I’m out in LA for a wedding and needed an appropriate present for the bride. So: 12″ acrylic lamp globe, $29 on ebay, 1/4″ ABS plastic cut plug, 1/4″ ABS plastic base piece, water, cosmetic mica, acrylic glue.
It was much easier to mail it out empty than to try to take a 20 pound ball of weird liquid on an airplane. So I assembled it in my friends’ kitchen. Memo to self: make fill-hole larger so you don’t wear your hands out with the hypodermic.
I put a little detergent in the water so that the mica would not stick to the acrylic, then sucked and injected it into the globe. It had to sit a few hours for most of the air to percolate out of the water, then I used the acrylic glue to make a ring of sealant, and put the base on.
The hardest part of this project was fitting the inner plug into the neck of the globe – I had to cut it with a reciprocating saw then sand it to fit on my belt sander. That took about 5 minutes.
Hey Marcus, If you’re still in town I’d like to meet you in person and buy you a drink in DTLA. How about it?
Where does the Strongbow figure in this activity?
B. B. Breece@#1: I appreciate the offer but I’m up at 5am to hit a 10am flight to Atlanta tomorrow.
chigau@#2: The strongbow was “lubricant” for creativity. It took several!
Lovely! And very clever.
My daughter made a galaxy/nebula by putting cotton balls and glitter in a jar with colored water (different drops of food colors in different places). I’ll have to show her this.
(Some Christmas ornaments are glass globes with color inside. To remove it, I pour in some salt and shake it around. That’s much smaller and more fragile than your globe, but I thought I’d mention.)
Menyambal@#5:
That sounds super cool!
I doubt a glass globe is strong enough to fill with water like this, but there are acrylic christmas ornaments that would probably make nice mini planets.
I just obtained all the necessary stuff for making PVA slime, so I’m looking forward to doing something (I just don’t know what yet!) with that…
Try a catheter tip syringe next time. You should be able to pour your ingredients through it.
Raucous Indignation@#7:
Whoah! I had no idea such things existed. Perfect!
Injecting through the hypodermic filled the interior of the globe with tiny bubbles that took a few hours to merge and go to the top; the catheter tip (with a slightly bigger hole) ought to solve that problem.
Now I’m going to have to make another one!
Yes, they are commonly used to put liquids, enteral nutrition and medications and such, into feeding tubes.