• Overview
• The Chest
• Plastic Platform
• Lights
• Gems
• Done

We need to power the lights inside, so we drilled a hole to pass the wiring through.
We took a cheap extension cord, cut the end off, passed the wire through the hole, and then spliced the cord back together with wire nuts and black electrical tape.

We made some strips of corrugated cardboard, then stapled them to the inside of the chest, a bit below the rim.

The plastic platform will sit on this.

We started with a sheet of clear plastic from Lowe's. This material is intended for lighted ceilings. It comes in various finishes:

• frosted
• prismatic
• "cracked ice" design

• acrylic
• polycarbonate

We used plaskolite-brand lighting panel in "cracked ice" design.

www.plaskolite.com

If you want to take the easy route, you can just cut the flat sheet to fit the inside of the box and call it done.

We decided to shape the plastic into a "mound", to mimic random heaps of treasure dumped into the chest. This is optional.

We decided to mold the sheet by pressing it over a pile of small rocks.

We measured the inside of the chest and then cut a piece of the plastic sheet that is a bit larger all around.

We put the plastic on a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil and baked it in the oven.

We weren't sure what temperature to use, so we headed for 350 F, and looked in on it frequently.

The clear plastic took on a milky haze (it will turn transparent again when it cools).

When it seemed floppy enough, we took it out.

We took the plastic off the cookie sheet and peeled the foil off.

Then we placed the sheet on the pile of rocks and pressed down.

Think of vacu-forming, without a vacuum. :-)

You can see why we made the original sheet oversize: each lumpy "hill" pulls in material from the nearby edges.

The result is a very wavy edge on the plastic sheet.

Using a tabletop belt sander, we shaved down the excess plastic.

This is harder than it looks, because the edge of the plastic waves around in two dimensions.

Some of the light passing up through the clear plastic, may bounce around inside it and shine out the edges. Think "light pipe". To keep this from happening, we blackened the edges of the plastic sheet with a felt-pen marker.

We used Christmas Twinkle Lights bought at Big Lots for $3.50 [October 2006].

front of the box

back of the box

Note: Not all of the lights in the set will flicker on and off. In fact, most of the lights will stay on all the time! The number of lights that actually flash probably depends on the manufacturer. It seems that every 5th light is common.

We removed the set from its cardboard box, but left the lamps in their plastic nest. Then we used a little aluminum foil to mask out the lights that are on all the time, so you only see the twinkle.

Warning:

Incandescent lamps generate heat.

This design puts warm lamps in a plastic nest, surrounded by heat-trapping foil. There is potential fire danger here!

In our case, we put the thing together, ran it while checking frequently to see how hot it got. In our case, the temperature seemed safe.

Use your own judgment!

We used transparent plastic gems, glued down to the plastic sheet.

Bigfoot supervises the operation.

We glued on the gems a handful at a time, in random positions. After the glue has dried for a day, we glued on some more.

The sheet is almost covered now!

Done

Here's the chest on location:

See the chest in action (2.3 meg).

Thank you for visiting. Your comments are welcome.
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