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dancing-dragon — Monocle 3
Published: 2008-08-09 21:24:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 2486; Favourites: 35; Downloads: 55
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Description
This here's the monocle I made for my steampunk costume. Its mostly made from sheet brass and copper, partly lined with felt for comfort. The eyepiece itself is an old camera lens. The rivets are just flat-head brass nails.There's a yellow LED behind the lens, which is run by the battery on the leather strap.
There's one smaller strap with a tiny buckle that runs over the top of the head to connect to the strap at the back of the head. I've found this keeps a lot of the weight of the monocle off my cheek.
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Comments: 20
Jeezus, this is a beautiful work of art.
I wish I could come up with something like this.
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Thanks very much! You should give it a try! I'd be glad to answer questions.
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My pleasure.
And I want to! But It'd end up a piece of crap.
I couldn't do justice.
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do you have a button to turn the LED on and off? o: also how often do you have to replace the battery?
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hm, it's a 3.6 volt lithium battery, and I've used it at 3 anime conventions with two days each (so probably around 36 hours) and it's still going strong.
Nah no button. I just flip the battery around in it's case to turn the LED on or off.
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Oh okay cool. 
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That is above and beyond badass. 
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heheh, thanks much! *dons cape and flies away*
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ohmygosh! thanks very much. ^_^
Oh man...they took quite some time, tho it's kinda hard to say exactly.
As for making more, I think I'd need the person present (or at least their face), in order to make one for someone else, since the metal is meant to mold to the face pretty well. And to be honest I'm not sure I could make myself do it again! hoo boy
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You, ma'am are insanely brilliant!! Seriously, holy crap. So- when are you going to either 1- factory produce these to sell to people, 2- make me a pair? Haha. How long did it take you to make these!? I want them so bad! Haha
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Thanks! Yea I suppose so. You wouldn't need anything as drastic as a forge or oxy-acetylene torch. I just used a propane torch to heat red-hot and therefore soften the sheet metal again after I had pounded it with a ball-peen hammer so much that it was getting too hard and brittle. I was hammering the metal on a piece of wood to get it to be slightly bowl shaped.
The only other thing I needed to know was how to do was solder.
Well...I guess I also had to learn to make good rivets using nails. Using flat-headed brass or copper nails, you can rivet two pieces of metal together. You just put the nail through the holes in the metal, then cut the nail shaft off maybe 1/8 inch longer. Then, making sure the head of the nail is on a really solid surface (like an anvil or chunk of steel) you kinda squish the cut-off end of the nail into a dome shape using a ball-peen hammer.
You can do the same to rivet softer things like leather together, but you have to use a washer under the end of the nail that you pound into a dome. Otherwise it wont have enough surface area and will pull right through the leather.
*gasps for air*
...yeea, I guess thats about all I really needed to know. <
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Amazing! I have a question: in order to make this stuff does it help to have some kind of metal working skills?
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