Nov 10th 2008Ship in a lightbulb

In addition to checking Woot every day, there is another site that I check pretty regularly called Instructables.  Last week I was browsing and found an instructable on how to build a ship in a lightbulb.  In an effort to postpone several of the projects that I really should be working on, I decided to build myself a ship in a lightbulb.

A few things I learned:

1.  It’s never as easy as they say to get the base off of a lightbulb.

2.  Never try to get the base off of a lightbulb in shorts and barefeet.

3.  Never try to get the base off of a lighbulb over a couch or carpet.

4.  A shattering lightbulb will send glass many feet in all directions.

This is just stuff I heard about…don’t really know if any of it is true!

OK, so I couldn’t get the base off like the article suggested.  Fortunately, I have tinkered with stained glass so I know how to cut glass.  Cutting the base off of a light bulb is not easy since the glass is incredibly thin.  Once that’s off, the rest is simple.  We’re not much for drinking wine (though cutting the bulb nearly drove me to drink!), so we didn’t have any corks laying around.  Of course, I rarely follow directions either so I was still in good shape as far as the instructable goes. 

Instead, I got some erasers and made my boat from them.  I painted it and made a mast.  Setting the mast up was pretty simple which was a surprise.  I was very excited when I got it done.  I showed the kids my creation and they were only slightly curious how I got the ship inside.  I tried to convince them of all sorts of trickery, but Isaac called my bluff.  He finally said, “Yeah, whatever Dad.”  Still, they sort of got a kick out of it and I had some fun too!  I put it on the top shelf of one of our bookcases where it can showcase our extensive dust collection!