Thursday, October 22, 2020

Slide of the Month - Jack-O-Lantern (enhanced)


 


        October 2020

        Time to make: 2 hours

        Boys Life "Slide of the Month"
        
        Nov. 1994, page 58

        Original design: Don Gubler







So lets add more power to the Jack-O-Lantern slides!


So much fun to have a pulsing light to give a eerie feel to this slide. I started with carving the basic Jack-O-Lantern out of maple and painting it with hobby paints. A couple coats of Poly served to seal the paint and give it a harder finish.  The next step was to hollow the pack of the slide to so there will be space for the light.  For the electronics, I took apart a battery powered  "tea light" which is ideal for the way the light flickers. The useful parts I was able to harvest was the  LED light, switch, and battery.  I could not use the battery compartment so I used a button battery holder I had left over from another project.  I  soldered the circuit together and after testing, began to assemble the components to the slide. I used 5-minute epoxy to mount the LED just above the eye holes, switch to the side and the battery holder to the back of the loop. After the epoxy had hardened, I routed the wires as neatly as possible and used some more epoxy to keep them in place.

All and all, a great upgrade to an already good slide!

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