I kind of started this idea about two weeks ago. My daughter has begun to explore her natural interest in all things of the earth. Of late, she has developed (a little too rapidly, I would comment) an amazing collection of minerals and interesting crystals or rock-like things.
I did this when I was younger, but lost some of my knowledge to the wearing away of time upon my interests.
I always wanted a way to inspect the minerals with light properly. I mean after licking them and smelling them and scratching them and adding trace chemicals to help identify like we always did in the past I usually found that many are translucent ant pics of them were very interesting and all I had back then was a very weak flashlight.
So, after a trip to my buddy who rebuilds cars and a few crap pieces that he gave to me free of charge, I built her an inspection stand.
I took an oak step, designed to make stairway building easier, cut it in half, rounded the corners and edges (needed two slabs of hardwood), set in a large PVC drain pipe part, painted black on the outside and fully covered with mirror Mylar inside, put in a five volt computer wallwart, a badass headlamp bulb from a modern car, used four large power resistors to adjust light intensity by a switch, a few other thrown together things re-purposed ...
And we now have a powerful light beam Station for inspecting or just taking pictures of the minerals which might exhibit some translucent properties.
I added a selection of cut out black felt overlays to the light diffuser in four shapes and sizes as vignettes to control the light escaping around the edges, making the possibility of photography much more predictable.
It was a very cool project and since ALL my real tools are mostly packed up and ready for re-Dwelling, I did it all with simple hand tools and rasps and sand paper and some glue and shit. It was a great father daughter project!
Still trying for that Hero Dad trophy.
