12/2/2023 0 Comments Prism kaleidoscope glassesThe casing (upper left) goes over the Prism Assembly and is capped by the capsule with the gemstones on the one end and a +2 close-up lens and step-down cover on the other. Rebecca from The Engraving Place in Brooklyn is holding up the casing she has just finished engraving for me: Oh, and cleaning the dried rotten egg yolk stuck to the outside AND inside of the copper pipe is hard. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work perfectly, so I had to fall back on spray paint. Rub the yolks on the copper, wrap it air-tightly (you will know why), and after a while it will blacken. If you’re stuck on a deserted island and need to blacken a copper pipe, you can use hard-boiled eggs. This is the main housing, a piece of 2″ DWV copper pipe (outer diameter 2.125”, wall thickness 0.042”): Here are some of the miscellaneous parts and tools used in the assembly: My idea was to bond both faces of the prism to 52mm clear photographic filters, whose metal rings perfectly fit the copper pipe I got for the main housing, thus centering the prism inside. Here, I am taking advantage of the latter, emitting from the monster black light lamp Polina got for the party in Poconos: The optical cement I got, Dymax OP-4-20632, is able to cure in a strong sunlight, but it cures much better in a UV light. The problem with hand-polishing is the surface wants to take on a rounded shape – it is actually pretty hard to keep it flat.įortunately, I ended up with only a little bit of roundness around the edges, well within the void size that the optical cement would be able to fill. Fortunately, I had polishing disks in Poconos. I was out of time and budget to order a different prism from China, and a crystal restoration shop wanted $120 per face to polish the two faces. You wouldn’t be able to see any gemstones through them. When it arrived, I was dismayed that its two triangular faces were matte. I wanted to make a full-size kaleidoscope, so the prism had to be a monster size. The main optical component is the glass prism (or three narrow mirrors arranged in the same way). Have you ever heard of a kaleidoscope that had not mere stained glass, but actual gemstones? Neither have I, so I was going to make one.Ĭlockwise from the top, I got the following stones for the kaleidoscope: Well, I’m Russian, so I decided to make a proper kaleidoscope for my sister’s birthday. On the internet I’ve found out that indeed, Russian and Italian kaleidoscopes are among the best. Instead of the silvered glass mirrors (yes, as a kid, I took my toy `scope apart – obviously) there was a folded sheet of sort-of-polished metal, and the pieces of colored glass were painted on one side (with the paint flaking off) instead of being real stained glass. To my surprise and dismay, it turned out to be far inferior to the Soviet toy kaleidoscopes. It is made by Corning, a high end glass manufacturer. Its shape and size are similar to the Russian ones. That thing is really tiny and the stained glass beads are fused to two wheels – meaning the patterns repeat themselves it’s not an infinite set of combinations which could never be repeated that was part of the charm of the `scopes Polina and I had grown up with: To our surprise, they were never as popular in the U.S., although there is now a growing interest among the aficionados.Īfter much searching, Polina was able to get herself this artisan kaleidoscope. Like many kids born in the USSR, my sister Polina and I loved our toy kaleidoscopes we had growing up.
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