Charity Shop Find

Found this today in the local Oxfam and simply had to have it, it only cost me £10. I believe it is a demonstration pressure gauge and probably would have been used for teaching at a school or university. That is why it is so large (approx 2.5 feet tall). It is my intention to turn it into a lamp, I plan to add a bulb holder and some form of shade to the top of the large Manometer tube housing and then buy some vintage style braided flex to connect it up.

Sorry for the break

Sorry for not posting anything for ages, a job suddenly came up and I had to relocate to Leeds hence nothing has got done for about the past two months. I'm now beginning to settle in and have already made a few purchases, for my builds.

Development in Sketchup

Top detail is sorted, a mix of valves and other electrical bit which I have. A bit of copper pipe will go around the front probably with a pressure gauge if I can find one. The right hand side of the case will have the large Ferranti voltmeter from the antique fair and a fuse compartment door which I salvaged from a skip.  The wooden panels on the top will be three hardwood drawer fronts which where another skip find. Power feeds to the fuse box (non functional) will be with bare wire fed over two porcelain insulators which came from my great uncle's junk collection. The box with mesh on the top of the case is a vent from a 120mm PC cooling fan, the box will be given high voltage warnings and possible an electric arcing effect behind the mesh. Behind the brass mesh at the bottom there will be flickering flame effect lights.

Just the front panel to design now then I can start building.

Sketchup Modelling

I have begun modelling my planned case modifications in Sketchup, so far I just have a crude representation of where I will be building out from the initial case. I plan to have a wooden panel on the front as on Victorian laboratory/electrical equipment. The rest will be painted dark green a lined in the stile of a steam engine. 

PC case found

I have finally overcome the problem that has been preventing me from properly starting the build, I have got a starting point PC.

This case was given to me in response to a wanted ad. Fortunately it seems to be exactly what I want. A three drivebay extra-wide full ATX case. This should give me a good starting point for both adding the steampunk details to the outside and for much improvement of the cooling internally.

It currently has all components apart from a harddrive. None of these components I ultimately want to keep making them perfect for testing the fans lights and other decorative features I have planned for the case.

I can finally begin my build!

Valves

I am currently watching a large number of job lots of radio valves on Ebay. After seeing one lot go very cheaply this looks like the best way to obtain them. The seem to be regularly sold along the lines of "I found this box of valves, no idea if they work or what they're for 99p start". Of course for what I want that's perfect I don't need to know what for or if they work as they will be purely decorative. I may drill them out and put LED lights inside them, but I will have to look into that.

Watch this space!

Gauge Clean-up (Ferranti) and testing

I was just going to show the clean-up of one gauge but I've added this one as well because it seems interesting. 

On initial inspection this appeared to be a Ferranti Voltmeter reading 0-500 volts. But during dismantling, cleaning and testing it was found to be something quite different. Firstly opening this meter was different, two screws allowed the face plate and glass to be removed but even after this it proved to be impossible to remove the electrical component. It was also apparent that the dial had been sealed with rubber to prevent water or dust ingress suggesting this gauge had some industrial or outdoor use. With the dirty glass removed it was apparent that everything was not what it seemed. Beneath the handwritten word "VOLTS" it read Milliamperes although this had clearly been scrubbed off, it was also obvious that all the numbers around the dial had been similarly altered. 

Therefore I decided to remove the dial to find out more. The information on the back of the dial showed that it was indeed built as an ampmeter not a voltmeter and was manufactured in 1956.  I progressed cleaning and re-assembling the gauge as before. 

I then decided to test both gauges to see if they worked. This was done using a bench power supply but could be done using batteries. Using a power supply you should insure it has current control as well as voltage as other wise you may end up frying your gauges. I picked up this power supply off Sheffield market about two years ago for three pounds, the man selling it had no clue what it was or what it was worth. It was connecting the Ferranti gauge up to this power supply that gave me my second surprise,  I set the power supply to 4 volts and expected the needle to hardly move (the gauge claiming to measure up to 500 volts) the gauge immediately maxed out. I checked that it was all set up right and tried again, same result. It is clear that for whatever reason someone decided to re-mark this gauge to give a completely false reading. 

Anyone know why?

Happily both gauges move when hooked up to a current meaning it may be possible to have them "working" (needles sweeping) on the front of the PC.