Steampunk Lighting and Painting for my next mod "Steampunk'd TJ11

Just thought I would share what I'm working on. My next mod is going to be a Steampunk'd TJ11.

I'm modding some old Vacuume Tubes so I can add LEDs to them and light them up.

I CAREFULLY drilled a hole in the bottom of the tube.

Orange is just a test color. I'll actually be using a shade of yellow.

Now a different tube.

Lots of light showing in the top view.

More coming soon. I ordered some more LEDs and resistors for testing. I'll start a worklog in a month or 2.

ok, that's pretty freakin' sweet!!!!

if you need a bit more diffusion you can always lightly sand the top of the LED and it will give it a broader spread of light.

Its a bit too reddish to me but keep up the work :)

Also have you seen the laptron fc10 controller with tubes used as the display?

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Originally Posted by xr4man

ok, that's pretty freakin' sweet!!!!

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Thanks

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Originally Posted by Snowman

if you need a bit more diffusion you can always lightly sand the top of the LED and it will give it a broader spread of light.

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Ya I did sand it some. I may have to do it a bit more.

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Originally Posted by Stonerboy779

Its a bit too reddish to me but keep up the work :)

Also have you seen the laptron fc10 controller with tubes used as the display?

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Orange is just for testing :P Yellow LEDs are on their way. Yes I've seen it. I'm trying to get Lamptron to send me one to use.

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Originally Posted by Snowman

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I like it!

Seems lamptron didn't realize the demand they are out of stock where I looked.

you could change up the colors in the tubes too. i mean, most tubes either don't glow or glow a nice orange yellow color. but it would be kind of eery to see a green glowing tube or cool to have a blue or uv glowing tube.

Ya I may try other colors. For now I'm sticking with a yellow light theme because it will go well with the rusted color of the case and parts.

I changed the name of the thread to include some painting. I'm going to play around with some rust effect paint but first, some more LEDs.

I bought 2 types of LED strips. Type 1 is SMD LEDs

Type 2 is more like traditional LEDs mounted to a strip.

Now to painting. This is the paint combo I will be using.

I primed some fan grills with self etching primer.

Then painted them with the Iron paint.

Now to play with the Rust paint.

I'll be applying it a few different methods to see what comes out the best.

Here are the results of about 10 coats of the Rust agent. 4 down, 3 to go.

Kinda funny how my painting surface is rusting too.

Tonight I'm finishing up the last 3 grills and I'll be taking a small part from the TJ11 (PSU bracket) and adding the rust effect to it. Pictures of that in my next update.

Cheers till then,

Fuga

That looks like a heating element of a stove to me....

But still good.

OK here is the last part of the testing. This time I'll actually be painting a part of the case.

Here is the dual PSU bracket.

I painted the screws that hold the PSU bracket together.

And here is all of it painted and put together.

That's all for testing. Next step is to start on the main part of the mod but that will be in a new worklog.

Thanks for watching,

Fuga

If you want even more rusty, nasty texturing, toss a little sand into the wet iron paint just after applying it. Let that dry well, then apply some more iron paint over it. It'll look more like metal that's started to rust internally, like severe body rot on cars.

For a difference, you might want to look at adding oil paint washes, dirty dry brushing and other effects on top of the rust so it's not all exactly the same (since it won't be perfectly the same anyway).