Tangled Area Lantern

[yaksplat]

I'm in the process of designing a house that we're going to build next year and I've got an 800 foot driveway that I think will need some lights along the length. I had been looking at different lights around the Magic Kingdom on my last trip and I saw the ones that I think I should use. I know the Tangled rest area/bathroom isn't a popular area, but I thought that the lanterns that they have are absolutely beautiful.

So last night I started working on it. I drew up a sketch in AutoCAD based on what I can see in the picture.

Then, since this will be made of some form of metal, it needs to be in a form that can be built. Tabs are added and fold lines.

After that, I printed out all of the pieces and taped them together, just to get an impression of size and if I need to change anything. This looks a little weird, but I think it may work. It may be a hair too large. I'm going to hang it around my house to see if it looks good when up at 8-10 feet.

 

[yaksplat]

(reserved for final product)

 

[yaksplat]

So I may have up to 20 of these, so I want to get something that's easy to build, not too expensive and it does everything that I need it to. I had thought that it would be really cool if I could make the lights change color depending on the season/holiday and control when they go on/off so each one will have a controller like a raspberry pi or a form of Arduino. So there's that aspect of the project that I'll be doing as well. This may take a bit so don't expect anything in the near term

I like how the ones in the tangled area have green/yellow glass in them, but if mine have RGB leds in them, I may want to go with a clear seeded glass instead so other colors aren't skewed. I can always make the light green...

 

[danlb_2000]

So I may have up to 20 of these, so I want to get something that's easy to build, not too expensive and it does everything that I need it to. I had thought that it would be really cool if I could make the lights change color depending on the season/holiday and control when they go on/off so each one will have a controller like a raspberry pi or a form of Arduino. So there's that aspect of the project that I'll be doing as well. This may take a bit so don't expect anything in the near term

I like how the ones in the tangled area have green/yellow glass in them, but if mine have RGB leds in them, I may want to go with a clear seeded glass instead so other colors aren't skewed. I can always make the light green...

What are you going to make them out of? They look like copper.

 

[yaksplat]

What are you going to make them out of? They look like copper.

Copper of course

I just tried out my new shear and brake to see if I could actually do something with the copper. I think they'll do just fine.
Here's a small triangle that's gets mounted on the sides of the top portion of the lantern.

Man....looking at those pics, my shop is a total mess. I should really do something about that.

 

[yaksplat]

Well, I got to buy some new tools, which happens to be the best thing about doing something that you've never done before.
I got a decent shear to cut the copper and/or fingers:

And a brake to bend the copper:

 

[yaksplat]

So, then after some trimming, shearing, braking and soldering, I have something that looks like it's supposed to. Which I consider to be a good thing.

Now I just have to figure out how these grids will work...

 

[KikoKea]

Will be lovely!

 

[note2001]

Did you finish this project? I'd love to see the final lantern.

 

[yaksplat]

I do have a near completed lantern. I'll take a pic of it later. It's on hold while i try to determine the best way to assemble different portions of this. Rivets vs soldering vs brazing. Rivets are tricky, but they look good. Soldering is easy, but then leaves more of a mess and then remelts when you heat a nearby portion. I think brazing would be the best, but i don't have the tooling for it yet.....yet Heat from a nearby joint wouldn't be enough to remelt neighboring joints, since brazing occurs at a much higher temperature.