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Neat Homebrew Halloween Tech? 50

Posted by Cliff from the costumes-comprised-of-just-cloth-are-boring dept.
aibrahim asks: "I just saw a proton pack (alternate site) a friend has built. It made me wonder what other neat high tech things the Slashdot crowd might be brewing up for the coming holidays. What I am really after is stuff that one of you made, better yet would be diagrams or explanations of how you made it. Doesn't have to be a costume item, anything interesting that fits the season would do." This is a follow-up to the earlier article. So what are you dressing up as for Halloween, and how do you plan on making your costume interesting?
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Neat Homebrew Halloween Tech? More

Neat Homebrew Halloween Tech?

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  • cool! (Score:2, Funny)

    by stuuf ( 587464 )
    How long would I get suspended for if I wore this to school?

  • I've got a neat gorilla outfit (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been using it for three seasons. It's not very high-tech, only got a hidden diskman and loud speaker with real gorilla's scream on a CDR. The most high-tech is the amplifier which I made myself, because the bare diskman was to quiet. Some people are actually scared when I say, I quote: "GRRRROOOOOAAAAAWWWWKKK!!!!!"

  • Homemade blood (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 27, 2002 @08:40PM (#4544161)
    1. Get a knife
    2. Cut yourself with it
    3. Profit! (or die)
  • Sephiroth.

    Think about it. He's probably the most badass VG boss ever, and is actually not excessively difficult to dress up as (the hair is hard, and the sword is excessive, but his main clothing piece is a black trenchcoat... ).

    Well. And my friends have agreed to covertly follow me and play "One-Winged Angel" quite loudly.

    Ol' Sephy's theme music just makes everything so much better.

    *evil laughter*

  • My Halloween Costume (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ummagumma ( 137757 ) on Sunday October 27, 2002 @08:42PM (#4544180) Journal
    This is what I am going as [msads.net] for Halloween. I figure it will scare the hell outta anybody.

  • We are borg. You will be assimilated (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stuuf ( 587464 ) <[sac+sd] [at] [atomicradi.us]> on Sunday October 27, 2002 @08:47PM (#4544208) Homepage Journal
    About 4 years ago (I was in 7th grade), I made a Borg costume. I went to Radio Shack and got a bunch of LED's, wired them to a switch and a some C batteries, and a switch, taped the to a black turtle neck and sweat pants. I took one of those black face masks (for skiing I think) and added a Borg eye attachment, consisting of a jumbo LED, wine cork, and drinking straw.

  • Forget the costume (Score:3, Interesting)

    by littlerubberfeet ( 453565 ) on Sunday October 27, 2002 @09:06PM (#4544287)
    There are these two NASA engineers that live near me. They take their two adjacent houses and make one huge halloween scene outside. It was the first time in my <sniff> 17 years that I have ever seen VAX at work. THey had computer screens set up with wierd fonts, dry ice, cool lighting, and a hell of a lot of various 'shock' items. Occasionally, spaghetti would come shooting out over the roof, it was awsome.

    In the 'off' season, they have an A scale train that spans their two houses.

    Use this, make a haunted house if you have time, and dress up too.
    • The most tech I've done in years is to run worms on old green and amber screen terminals and set them in the windows next to the door. Looks much better if you have one with a detachable keyboard. They usually are partially hidden by a netting with leaves and other forest floor debris in it. It makes an interesting effect to have the worms crawling about under the debris. I use black construction paper to hide the bezels of the terminals.

  • not an item... a sound (Score:4, Interesting)

    by agnosonga ( 601770 ) on Sunday October 27, 2002 @09:06PM (#4544289) Homepage
    My dad has a recording of me crying (when I was 2 y.o.) which he slowed down so that it sounded like a wailing monster. Then he dubbed some glass harp [glasharfe.de] music [glasharfe.de] and other weird scary sounds over that.
    It ended up being very interesting holloween music, it still makes me shiver.

    some other musical glasses links: 1 [glassharp.org] 2 [glasmusik.com] 3 [pbs.org]

    • I usually am the one to stay home and hand out the candy.
      I like to play Coil's unused Hellraiser theme (Clive Barker found the music scarier than the movie), put trashbag black-outs over the street lights, blooddied mannequin parts in the yard, and the best is a candy baited - gelatin filled - tiger trap.

  • We-ell... Not really high-tech... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Telent ( 567982 ) <telent@noSPam.mordac.info> on Sunday October 27, 2002 @10:20PM (#4544585)
    ...but maybe you'll find it interesting anyway.

    I'm going as a blowfish [openbsd.org]. For the spikes, I hacked up some large foam cones from a craft store, carved the pieces into spike-shapes, and used a file on them to get them smooth. I'll spray-paint them yellow, then use skin glue from a costume store to affix them to my yellow-painted face and the yellow bathing cap I'll have over my long hair (yes, I am female).

    Proper dress? Oh, probably bluejeans and a blue turtleneck (simulated water)... or maybe this [openbsd.org]. Cripes, I love Halloween... what other day of the year do you have a chance to dress up as Puffy without a free trip to the mental asylum?

    • I'm going as a blowfish [....] (yes, I am female)

      Ahem...

      Anyways.. I found this hidious blue poyester suit at the thrift, and found a .JPG of the BSOD. I color corrected the blue to match the suit and glued it to the back. I wore it last night to two parties, one with normal people and the other with geeks, and at both it was rather popular.

    • Your costume idea sounded pretty cool, and got me thinking about a more advanced version - you could have a loose bag wrapped around your whole body with lightweight spikes all over it, that would dangle along the costume.

      Inside the bag, you would be wearing a backpack with a powerful vaccuum that could instantly inflate the bag, also make the spikes go straight out at the same time! What a great load of fun THAT costume would be, though I'll bet at a party you'd end up breaking something around you eventually, or at least spill a few people's drinks.

  • Screw high-tech (Score:5, Funny)

    by blogan ( 84463 ) on Sunday October 27, 2002 @11:08PM (#4544780)
    Get yourself a green t-shirt, a grey sweatshirt, some Robitussin and go as Ellen Feiss.
  • I don't really care about people's costumes. I want to know more about your Halloween _projects_. What cheap, creative ways are you using to decorate your house?

    Here's an easy way to haunt up your front porch for less then $25. The neighborhood kids love it.

    Last halloween I bought 10 pounds of dry ice from a local industrial chemical supply store for about $10. I placed the dry ice in a cheap black 5 gallon "witches cauldron", which I got from the local Haloween store.

    To create the fog, I simply placed the ice in the cauldron, and periodically added warm water when I saw trick-or-treaters. The warm water melts the ice, and you get fog.

    The dry-ice provided enough fog rolling down my front steps to freak out the neighborhood kids. This fog lasted approximately 4 hours.

    For added effect, I placed a couple of those green and red glow sticks inside the cauldron (Since glow sticks glow less when cold, I placed the sticks on a pedestal above the cold ice and water), and added some reflective alluminum foil to enhance the glow.

    As an added effect, I replaced my porch light with a black light, and added a bunch of those green-spiderwebs from the halloween store.

    This gave the whole porch a nice eerie glow, especially with the green-glow eminating from the cauldron. The fog trickling down the stairs is a great and cheap effect, especially with flickering candle light from the jack-o-lanterns.

    Whole cost of this operation, including dry ice $1 a pound), cauldron ($5 at the drug store), black light ($2 at hardware store), glow sticks ($2 each), spiderwebs ($3 a pack), pumpkins ($3 each) was probably $25. I'm going to do the same thing this year.
    • Couple of years ago, I'd just changed jobs and dough was scarce. This was also about the time Blair Witch was big. So, to decorate the balcony of my apartment, I made a trip to the vacant lot across the street, gathered up a bunch of sticks, and made little Blair Witch stick-men to hang off the balcony. I the proceeded to root through my remnant bag and rip off strips of fabric to tie on them, as if someone had tied a piece of some poor sap's clothing to them. Apparently, I started a fad, as they were all over the building the next day.

      Cost: free.

      But that wasn't quite enough.

      We had a dead Tiki torch. I had a bunch of raggedy-ass old clothes. I had more plastic grocery bags than I knew what to do with.

      Stuffed the pants with bags. Ran Tiki torch down one leg. Stuffed shirt with bags. Crammed shirt onto top half of Tiki torch. Dressed shirt-and-pants up in coat, scarf (to hide the fact that it had no face--it didn't particularly need one, as you'll see in a minute), and stocking cap. Stuffed "hands" in pants pockets, turned him to face the corner. Lashed bits of him to the railing with fishing line. Ta da! Mike standing in the corner!

      Cost: free for me; might cost you $10.

      Finally, I used the clothed-and-bags trick once more a year later. Stuffed pants and shirt, sat in chair. Got hold of styrofoam wig head. Ripped head off neck, stuffed neck in shirt, buttoned shirt. Liberally squirted fake blood over all. Dipped blade of cheap kiddie scissors in glue, jabbed into styrofoam. Made sign for poor guy to hold: "Mommy TOLD me not to run with scissors."
    • One of my neighbors had quite a good setup...

      They had a long hallway that led to their front door. They decorated that hallway with thick fake spider webs, a black light, and a strobe light. They had a CD Player playing constant halloween sound effects fairly loudly, with shrieking, laughing, organ music, etc. all playing at once. But the part that was really spooky is that there was a candy bowl sitting on the ground, with two guys sitting on the stair that steps up to the door just a foot or two feet behind it, one with a ski mask and dark clothes, and the other with the silence of the lamb things going on. They both just sat there and absolutely did not respond to anything, except that they stared at us. The atmosphere of sound and flashing lights was perfect.

      So the trick was on us. We had to grab the candy, without knowing what they were going to do, while they both just sat there and stared at us. And the best part is that they did and said nothing and it was spooky as all hell =)

    • This year I started a few projects. I'd actually been rummaging them through my head for the past few weeks. Last nite I started them (figures, the night before Halloween).

      1. I picked up a fogger at one of those seasonal halloween stores. pretty cool, but the fog drifts. So now I started making a fog chiller.

      2. I'm making a large-hand to go with my grim-reaper outfit. Its actually on the end of a piece of pvc. But it has a palm built into it so I can place candy there and they can take it out of the hand. I made it out of copper wire framing and foam (the insulation-spray kind). Most of it was dry last nite, but it had expanded. So this morning I cut some of it off/out, and sprayed more in the gaps where it needed it. If the foam hardens enough today I'll be able to get home early and hit it with some black paint and be able to use it tonite.

      3. A ghost. I picked up one of those white skeleton heads (filled with foam) from the store, and got some cheese cloth from Lowes. I'll string together a couple coat hangers, stick the head on top, throw the cheese cloth all around, and hang it w/ a black light underneath.

      4. I fired up kazaa and grabbed some halloween music off the net, and burned a cd. We'll throw that in the cd player and play the cd in the front of the house tonite.

      I *did* take pictures throughout making this stuff so far. I grabbed them off the camera this morning. I'll put them up on a webpage (yet to be made) within a week or two. If anyone's interested, let me know I'll send you the URL.

      For next year, I don't know what I'll do, except to try and start much earlier! I'm considering picking up a small air compressor so that I can make some pistons out of PVC and make some animatronic-type things. Don't yet know what though. Suggestions appreciated.

      • 3. A ghost. I picked up one of those white skeleton heads (filled with foam) from the store, and got some cheese cloth from Lowes. I'll string together a couple coat hangers, stick the head on top, throw the cheese cloth all around, and hang it w/ a black light underneath.

        I think some people apply hairspray to their ghosts. THe hairspray makes the cloth glow more under blacklight.

        I'm looking into making a Flying Crank Ghost [google.com] next year. There are dozens of plans online. It's a ghost-marionette. The attached machine gives a real natural-looking movement to your ghost. The project doesn't look very hard, and it won't take alot of space to store. Just need to clean up my workshop :)
  • There's a whole homebrew Halloween subculture out there.

    Here's a great Halloween Project List [8m.com] with diagrams and everything.

    Some of the projects cheap, easy and can be done in an hour (and you still have a few days left).

    Other projects are more involved, like building a IR motion detector to detect trick-or-treaters and set off some effect (like a fog machine) further up the path, the famous flying crank ghost [google.com] projects, glowing ghosts, you name it. I mean, come on, haven't you always wanted to build your own electric arc (jacobs ladder)" that you see in Frankenstein's Labratory??? [golden.net]

  • Head on a platter (Score:5, Funny)

    by gentlewizard ( 300741 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @01:27AM (#4545382)
    For controlled environments (i.e., haunted houses) the head-on-a-platter gimmick is hard to beat for great reactions from the kids (and some parents!)

    Basically, you get a thin aluminum serving platter, the throwaway kind, and cut a neck-sized hole in the center (tape the edge with transparent tape to avoid cuts). Cut one slit from outer edge to the hole. You can easily bend the platter open to put it on someone, then fold it back flat and tape up the slit.

    Then get a board and cut a square notch into one of the long sides, about the middle. Put the board across some sawhorses. The person with the platter sits comfortably in a chair below table level, with the platter appearing to rest on the table. Throw a tablecloth over the whole thing and arrange eyeballs, worms, or whatever on the table.

    If you're the head, keep your eyes closed until someone is nearby and speculating about whether you're real or not. Then pop open your eyes wide and scream as if just noticing you have no body.

    When we did this one year, we picked up a ton of candy off the floor from kids who didn't stop to check what they'd lost! evil laugh

  • Robot Frank (Score:3, Interesting)

    by floydigus ( 415917 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @05:50AM (#4545990)
    Be Robot Frank [robotfrank.com]

  • War Pumpkin (Score:2, Funny)

    by jonv ( 2423 )
    here [warchalking.org]

  • Halloween craziness (Score:3, Funny)

    by Telecommando ( 513768 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @02:49PM (#4549499)
    The best bit I ever saw as done by a neighbor when I lived at my old house. He got a big cast iron cauldron, filled it with candy and put it in front of the house. Next to it he put a stuffed scarecrow in a chair. You know the type, old shirt and pants stuffed with straw, old gloves, plastic pumpkin head and an old floppy straw hat. Next to the cauldron was a sign that read, "Sorry Kids, We had to go out of town. Enjoy the candy!"

    Now the trick was, the scarecrow wasn't what it seemed, it was actually my neighbor inside some oversized clothes stufed with straw, newspapers, etc. He sat there motionless, arms and fingers askew for a couple of hours and waited.

    When smaller kids came up, usually with their parents, he'd do nothing. But when some of the older "punks" came up, thinking it was easy pickings and they'd just take the whole thing, he's jump up screaming, "I'm gonna eat your face and knaw your bones!"

    They'd run off screaming and more than a few would literally 'wet' themselves. One even dropped to the ground and started screaming for Jesus to save him.

    I and some of the other neighbors sat in the house in the dark with his wife, drank beer and watched the fun.

    Now here's the funniest part. Late in the evening a little girl and her mother came up to the house. The mother prodded the little girl, dressed as a princess, to go up and get some candy. The girl cautiously crept up to the cauldron and reached in, never taking her wide-open eyes off the "scarecrow". She took a couple of small handfuls of candy and ran back to her mother.

    Half-way back to the sidewalk she remembered her manners. She turned back to the scarecrow and waved saying, "Thank you, mister scarecrow!"

    Our neighbor waved back saying, "You're welcome!"

    The little girl was unfazed, but the mother let out a scream that could probably be heard for blocks.

    In the house, we couldn't stop laughing for several minutes.

    Now one of the best costumes I ever saw was done by a college roommate. He put a piece of gauze over one eye, then covered it with extra-thick, congealing, red gelatin, which hardened on his face. Then he stuck a plastic eyeball on his cheek with more gelatin. some frayed, yellow, nylon cord was dipped in the gelatin to look like an optic nerve and pasted between the plastic eye and his eye socket. (I helped him get things placed just so.) A pair of sunglasses with one lens broken out and pieces of the lens stuck in the gelatin around the eye completed the effect.

    More gelatin (green this time) on the side of his head was sculpted to look like an oozing head wound.

    For the rest of his costume he put on an old, tattered, overcoat, some hideously ugly, green, monster-like, rubber gloves and carried a large plastic knife.

    He took 3rd in a contest held by a local bar. He lost to a thin, blonde girl who had painted herself white with black lips and black eyeliner wearing a white wispy gown and a muscle-bound guy dressed as Rambo whose costume consisted of a pair of torn jeans, a bandanna and a kid-sized plastic gun.

    First and second place got $250 and $100 cash respectively, 3rd place got a $10 gift certificate to the restaraunt next to the bar. Found out later the ghostly girl was the bar owner's niece and Rambo was his cousin. After that, my roommate never really bothered to do much for Halloween.
    • Some years ago, I saw someone who did a "Terminator" costume for a Science fiction convention (BanffCon 1). It was an excelently done outfit with the ripped up face and hanging out eyeball. As he was soing his act on the stage, a little kid (about 6 or so) ran up to him and yelled "shoot something".

      The terminator turned mechanically to stare at the kid. The kid suddenly realized that he was the most obvious target. The look on his face went from excitement to fear and he quietly backed into the arms of his parents (who could barely keep from laughing).

      And while I'm at it: Remember Calvin and Hobbes [bcgreen.com]?

  • My haunting experiences... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SablKnight ( 205665 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @03:19PM (#4549769)
    I feel at least a little capable of discussing this, since I've been haunting [njit.edu] my house for 3 years now. The key to good haunting, IMHO, is to never use store-bought things unmodified. It doesn't take much. I do break this rule in the website I reference above, since it doesn't have this year's pictures on it yet. Look for trends; effects that used to cost a lot of money are getting cheap and easy, like fog machines (a fog chiller is a must), fake flames (replace the cloth part, the default ones are terrible). These things are slowly becoming mainstream --unfortunately, since people can spot a store-bought effect much more easily, but fortunately because they are much more available and affordable.

    I dislike moving props. They almost always look fake and mechanical unless you do a really good job. The only one I have is the Flying Crank Ghost mentioned above, that I built from a windshield wiper motor and various hardware. This is mounted in my balcony, running from below with fishing line so that none of the mechanism is visible. My personal goal is to have a mostly static setup with such a terrifying ambiance that trick-or-treaters refuse to get their candy.

    Some quick tips:
    * Know your location -- some things work well where others wouldn't. I've got a cheap winged-skull clock that fits perfectly in a space on my balcony; it wouldn't work in a lot of houses.
    * Skulls, skulls, skulls -- possibly the best decorating element ever. Buy them by the dozen. I like Bucky [buckysboneyard.com] skulls myself. Be creative. Use gel stains to age them, melt candles on them, stick spikes through them, layer lunchmeats on them for parties.
    * Thunder and lightning machines are great. Hook up some spotlights and a thunder cd with some cheap subwoofers and you'll get everyone's attention.
    * Ignore the infamous ten-foot rule. TOTs get really close to your props, make them believable from inches away.

    I've slacked off a little this year, I still have some things left to construct. Use the monsterlist referenced above, it's a lifesaver. Join Halloween-L (www.wildrice.com/halloween-l to sign up) for lots of great tips. Be creative, work with what you have available.

    Happy hauntings, and may all your dreams be nightmares
    -SablKnight

  • BFG8500 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pjwhite ( 18503 )
    About three years ago I built a BFG8500 (smaller cousin to the BFG9000) as part of my halloween costume. I sold it on eBay a couple of years ago, but I still have some pictures of it. Here [electrongate.com], here [electrongate.com], here [electrongate.com], here [electrongate.com] and here [electrongate.com]. It was pretty cool. It had a digital sound generator to recreate the whooshing sound of the BFG9000 and a photoflash with a green filter, rigged to a trigger button. And some blinky LEDs, too.

  • Software Pirate (Score:3, Funny)

    by elemental23 ( 322479 ) on Monday October 28, 2002 @07:32PM (#4551991) Homepage Journal
    I went to a costume party the other night as a software pirate. I wore traditional pirate garb but was carrying a canvas bag labeled "w4r3z". The bag was full of CDs labeled "Photoshop 7", "Windows XP Professional", "Mac OS X 10.2", "Windows 2000 Server" and so on. I then let people at the party help themselves.

    I'm still waiting for the responses from people when they find out that these CDs are all identical Debian install discs.
  • what am i dressing up as? Well, in a kind of ill-considered show of bravado i agreed to dress in drag with a (male) friend of mine. Oh god the embarrasment of shopping for women's chlothes. Especially when the key word for the outing is "sluttify." :::shudder:::
  • <P>I was commissioned by a friend to build a Jacob's Ladder that could be taken to parties and would not look out of place in a '50's B movie mad scientist's laboratory.

    <P>So here is a fuzzy picture of me with it on the Mad Scientist list on Yahoogroups. I have the list set so you don't have to join to see it.

    <P><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mad_scientist/ files/Misc%20Mad%20Scientist%20Equipment/JacobsLad derPix0013.jpg">Jacob's Ladder</a>

    <P>The body is dark laquered wood, lots of coats. Plexiglass covers the front and back. The knobs and bulbs are pretty old to enhance the antique look of it. Real ceramic insulators hold the rods, and the rods are made of thick flat copper strips supported by brass rods which themselves are held by the ceramic insulators.

    <P>Powered by a 7.5KV neon sign transformer. The big red light stays on, the bank of amber lights are NE2 bulbs wired with RC networks so they all blink separately.

    <p>At the moment it is in the KISS radio haunted house in Seattle, WA next to a van der graaff and an electric chair.
  • A real 5ft Claymore sword (from "Braveheart"), a battle axe, dirk and sgean dubh (sock knife). Now let just one of ya call my kilt a skirt !!! Bloody Sassenach!!!!
    • Some time ago a group of us were wandering around in costume. I had a 3/4" plexiglass walking stick (formerly a staff) with a light in it. It turns out that someone mistook the light of the staff for a metalic glint and called me in as a kook waving a gun around the crowd.

      The police stopped us and 'asked' me to get into their cruiser (they refused to answer my questions as to why). One member of our group was a new lawyer. He tried to remind the officers that when they take someone into custody they have to say why.
      The hard part about this was trying to simultaneously keep the cops from seeing the (rather realistic) broadsword he had in his belt.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Hacker.

    A while back for holloween, a friend's band was playing at a Bar. I wore my 2600 cap (http://www.2600.com), a hacker T-shirt (http://www.defcon.org), and Jeans. Instant "costume"

    I had a few people walk up to me and asked if I had dressed as a hacker. Actually, I ended up having a pretty good technical discussion with someone there, as well.

    I don't know if it counts as a costume if that's what you wear regularly, anyway :)

    Sam Nitzberg
    http://www.iamsam.com
    http://iamsam.com /photos/H2K_July_2000/index.htm
  • I built this many years ago as part of a wizard's outfit. It was a magical 'glass' staff that was lit.

    To start with, I bought the staff. I went to an industrial plexiglass supplier and bought a 5' length of 2cm (3/4") plexiglass dowel. Having had some experience with it, 2cm plexiglass was fine for a 'wand', but it was too thin for a staff. If I were to do it again, I'd probably use 2.5~3cm plexiglass for a staff.

    To create the effect I needed minimal hardware on the staff itself. I originally considered building a battery into the staff but quickly came into two major problems:

    • Any battery small enough to hide wouldn't provide very much power for the light.
    • A replacable battery holder would add difficulty.

    My alternative plan turned out to be much nicer. The ingredients were as follows:

    • One 3V flashlight battery.
    • A roll of bell wire.
    • One foot of 16 gauge stranded wire (just about any gauge wire will actually do).
    • A roll of soldering braid
    • Plexiglass rod (5' for a staff. 2' for a wand)
    • extra fine sandpaper.
    • soldering iron. (two would be better -- one for soldering, one for plexiglass work)
    • A small amount of solder.
    • One knit-fabric glove -- wool or wool look-alike. Black is perferred (hides the wiring better).
    • one large sewing needle
    • one two-battery battery holder (AA is fine).
    • good ventilation (plexiglass smoke stinks and is probably not healthy to breath in)
    1. Put on the glove and grab the staff near it's end with your thumb resting along the staff. This should be a fairly natural grip, because it's the grip that you're going to be using to power the staff.
      Mark where the the main digit of the thumb and the base of the thumb touch the staff. Mark these positions on both the staff and the glove. (sewing needles will do fine on the glove.. an overhead marker for the staff).
    2. Peel the insulation off of the stranded wire, and use the needle to weave it into the fabric of the glove in two random patches (about 3/4" to 1" in diamater) where the glove touched the staff when you were holding it.
    3. Cut two lengths of bell wire about 4 feet long each. Use the sandpaper to scrap off the last two inches of insulation from one end of each wire. Insert the wire into the cuff of the glove (near the palm side) pull the wire through the fabric of the glove. One wire to each patch.
    4. The other end of the wire will be soldered to the battery holder. If you have heat shrink, put this around the solder joints -- otherwise electrical or duct tape will do fine to unsulate this. (once again, remember to scrape the insulation off of the bell wire ends.
    5. Scrape the insulation off of one end of two pieces of bell wire (about one foot each). Solder the wire to the flashlight bulb. (one piece of wire to each 'pole' of the bulb)
    6. Use the soldering iron to Melt a hole in one end of the staff. This hole will need to be big enough to fit the bulb.
    7. Stick the bulb in the hole, and melt the plexiglass back behind the bulb to fill in the rest of the hole.
      • as an alternative (I haven't tried this, but you could probably get a similar results) you might try drilling the hole and back-filling with epoxy.
    8. Use the soldering iron to heat the wire and melt it into the end of the staff -- (the wires should go out at 180 degrees to each other. If you use epoxy to fill the hole, you should do this before you fill the hole. (burning epoxy smells worse than burning plexiglass).
    9. Run one wire to each of the points where the contact points of your glove touch the staff. Use the soldering iron to push the wire below the surface of the staff, then smooth the plexiglass over the 'trench'.
    10. At each touch point, one of the wires will come back to the surface. Measure off about 2" of wire and cut off the remainder.scrape the insulation off of the wire sticking above the surface.
    11. Starting about 1/4" below each touch point wind the desoldering braid around the staff. Each loop should go under the loop before it (I believe that this is known as a 'clove hitch'). Use the soldering iron to push the braid into the plexiglass (but don't cover the braid with plexiglass).
    12. When you get to the wire from the bulb, wrap the wire around the braid.. You want a good contact here because this is going to power the bulb. Continue wrapping until you get 1/4" above the wire.
    At this point you should have your magic wand. Put the batteries into the battery holder, put the glove on and grab the wand so that each of the contact points on the glove touch one of the bands of desoldering braid. This should close the connection and provide power to the bulb.
    You should be able to turn the staff on and off by simply moving your thumb or shifting your grip.

    Run the wire within the sleve of your costume to a pocket where you can place the battery pack. If you have no pocket, try buying a traveller's wallet/ money belt.

    Enjoy.

    In my experience, the wand worked fine... It was quite fun having people try to guess how it worked. This is where the bell wire comes in handy.. It's thick enough to carry the current to the bulb, but the insulation keeps the wire as thin as possible (and it seems to be reasonably sturdy).

    3/4" plexiglass is fine for a wand, but it's too thin to make a sturdy staff.I started with a 5' staff and ended up with a wand, a walking stick and a couple of other assorted bits of plexiglass. one-inch rod (3cm) should work much better for a staff

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