at Lebreton Flats).
The sea floor is marbles that a nice fellow gave me at the Great Glebe Garage Sale and more broken glass.
I think the jar used to have pickles in it.
The liquid inside is mineral oil. I used mineral oil because:

• It has an index of refraction of more than 1.4, this means that it magnifies better than water or alcohol;
• It is relatively nontoxic (this was all baby oil, therefore food grade); and
• The metal bits will not rust.

Unfortunately, it's hard to scavenge mineral oil. I put a fair bit of effort into finding a good price for it. Mineral oil can be bought in bulk. Not at a hardware store, not at a paint store, not at a drugstore. At least none of the many that I tried. But at the Petro-Canada bulk oil depot on Merivale Drive. When I last spoke with them, they had one 20-litre bucket of food-grade low-viscosity mineral oil priced at $3.99 per litre or $79.80. (I wanted low viscosity because it pours faster and there isn't much difference in the refraction index between the lowest and highest viscosities.)
But at Dollarama, you can buy a 266ml bottle of baby oil for $1.00. I believe that works out to $3.76 per litre. You wind up with a whole lot of little clear squirt bottles to re-use or recycle, but you don't have to buy 20 litres at a time. (This project required 3.5 litres of oil.)
Links:

• Giant squids on Wikipedia
• My other lightbulb art

Lightbulbs and Aloe Gel

Remember my lightbulb TV screen?I've learned some important lessons about liquid filled lightbulbs since I made it.
First, if you use binder wire and the wire goes into the liquid it will start to rust and make the whole thing turn a disturbing brown colour.

I am still using binder wire to hang regular-sized bulbs, but now I am wrapping the wire around the outside of the threads and applying some solder.
I am also trying a new liquid, aloe vera gel. I think it might look cool because air bubbles in the gel don't seem to move.

Lightbulb Art - Shade

I broke the lamp shade in the guest bathroom about six months ago.

I must get something that won't burn to cut the glare from the clear lightbulb, I thought.

The obvious answer of using other lightbulbs, burned-out and coloured ones, came to me quickly.

It just took me a while to get around to making it happen.

These bulbs are filled with rubbing alcohol, mineral oil or both and capped with black silicone caulking. I found the grill in some renovation garbage.

The wire came from the broken slide projector I made a mobile of many years ago. Some of the wires are attached to the bulbs using triangular bits of plastic clipped from excessive packaging. I think the springs are from a lawn chair. I don't know where the other wire bit came from, but it was a perfect length.

Click on the photo to see my Flickr set that includes a couple of "the making of" views.

Lightbulb Art - Window Hanging

Remember my fabulous TV Screen? Some of you might have been reluctant to get one for your home because you want to watch Heroes or Battlestar Galactica without distortion.
No problem.
Just hang your Lightbulb Art TV Screen in the window when those shows are on.

Lightbulb Art - TV Screen

I am happy to report that I can now show you another thing to do with burned-out lightbulbs.

1. Empty and clean out the lightbulbs.
2. Take an old picture frame that is the same size as your TV screen and rig something along the back at the top to hang the lightbulbs from. (I had a piece of plastic grating that I think came from a flourescent light fixture, but you could use a stretch of binder wire or a coat hanger.)

3. Cut different lengths of binder wire and bend them to hang the bulbs from the frame.
4. Hang the bulbs in a way that you find pleasing.

5. Fill the bulbs with a clear liquid. I used a clear soap in the big bulbs. My theory on the soap is that it will have a higher index of refraction than water, thus giving more magnification and light-bendiness, but I could be wrong. Also, I figure bacteria will not grow in soap. On the other hand, it may all crystalize in an unaesthetic way. Because I could not find my syringe to put the thick soap into the little bulbs, I filled them with very old hydrogen peroxide from when I wore contact lenses. (That was like 1991.) While hydrogen peroxide solution should also not grow bacteria, I suspect it will have a highly corrosive effect on the binder wire and bulb sockets, and is probably a bad idea. But I was impatient.
6. Cap the bulbs with silicone caulking.

7. Attach the frame to a heavy piece of wood on top of the TV set.
8. Cover the wood with a dark cloth and weigh it down with a large fossilized dinosaur egg to hammer home your philosophical point about technological consumer obsolescence.

Links:

• Lightbulb Drying
• Bud vase
• Bud vase [Make]
• Lightbulb Acquarium [Make]
• DIY Hollow Out A Light Bulb [TeamDroid]

Lightbulb Drying

Here is a useful tip.

When you rinse out your emptied burned-out lightbulbs it is helpful to have a drying rack.

If, like me, you do not have such a rack, just take chopsticks you've been saving from Asian takeout and stick them into slots in your salad spinner.