One for the Makers!

Tinkering with soldering irons, components and wires means there is never enough space on my desk to complete some of my projects or I have to put it aside for another day, so…I decided to make an all-in-one workstation that would keep my project together and be light enough to place elsewhere until I could come back to it.

Hence, the ‘Mega-Helpful Steampunk Helping Hands’!  This is still a work in progress so here are some preliminary photos:

Frame for holding the PCB, magnifying light for those pesky tiny IC’s

The box is an old cutlery canteen which has been well sanded.  The magnifying lamp was a component from my old table lamp (minus the base).  The frame and uprights are brass and copper. pieces I have rescued from various plumbing projects.

Notes:

1. It helps to have great builder friends.
2. Find local scrap metal merchants. Scrap metal merchants will often let you pick through and choose small bits and pieces which they will sell to you at the same cost as the raw material (you save lots based on buying new pieces from plumbing supply stores as you are not only paying for long/custom lengths, you are also paying the inbuilt costs of extrusion into cylinders of particular diameters etc.)

At different stages from pale to stained to varnished.  (I used Danish Oil)
I changed the ‘look’ by using a hand held magnifying glass and and old sewing machine lamp.

A bit of TLC and the lamp looked great!  This was bought from The Bower
The next steps involve mechanising the opening of the jaws for the PCB, adding a soldering station and a power rail for testing completed projects.

Check back in again with me soon to see the next stage of development of the ‘Mega-Helpful Steampunk Helping Hands’!