Steampunked Magic Uranium Light

Hi everbody!

Some months ago I came across with some uranium glass beads. Within a second I was absolutely convinced that these mystic shining beads had to become the central element of a magic steampunk lamp.

Uranium glass is said to fluoresce bright green under ultraviolet light - you will find furthermore explanation at wikipedia. So I tested various UV-blacklight LED´s with different kinds of wavelengths from 365 to 420 nm. In this case UV-blacklight LED´s with the wavelength of 405 nm works best.

This light runs with 4,5 Volts by three AA-batteries.

Oh, yes! and one hazardous warning is necessary to be mentioned: Although I used an E27-Edison screw socked system, do not screw this "bulb" into another holder! This might be deadly dangerous!!!

And now let us start with the construction of the "Steampunked magic uranium light".

The lamp itself should looked like as if it might had been constructed in the labs of Thomas Alva Edison or a steampunk inventor. So I used a lot of old lamp parts made of brass and copper of that time and combined them to a new lampholder and also created a scientific looking bulb.

The uranium glass beads got a hole in their middle which one can use for putting a pair of copper wire through. At each end of this holes I placed small Edison screw sockets E12 from broken electric X-mas candles..

One socket covers the UV-blacklight LED, the other is just needed for symmetric reasons. Both sockets are connected electrically with the LED so you can use them as real contacts to the battery (see also explanation at the step before). At the end of construction the main copper wire was soldered with the foot-contact of each socket and keep in that way all parts together. After each step of construction I checked the LED function, to make sure that everything was fine.

The idea of this bulb came to my mind when I saw this LED garden chain made in a retro style.

The new uranium light element was brought in carefully and electrically connected as you can see with the Edison Socket E27. To insulate and fix the bulb a piece of cork was build in the E27 socket too.

The table lamp should look very steampunked. So I chose to take parts from very old bulb holders made of brass screwed them at the ends together, cut off one cleading so you can see the copper made screw-holder and fixed the new lamp on a ring of plywood covered with red fibre.

At the end I have to say that his lamp looks a little bit like as if it has to be stored at warehouse 13 - or not???

So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and maybe you create your own uranium light in a steampunked way or in an atomic-punk style.

Yours Aeon Junophor