Zombie Apocalypse Electric Lantern

The beginning. I use a clamp/guide with a circular saw to get nice straight cuts, it works pretty well. Also quick clamps like these are a great idea also

Here I needed to get my top and bottom plates cut and marked out well, because I knew the whole thing hinged on having the these two right. I drilled all my holes into another piece of wood (off screen) first, so I could test fit before I committed to my top plate. I used a thin piece of MDF to mount the switch because the wood was too thick to mount the stitch directly. Then as you can see in the last pic I put it all together to make sure it all fit, and to see how it looked. I tried to plan all this out before hand but there's only so much you can do on paper (that's me anyway). I was really making up a lot of this as I went.

I forgot to take a bunch of photos in between these steps lol, when I'm on a roll I hate to stop! But basically I undercoated the top/bottom panels, gave them a quick rub with fine sandpaper, and drowned them in cheap spraypaint. I want a weathered/clunky sort of look so I don't need to be perfect (which is much easier). Then I cut the front panel and battery door after deciding the final height (as we can see in the first pic). I was going to use 3mm MDF for the sides but I decided it was too weak, and I had some ply lying around so I used that. I glued/screwed everywhere for strength. I used self-drilling metal screws for the sides, because I wanted the big chunky hex heads. Luckily they actually bit into the MDF (in most cases), but I was relying on the glue to do most of the work anyway.

I drowned it in paint again, then I got some more of the really fine sandpaper and smoothed the sides so the sticker would have something to adhere to. I then gave it another coat just on the sides. Finally I gave it another sand, and this time I sanded the heads to the bolts/screws to give them definition, and so you could see they were metal again.

I joined the wires from the light onto smaller gauge wires using solder, which I then heat-shrinked. The switch terminals had become loose because I kept changing my mind and bending them to different angles. I just flooded them with solder which luckily did the job.

As we can see it worked out well. I had already bench tested the switch using a multi meter, and the light by connecting to the battery earlier. Don't forget to test all your parts before you even begin your project!

This is almost done, I just need to weather it more and add some more details!

I forgot to add that I didn't make the sticker, I bought it from here sticker link so credits for that need to go to the original artist :)