Home Made Pressure Gauge

So, I have been working on a lot different steampunk projects for quite a while.  So many, in fact, that I have not been able to find the time to post any new items on my blog.  One example is this part of a new set of goggles for my etsy store.  The goggles are based on a pair that I made for a friend who made me think of a more engineering style overall.  The goggles needed something that would help out with the effect of an industrial look.

I had read online several months ago about making your own pressure gauge but I lost the bookmark and I'm not sure where I found the article now.  The basic idea is to take a flush finger pull which normally gets put into a cabinet or closet door to help to open and close it.  I found a set of four that were small enough to be made to fit some goggles.



As you can see, these were pretty reasonable so if I messed them up it would be no big deal.  Next you have to use clear casting epoxy to make the "glass" for the gauge.  I already had plenty Easy Cast left from earlier projects.  The process will be to fill the finger pull partially with the epoxy then let it dry, add a custom gauge face then finish filling to top the gauge off.

In order to make the custom gauge be able to attach to whatever item I am steampunking it was necessary to drill a hole in the finger pull then put a small bolt through the hole and a nut on the outside to keep it in place.  Once the first layer of epoxy dries it will make the bolt permanent which will make it possible to bolt it onto whatever I'm working on.



I searched for quite a while trying to find the right gauge face art that would work in this custom part but I finally had to end up printing one and then cleaning it up by hand simply because the detail did not transfer well onto the very small scale that I needed.  This is the first image I found.

I printed this, cut it out and coated both sides with generous amounts of Mod Podge to protect it from the liquid epoxy.  After this covering had dried I put the face into the partially filled gauge and then covered it the rest of the way until the epoxy was level with the outer rim of the metal pull.  Once it had dried, I was left with a small gauge that could be added to my new goggles and it really came out nice once finished.

*Note: some tricks about using epoxy.  The Easy Cast clear epoxy has some quirks to it that can be frustrating if you have never used it before.  It is very easy to pour too much into your project and have the epoxy overflow.  Try to pour in small amounts and let the liquid settle a little before pouring more in.  Make sure the mixture is right which should be 50/50.  It's possible to get a sticky mixture that never fully dries if the mix is off.  And last, the epoxy is made to off gas on its own but it really can help to get all of those tiny bubbles out by exhailing on the epoxy because carbon dioxide helps the liquid release the bubbles even faster.

Test Gauge

This is one of the final test faces that I experimented with using some overlays of different patterns to give the image an older look.  I settled on a rusted background as oppossed to some of the other ones I was working with.  I think it lends a good industrial feel to it.  Now I just have to be able to print this out on a small enough scale to fit into the gauge I bought and keep most of the detail.

Gauge Faces

I found a site a few days ago that talked about printing your very own custom gauge faces for your car or truck's instrument panel.  This would help one to know that whether they were obeying the letter of the traffic law or sticking it to the man by endangering themselves and others they could do it in their very own style.  But this also signaled (get it?) to me that I could custom design my own steampunk gauges for various instrumentation.  You can pick up a pack of printable transparencies at an office supply store that allow you to print on one side and make your own gauges.  The first design I found was this fairly basic speedometer face:

By taking a little time in Photoshop I was able to remove several of the original features of this gauge and start cleaning things up to try to get more into the realm of a general instrument to measure whatever might be needed in supra-Victorian science.

I removed the main indicator hand because presumably when I print this new face out I will place it into a gauge that will have a real arrow to replace the pictured one.  The numbers indicated here are also a little too much like something on a dashboard so I took them out too.

I then copied the small empty box on the left hand side of the original gauge and put another one on the right side.  Then I filled it with a little bit of red to indicate that this would be the dangerous end of the spectrum for our measurements.

Changing the background color of the faceplate allowed me to make this one looks a little less clean than the original pic and I also came up with a name for this instrument.  This aetherometer would obviously be used to monitor the amount of pressure of particulate interaction within the aether itself.  Very useful when manning a personal airship.  I will probably try to also find some sort of gradient pattern to superimpose over the face to try to give a more aged appearance.