
I decided I wanted to make the walking stick version of the scepter seen in the German opera house scene. (When Loki is in that scrumptious suit.)
It started with a trip to Lowes (only reason I went to Lowes instead of Home Depot is because Lowes is on my side of the street.) I wandered through with the image of the walking stick on my phone and wondered how I was going to make it happen.
I also decided I wanted to make two sizes, just to see what would work better with the Loki dress. I started with wooden poplar dowels at 1/2", and 1" in diameter. I knew I wanted to make it glow, so a light source was one the first things I needed to figure out. I wanted to keep the staff compact, so many of the LED ideas were ruled out based on the battery size needed to power them. I settled on flashlights as a compact and easy to deal with light source. The light is already made to be focused in one direction, and a decent amount of lumens can be packed into a small flashlight. Since I'd have to make the walking stick parts fit around the flashlight, I went for the smaller, but still bright lights. Once I chose to use Flashlights as a light source, I worked to find the fittings that would fit around them. (I wanted to be able to remove the flashlights in order to replace batteries and so that the staff could be broken down into smaller parts.) I then went back and forth between the plumbing section and the electrical section looking at PVC fittings. The electrical section had better fitting pieces (grey pvc on the right.) The heads of the staff are electrical boxes. Stone for the Staff | One of the parts of the staff that took me the longest to figure out was the blue stone in the center. I wandered Michaels, JoAnns, Lowes, Walmart, Target, Hobby shops, Etsy, eBay...all looking for the right stone. To the left is what I ended up bringing home. Let's see, we've got Chandelier replacement crystals, vintage glass stoppers to decanters (my mom sent me these), colored glass beads and squares, Glass containers, bits of safety glass I obtained... um... somewhere... okay, moving on...What worked by far the best was real stone - polished quartz crystal cylinders. They catch the light the best. (where I got the stones? - eBay) Alright, so I had the parts and to the left you can see how the crystals glow with the light from the flashlights. The next step was figuring out how to make these parts look less like dowels and electrical PVC fittings and more like an ancient weapon of awesome proportions. Time to get out the Dremel... I also got to be fashionable while working on cutting and shaping the PVC in the shed out back... |
Here are a few additional pictures so you can see how it screws together and where the flashlight goes. I crammed -I mean gently placed- the blue lighting gel (plastic sheet) inside the head of the staff between the crystal and the flashlight. I did not glue it in place in case I ever wanted to use a different color. The gel's are made to take the heat from professional lighting, so I was fairly confident the flashlight wouldn't melt the plastic. (Below) To secure the crystal in the head of the staff, I took some jewelry wire, wound it around the crystal and secured it through holes I bored in the plastic of the staff head. |