This is an old Western Electric trouble alarm lamp with two brass rings, a red glass cone lens and one green glass cone lens. I picked up from our local reuse place so I am guessing it was from a small switchboard or C.O.?

I disassembled it and cleaned the plastic/glass using mild dish soap, and hit the brass with a wire brush wheel. The lamp originally uses these wooden wedge base B2 switchboard incandescent bulbs but I am switching it to LEDs to save the bulbs and make it low voltage friendly. I used some left overs from an addressable LED strip (Adafruit.com) and mounted them to small strips of plywood with 3M doublestick mounting tape. I marked out the holes in the paperboard corner that I saved as it great to do mockups with and It fit better than I expected. I also had some of these leftover addressable NeoKey LED switch mounts (Adafruit.com) and filled them with leftover Cherry MX blue clone switches (novelkeys.com).

I might just drop it down to one switch as two makes it seem too bulky. I also picked up at reuse a small lot of tiny box hardware and cleaned up some brass screws from it to attach the switch sockets.

I am hoping to use this as a simple event timer that after an hour it goes from Green to Red alerting me that I need to take a break from the project I am working on at the bench.

Stay Tuned and please take care of each other.

One of the fun things I remember as a kid was watching my grandfather make things for us to play with. These photos are of my progress as I attempt to make his bottle rocket platform. The design is super simple and it works really well. So it should not be too much trouble and I will post more about it as soon as I get the rest of the parts I need.

If you make this or use the design please know you do so at your own risk. Plastic soda bottles as pressure vessels and the systems in this platform have risks. I will post about them when I have finished building everything. My partner was a great help in helping with bending the pin. I really need a bench vise.

I am super excited to say that I now have a small workspace to work on projects that I could not do in my living space. I still need to fix the wall joints, paint and strip the concrete floors eventually.

Tool wise I recently got a used older model Craftsman drill press and an older Delta belt/disc sander for a good deal. The only thing that I have had trouble finding a reasonably priced functional bandsaw that can cut both metal and wood. In the mean time I did pick up one of these handheld bandsaws to tide me over till I can find one. I am looking to convert the handheld saw into a freestanding saw to cut some of the smaller pieces that I use to make things. Lastly, I thought about making a work bench but a deal came up so I purchased a kit and so far it works like a charm. The vice needs a little TLC to take out the slop in the rails but that is not a big deal.

So far I am really happy with what I have so far and can’t wait to get busy repairing and making things.

Remember to please take care of each other.