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    While rummaging through a box of random household junk at an estate sale, I wished I had been wearing a pair of rubber gloves. I inadvertently grabbed something wet and squishy. Nevertheless, I was determined to dig to the bottom of the box. I'm glad I did. I found a pair of old 600 volt Buss fuses. At the time, I had no idea what I would do with them, but at a dollar a piece, I couldn't pass them up. After gathering dust on my workbench for a couple of months, I finally decided I would turn the fuses into to a pair of night lights. I found some wooden boxes in my cabinet and used the Lichtenburg technique to zap them with 2000 volts of electricity. This produced an pleasant dendritic burned pattern on the surface of the boxes. Continuing to root around my workshop, I found some potentionmeter switches I had salvaged out of vintage radio equipment. I then took a spool of anodized aluminum wire and wrapped it around a cardboard tube to make a decent sized coil. At this pont, the project was clear in my mind and I gathered up additional components including a transformer, bits of wire, and a test-tube. After a good bit of fiddling around and wiring of the various components, everything came together fairly much as I had envisioned it. Now, by turning the knobs, I can make the test tube glow with whatever color suits my mood.  |