Aetheric Neuralizer IXb - Reflections

Once I have the Neuralizer properly assembled and running I shall of course go through and organize these notes into a more workmanlike Bill of Materials and Construction Guide, assuming I can maintain enthusiasm for the job and not collapse in an unmotivatable heap over by the swarf bins.

Thank heavens for the bounty of tea. I don't know how I'd have managed to face the adversity this project has produced without steaming pots of the stuff, applied at regular intervals to the recalcitrant thinking processes.

Anyway. Tonight I expect to make most of the final fittings before the casing is dismantled for cleaning and painting. I shall take photographs if I can spare the time.

Jobs remaining:

1. Barrel lighting effect and shroud. I believe I have all the materials needed to complete this task, but I may need to obtain some decorative automotive door edging. The brass-finish furnace grill is sharp when cut.
   
2. Sound module installation. A very simple job involving double-sided tape and probably gobs of silicone sealant to hold it in place. It's unlikely, but I may use more of that epoxy putty. Depends on the smell/set-up factors involved. Both take forever to set-up but the sealant stinks up the place as it sheds acetic acid during the air curing.
   
3. Handle and triggers - this is now most urgent. I still have only the fuzziest internal pictures of what this will look like!
4. Possible installation of third hand-wheel and switch - this will almost certainly be deferred as an upgrade to be made much later, if at all.
5. Wiring and test firing. Assuming no malfunctions, this should be the most straightforward of the tasks and should consume no more than a couple of hours at most.
6. The Battery Box. Time-consuming woodworkery needed here. I'm probably going to double-up the connecting cable, stitching the lengths together with cotton as I have concerns about the current consumption of the Neuralizer when in full "cow the masses" mode. This has been the most disappointing and hard-to-get-convincing part of the build, and I've failed utterly to capture the look I was aiming for.
   

There are some aesthetic questions still to be answered, but I think mostly this will be good as it stands for the demonstration I have in mind. The aim will be to arrive at Saturday morning in a position to be able to add stuff but not having to do so.

I think I'm happy with most of what's been done. I'm extremely happy with certain aspects of it - the hand-wheel controls are very satisfying in appearance for example, and the Aetheric Resonator is spectacular when power is applied, so much so that it spurred me on when things got unhelpfully hard.

I'm disappointed with my failure to locate a cable of suitably convincing look and behaviour. I wanted something that looked like old-fashioned cable and hung more like rope, in a deep catenary. I'm extremely under-impressed with the quality of the sheet metal screws I was sold by Home Depot, the hexagonal heads of which do not have a consistent profile and offer too-little purchase to a socket spanner. I would advise everyone to avoid these.

The false-starts were relatively few and far between, but have resulted in a small stock of parts deemed not fit for purpose.

These parts, mostly lighting effects that were the wrong size or just not suited to the task at hand rather than non-functional, have been tentatively assigned to the backpack part of a steampunk space-suit project I've been mulling for years. That will feature a convincing steam engine component if I can ever figure it out.