Jun 132020
 

Here are more silicone tube lights with increasingly unlikely balsa gliders.

Here’s a video I made of the process of making the lights.

The classic toy ‘jetfire’ style balsa planes are aesthetically perfect to me. Form and function in unity. The little nose weights complete the look in the miniatures and it just looks great suspended in silicone all by itself. Add some swirly powder and LEDs and you got some staring to do.

But of course I can’t look at a balsa plane and not think about planes in general, so I started considering other possibilities. I’m not an aerospace engineer or an artist, so I thought about air frames that were very visually distinct and ones I liked just because. So far I’ve found three variations that worked out pretty well.

CTS (Cellulose Transport System) Orbiter – Psych! It’s the Buran! Sort of, not really, doesn’t matter. It is technically a glider air frame, but I positioned it in an orbital orientation so it’s not even pretending to glide, but whatever. It’s geometrically distinct and close to my heart, so this was inevitable.

P-38 Torchlight – Very distinct geometry. Very little sense as a glider. But it’s undeniably cool and was a very capable airplane so I gave it a shot. Turns out it’s pretty easy to make and much stiffer than a typical balsa plane so it’s easy to reposition in the silicone without fear of twisting the wings.

SR-71 Woodpecker – Negative zero glider sense here. Gigantic inert nacelles are not a thing. But who doesn’t love the borderline sci-fi aesthetic of this historic aircraft? I got the general shape and quit. Didn’t know how to make the inlet cones or afterburners and anyway it’s a balsa wood model of a supersonic jet so seemed good enough.

Not sure what’s next. I tried a biplane but getting silicone between the wings without voids is problematic. Not sure I’m ready to go full sci-fi balsa spaceship but it does seem like that’s on the horizon. I’d love to think I can carve Serenity or the Enterprise but I’m pretty sure I can’t. Maybe an X-Wing though, we’ll see.

Also I am willing to sell these but don’t care that much. Etsy seems like a waste of time and I don’t really want to deal with typical consumer expectations. But- if you want one enough to contact me about it- there’s a good chance you’ll get one. I’m thinking in the $100 range is enough to motivate me to put one in a box for a stranger, but if you’re a cool person and have an interesting reason for wanting one that’ll motivate me even more. They do take for freaking ever to cure though, like months. So if I make one custom don’t expect it for a good while.

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