I’ve cut myself a piece of steel for the sign and managed to get it completed to the point where I can attach the EL wire.
I first grabbed two washers, bent them slightly and welded them to the steel. Once complete these can be used to tie of the hanging wire on the back.
I then used a grinder to remove light surface rust and to give the steel an industrial “brushed” look.
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I’ve done a bit of work on my bar sign project.
First of all, I’ve converted my design to black and white, resized it a bit and printed it out onto A3 paper.
This is the (rough) but workable pattern.
A friend of mine is coming up to his 40th Birthday and he’s having a cocktail party to celebrate.
I’ve decided I wanted to make him a “Neon” bar sign for a gift.
Neon signs are expensive, use lots of power, generate heat and are generally not a suitable DIY project, so I’ve decided to use Electroluminescent Wire, or EL Wire for short.
I’ve been playing around with different fonts and colours and have settled on the following design.
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Auckland weather has turned in the last week. Evenings must be about 5-10 degrees cooler now meaning the atmosphere is more stable and ultimately better sky viewing conditions.
I set up my Mintron camera with the 50mm F1.4 Lens I picked up and played around to see what sort of results I could get.
I have to say I’m very impressed, even over the light polluted skies of Auckland City (I’m very central city at the moment), I was able to get the following images (Annotated using astrometry.net).
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