Projects #2: Flotsums and Jetsons

Important Discovery #1:

Those great big plastic tupperware containers from the plastic tupperware container shop make really good light-boxes for photographing things:

If you get a bit of white artists-cardboard… sit it loosely in the bottom of the box… hey-presto:

Can tip it sideways, or shine lights in the top. I’ve found it’s quite good to have two holes…

So you can leave your camera pointed in one hole, then put your arm in the other hole (like Homer Simpson’s job) to arrange things. It’s also quite useful having an extra hole so you can shine a bright light directly into it to give the photo a bit of zing.

Important Discovery #2:

You spend more time looking for sources for components of things than you do actually making them.

This is an opportunity waiting to happen. Localised, easy-to-find, sources of stuff for makers. I made this little lamp for example:

Which took all of about 10 minutes, but I had to drive to neigbouring towns TWICE to get the various components. It’s made out of Rimu, with a special secret family recipe for the polishing oil, which is:

1/4 Tung Oil
1/4 Boiled Linseed Oil
1/4 Veg Turps
14/ Marine Varnish

I have no idea what any of these things are. There was an antique tin of it in the basement. I tried out various experiments etc, which might look similar to you…

But they’re not.

I also made a micro-hydroponics thing for my seedlings, which are the laziest arses in the world.

It’s been about 3 weeks so far, and only one of the bastard things has appeared

Which isn’t very many. I think it’s because that white stuff that the hydroponics guy gave me to grow them in is basically translucent, so they don’t know which way the light is coming from, so they grow sideways, which is absolutely typical. You try to bring them up proper, and this is the thanks you get.

I also designed my calipers website, and made a small hash-pipe out of a piece of driftwood that I found on the beach, even though I don’t have any hash – and haven’t actually seen any since England in about 1987

This is the beach I found it on

I made that video last year. Probably time I did another one.