There comes a time in every young scientist’s life when he or she needs a vial of Liquid Awesome. It could be the final component needed to complete an army of face-punching robots. Maybe they’re completely out of Totally Awesome Sweet Alabama Liquid Snake and are ready for the ‘hard stuff’. Heck, they might even need it as a prop in a vaguely Science-themed musical to be performed in front of wasted hippies! Who knows? The point is that although I am not particularly young, not technically a “scientist,” or even in possession of what one might call a “life,” that time came for me. And now, word philanthropist that I am, I shall SHARE as much of my construction process as I can remember or bothered to take pictures of.
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Materials
- 2 of those hockey puck shaped LED lights that are so popular nowadays. I got mine from the Dollar Tree, but you could probably go to a mountain and hew some from the living rock if you want to.
- A few wooden barbecue skewers.
- A clear plastic tube about 6″ long that can be sealed. I used the tube that epoxy putty comes in, but I had some of them lying aroud. Feel free to go do the living rock thing again.
- Bathtub or aquarium sealant
- Liquid Nails
- Rubbing alcohol, or any other clear liquid that shit won’t grow in and look all nasty.
- A green highlighter
- 2 pieces of thick, stiff-ish plastic a little larger than the clear portion of the puck light (I cut pieces out of some of those blue plastic electrical boxes you can get for installing wall switches)
- paint
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NOW DO IT:
- THE BASES
- Dismember the 2 puck lights, and set everything but the 2 covers aside
- Drill holes around the edges of the covers that are appropriately sized to fit your kebab skewers. Bonus points if your holes line up and are equally spaced.
- Cut a pair of rings out of your stiff plastic. The outside diameter of the ring should be a little larger than the big hole in the covers. If it’s too big you’ll have to redrill your skewer holes, which may or may not be a tragedy depending on how big a drama queen you are. The Inside Diameter of your rings should be the same as the Outside diameter of your Clear Tube.
- Glue a ring into each puck cover and paint em up all purty. MORE bonus points if these line up
- While you’re getting your Art on, go ahead and paint your skewers too, you can cut them later and the paint will help keep them from splintering
- THE LIGHTS
- Go get the guts from one of those puck lights you tore apart, you only need the complete guts from one, so go ahead and eat the other one.
- If your lights are anything like mine, they will finally have stopped their incoherent shrieking by now and will have a central button for turning them on and off. This will not work for our design, as there will be a big ass tube of Awesome resting in that area. SO!
- Desolder that old switch and move it onto some wires. From there you can stick it any damn where you like
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- THE GOO
- Rip open that green hi-lighter, pull out the spongy gutsy thing, cut it open and drop it into some rubbing alcohol. NOTE: It is a good idea to do this over something that will stain easily and permenantly, because the idea of you destroying things you like is pretty funny.
- When the alcohol is bright green, fill up the clear tube with it and mess around with the alcohol concentration until it is transparent enough for the lights you wired up in the previous area to shine through from bottom to top.
- pop the cap on, and cover the crack with the tub sealant
- DON’T TOUCH IT for however long it takes for the sealant to cure
- While you’re not touching it, you may as well cut the skewers to be about the length of the tube
- NOW PUT IT ALL TOGETHER
- Glue the skewers into the skewer holes
- Slide the tube in through the top base (the one without lights and batteries in it, doofus) so that the clear bottom rests on the 3 LEDs
- You won’t be able to glue the bottom very securely, but you can compensate by filling the entire top base with Liquid Nails. This will reinforce the aquarium sealent which is probably still wet because you are far too hasty and never follow instructions.
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hahaha look at this dumb dude doesn’t know when to use the word “leach”
Sorry, I left a step out for ease of instruction. I actually raised a species of super intelligent leeches to use as lab assistants. When I say “green highlighter leeched into rubbing alcohol” I mean I asked my leech lab assistants to leach the highlighter for me. Schmuck.
Besides, I didn’t save the file I annotated that image in, so I’m definitely not going to change it now.
Nice ex post facto, KAZ. One thing though: if you had raised a species of super intelligent leeches, don’t you think that, maybe….YOU’D HAVE MADE AN UPDATE FOR THAT LITTLE PROJECT????
WHAT’S THAT SOUND? IT’S THE FIRE DEPARTMENT…COMING TO PUT OUT THE FIRE…FROM KAZ GOING DOWN IN FLAMES….
I’d definitely rub that on my baby turtles!