I thought I would add yet another page to the many dedicated to the art of building bicycle lights.  But before I dive into it, a little background on where I’m coming from when I first approached this.

Since the day someone accused us of entering the Mont 24hr bike race a few years ago, I realised that between Amirah and myself we would need some decent lights.  The sort of lights you can race down a single track at 3am and not be left arhh… in the dark?  Well, hoping to come across someone with proper lights, so you can follow them like a shadow, cataloguing every rock and root that passes briefly through their nice light, before it passes into darkness heading for your front wheel.

Anyway, with that in mind, I had a decision to make, I could either go out an buy two pairs of bike lights from the shop which (if they’re to of any use at all) cost a fortune for what you originally think should just be a globe, switch, wires and battery.   Or make our own!  I can say in hindsight, if I was making lights for just one, I would seriously consider paying the money for some off the shelve lights; on sale perhaps.  However, we were 2, and that ultimately swayed me in the direction of making our own.

First stop was web research, what you’re doing now I guess.  Like you probably have, I found many many website that show you various ways of doing this.  You didn’t?  Well there are a bunch you can get to from Mike Bentley’s page.  Sorry, there’s a number of dead links in there though. 

So far so good, but what did I learn?    ************************* 

(more…)

I’ve put up a few more pictures of other glass projects I’ve done.  One thing I have learned from this is that photographing glass is not as simple as you may expect.  I think I need studio lights to do it properly.

In the new gallery you can see gifts I’ve made for people and little object for the around the house.  It’s not very full at the moment, but I have a bunch of little things I’ve currently working on, so it should fill up over time.

I should also thank Gordon and Sally at Divine Glass for all their help with these… none of it I could have done without their help.  Thanks!

By now I expect you’re wondering “if he will make a custom designed piece for me?”  The answer is yes… so if you like something here, more than likely I can do one for you.  How much it would cost I can’t say, but asking is a good way to find out!

Ok here is a picture of how it stands now.  I cut it up a bit as I said and put it back together again.  I also put the clear top section on so you can see it now as I planned it.  The top bit had a few cut-out shapes separating 2 sheets.  That process trapped bubbles and gave the top section an undulating surface… which is sort of nice and should distort anything I put below it.

Next step is to do a drawing to go under it for when it’s framed.  My original intention was to have a simple pencil drawing under there, but I’ve since been thinking about a red and gold one instead.  Mainly because our red and gold cushion looks good under it.  The thing I like about this is I could potentially swap it out later on if I changed my mind.

Here are a few pictures of a glass picture I’m working on.  Since the next stage of this little thing is to cut it up and reconstruct it a little, I’ve decided to take a few pictures of it while it is still in one piece.  The section you can see in the pictures is really just the base of it, there will also be a top half which will be all clear glass but with a few lumps and bumps.