I found a small duffle bag with a compass on it for cheap. The compass looked just the right size to fit in the base of my Super Polaris mount. I cut it off the duffle, trimmed the plastic casing, and got it to fit perfectly! Ironically, it seems sensitive to the metal, rather metallic, pieces in the mount, like the nearby latitude adjustment bolt! I struggled mentally with this for a while, seriously considering putting the compass somewhere else. I even briefly glued in to the north wooden tripod leg. But then I thought, heck, just friction fit it into the mount, and take it out, when necessary, to get a bearing on magnetic north. It's not like I'll be using this a whole lot...
In the car bits section, I found some interesting lighting gear. American Products Company Litestripes in red! This is really tacky pinstriping that you can put on your car, truck, low-rider, or pimpmobile, which lights up. This stuff was deeply discounted so the technogeek in me was partly interested. But I also thought that this stuff might work for the lighting in a compact, ultrathin light table. The stuff's already red (actually, more orange). Some text gave me the impression it could be cut to any length to suit one's purpose (or fender). I severed the strip and then made electrical connections between them, powered it up, and found the "detached" strip lit up along with the main one. So, this means I can build a light panel with separate short strips running parallel to one another. All runs off 12 volts. Next time I'm at Mom's, I'll build a box to fit the Tirion field edition pages!
Pimp my 'scope.
No comments:
Post a Comment