Background

I have always been fascinated about cool secret hiding places, hidden in normal everyday objects around the home. Not because I have something to hide from anyone, but more in a cool childish spy gadget way. This is a short DIY project about how to make your own secret organizer hidden in a normal drawer.
I was inspired from this Makezine page that sums up some of the coolest hidden rooms from the simplest hidden compartment from cutout pages inside a book to complete hidden rooms and even a garage. In my opinion some of the coolest is the fake mains power outlet that reveals a tiny storage room for valuables and the idea about drilling a hole in the top face of a door that is large enough for a cigar cylinder that can hide money or a USB memory stick.

This project was inspired by the False Bottom Secret Compartment because it was a perfect addition for another project I’m working on. Even though I think the idea about using a false bottom plate is great, I didn’t like the way it was constructed. All the hidden things will rattle around when the drawer is opened or closed. I wanted to design a more professional solution with an organizer where things have a specific place and where they fit without moving around and reveal their hiding place. Below you will find a description of how I designed it.

How it’s made

1. Measure the inner dimensions of the drawer. Be precise because it’s important to make a tight fit with the organizer plate and the new bottom plate.
2. Find out what you want to hide in the drawer. Take precise measure of all the items. I always prefer to make a digital sketch. My preferred programs are Trimble Sketchup for quick ideas and Fusion 360 when I want to 3D print or laser cut something. When all the items has been sketched it is easier to figure out how to do the complete layout. Make sure to leave enough empty space around the outer border for strength of the plate. Remember to think about the height of the object. I settled on a 5 mm thick acrylic plate for the organizer plate but you could use plywood or similar instead.
3. Laser cut the organizer plate and the extra bottom plate. Make sure the wooden veins are in the same direction as the real bottom and has the same color and texture. It’s also important to make sure that the plates fits into the drawer, and the cutouts for the items are perfect. The width of the laser cut path on the laser cutter I use is around 0.2 mm which is a perfect tolerance so the things don’t get stuck in the organizer plate.
4. Make a small circle in the front of the organizer plate. This is used to push up the false bottom plate.
5. Put the organizer plate in the drawer and drill through the hole and through the real drawer bottom.
6. Fill up the organizer with the items you designed it for and put the false bottom plate on top.
7. To get access to your items, use a pen and push it up from the underside of the drawer to lift up the false bottom plate again.

If you don’t have access to a laser cutter another solution could be to use cardboard for the organizer. Then maker small paper models in actual size of the things that needs to go into the organizer and use a sharp knife to make the cutout holes.

Organizer design

Below is the final design of my organizer. It’s always hard for me to settle on a final design, because things can always be optimized. Going from left to right the large room is for a folded A4 document (or A5). The middle top and bottom rooms are for banknotes, the dimensions fits a Danish 1,000 KR banknote and smaller. In-between there are two credit card sized rooms room for ID or credit cards. To the right there are room for two USB memory sticks. At the far right (the front of the drawer) there is easy access to the four SD card rooms and two Compact Flash card rooms. The hole for lifting up the false bottom plate is placed in the front middle.

Final assembly

The organizer looks way more cool with all the stuff in it. Everything fits perfectly except for the Microdrives (type of CF card) that needs a little adjustment to fit. Another small annoyance is that the plate I used for the false bottom was cut in the wrong directions compared to the veins of the original bottom plate. The pictures also shows that the false bottom has a tiny gab but that is important in order to make it possible to lift it up.
I’m very happy about this quick little hack. And I can always make another or one more organizer if I need room for other secret things. What do you want to store in your own secret organizer?

Indlægget How to Make a Secret Organizer in a Drawer blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

Introduction

Over the years I have come across different giant projects. There is a Giant Arduino Uno, a Giant LED, a Giant Resistor ohmmeter, a Giant NE555 footstool and lately a Giant SD card. I’m not sure why people think is so interesting to upscale tiny objects from around there lab, I guess there are different stories and reasons. But now there is also the Giant Vacuum Tube Lamp and here is my story about it.

Inspiration

The other evening I was trying to get an overview of all our digital images that were spread all over the digital place. From old smartphones including online backup services that were about to expire or filled up, like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive to different folders in different computers and backup hard drives to an old camera in a drawer. On an old hard drive I found some very interesting images taken longtime ago at a music festival with the famous, now dead, Danish musician Kim Larsen that I have heard on the radio since my childhood. In the background of the stage stood four vacuum tube models the same height as a person. They looked rather realistic with orange light simulating the filament heater and blue light simulating the fluorescence that can be seen in some power tubes. My guess is that they should look like EL34 power tubes typically found in guitar tube amplifiers. I remember that I thought they looked so cool and wanted to build something similar. But I never got anything done about it – until now.

When I saw the images again I got the same excitement and started to search around for the part that would define the rest of the design – the glass envelope. I was surprised to find many different products available. Typically used as a glass bell for displaying flowers or other creative things as an interior decoration. Most of them had a dome shape at the end without a tip resembling the exhaust tip on a vacuum tube. This was not a big problem because it looked a lot like the EL34 where the exhaust tip is hidden at the bottom of the tube between the pins. The dimensions of the glass bell gave me some dimensions to continue my work with the search for the rest of the parts. An EL34 measures 33.3 mm in diameter and is 98 mm high including the socket but without the pins. The closest I could come to this relationship, using the largest glass bell I could find, was one that had a diameter of 21.5 cm and a height of 52.5 cm. This gives an upscaling factor around 7 for both diameter and height.

Design and construction

After settling on the outer dimensions I started to search for inspiration for the internal structure of the vacuum tube. I wanted it to look a bit more realistic than the ones I saw at the stage and another project I found online.

The outer structure of the tube is inspired by an EL34 tube mainly because the glass bell has a rounded top like an EL34 without an exhaust tip at the top. The connection pins on an EL34 is connected to a brown or black socket part that would be a perfect way to connect the glass bell with the connection pins on my model. 

The internal structure is inspired by the front cover of a book from my collection called Build Your Own Audio Valve Amplifiers. I didn’t want it to look like the internal of an EL34 because there isn’t much to see other than a big solid metal plate. I found an EF89 in my parts bin that has a nicer metal grid around the heater and grid wires that can be seen beneath. The EF89 is commonly used as a R.F. Pentode in AM/FM radios. 

Starting from the inside and out the heater is built from two 230V LED filament light bulbs mounted top to top. Around the bulbs an enameled copper wire is wrapped imitating a grid. Around this grid another grid is wrapped around two threaded rods. The last layer is a thin perforated metal plate imitating the outer metal plate. The six threaded rods are held together in each end by the insulating spacers made from laser cut acrylic plates that are sanded to give them a matt finish like mica. At the top end two of the threaded rods are extended to work as mounting for the getter ring. At the bottom the internal structure of the vacuum tube is connected to the socket by thin copper tubes going from the threaded rods down to the pins in the socket. To straighten the copper tube before bending to the right angles I used my Tube Straightening Tool.
The socket is made by laser cut plates of plywood glued together to give the right height. The plates were made with holes for the eight pins which are glued on. The curved surface of the socket has been sanded down and plastered before a spray primer has been applied. The last step was to paint it with a black glossy spray paint to make the surface look piano black.
The two light bulbs are connected in parallel and the power cables to them are routed through two of the copper pipes and down through two individual pins and connected to a transparent copper wire. 

Final details

There are still room for minor upgrades:

• Make larger cutouts in the pins where the power cables go through them.
• The getter ring should be sanded and painted silver to look like metal.
• The top part of the glass bell should be painted dark silver to look like vaporized barium.
• As a lamp the amount of light from the two light bulbs is perfect, but as a model of a vacuum tube it would be nice to add a light dimmer to make the filament look a bit more realistic.

Parts list

1x Glass bell – glass envelope
9x 12mm round plywood plates – socket
8x metal tubes – pins
6x M6 metal threaded rods with nuts – internal structure
2x acrylic plates – insulating plates
1x acrylic circle – getter ring
2x LED filament light bulbs – filament
8x copper tubes – connection between pins and internal structure
1x Enameled copper wire – grid
1x Thin perforated metal plate – outer plate
1x 230V transparent copper wire 
8x Acrylic plate for connecting pins and copper tube
4x Acrylic plate for light bulbs
1x Acrylic socket top plate

Specification

Final thoughts

I think my giant vacuum tube lamp turned out almost as I had hoped for when I imagined it in my head. I spend the most time on completing the socket because I wasn’t happy with the result after the first time I painted it. The surface wasn’t smooth enough, so I had to sand down the paint and primer to make the surface more even before repaint. This had been a much easier task if I had had the right tools like a belt or disk sander to sand the wood in the first place. Much of the design has also been work in progress while building it since I did not made a complete 3D drawing of the vacuum tube prior to the build. That made it necessary to adjust and modify some parts throughout the build.
I think the final result looks much like a real vacuum tube (except for the bright heater) and I’m especially happy with how the connections from the pins to the internal structure has been made with thin copper tubes that looks realistic.

If you have any feedback please comment below or contact me. If you are interested in buying your own giant vacuum tube lamp please contact me and convince me to make another one for you.

Indlægget Giant Vacuum Tube Lamp blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

The Police Station consist of the main building in tan and a 8 brick wide donught shop to the left with a small apartment on top. To the right is a small 6 brick wide news paper shop. Behind it is the prison which is connected to the Police Station. On top of the prison is a small room with photo equipment for taking pictures of suspects.
The first overall impression of this set is that it looks great and is a nice, tall and big building with lot of details.

Box

The first thing I noticed when I got the set was the new design of the box. It’s a complete black box with a picture of the Police Station. On the back is the normal things like the set shown connected to other Modular Buildings, an exploded view of the building and close up details. It doesn’t show the usual Creator logo on the front. I was a big fan of the design of the box from the previous Modular Building #10270 Book Shop with all the nice colors, so this box seems a little disappointing to me.

Instruction manual

The instruction manual is one big book around 1 cm thick. In the beginning of the Modular Building series the instruction was divided into multiple smaller parts for each part of the building but this has recently changed into one single book. I like that is just a single book now which looks more professional, but through the building process I think it was easier to have the smaller ones. The thickness makes it hard to open it enough up to see all the details which meant that I actually missed a brick through a step.
There are two things that I don’t like about the instruction manual. The first thing is just a small detail but still annoying. I can’t find the LEGO set number anywhere on it. I’m not sure if its a mistake or on purpose. The other problem was really a big frustration for me. All the pages has a black background (like the box) which I really don’t get. First of all it’s a waste of ink but it also makes it really hard to see the dark brown bricks in the small box showing which bricks are needed for the following step. So a lot of light is needed if you, like me, often builds in the evening.

The build process

Inside the box is a lot of small plastic bags numbered 1 to 14. As I recall earlier Modular Buildings was not divided into that many different bags. What this means is that the number of bricks you have to sort through to find the bricks you need is way more manageable and it’s easier to build. I spent a couple of hours through three evenings to assemble the set.
It’s always a pleasure to build Modular Buildings because there are always new great building techniques to learn and not that many repetitions. Some of the last sets I assembled was set #21321 International Space Station and #10277 Crocodile Locomotive which I both like but they have a lot of repetitions and becomes a little boring to assemble.

Details

Positive

• The sides of the building are nice and clear with matching colors without different strange colors caused by the interior.
• I like the green creeper on the front it gives life to the facade and connects them together.
• It gives more details to the building that the facade has different depths for the different parts of the buildings.
• The double door entrance to the Police Station looks great instead of just a single door like on #10224 Town Hall which I didn’t like. And now with real door handles.
• The Modular Buildings have always used some nice architectural details. Even though it was not that fun to build I like the look of the corner details of the tan colored building with the dark tan bricks.
• The internal stairs up through the building is build in a new way using bricks mounted sideways and connected to the wall. This solution is simple but looks great.
• Hidden details is always fun, and the hidden escape tunnel under the prison cell is really nice. Even with a small spoon for digging and a tiny crack that can be seen outside on the building plinth.
• Another hidden detail is in the apartment above the donut shop. Beneath the bed is a small hole so the thief can use his fishing pole to steal some cakes from the shop.
• The interior is full of details. The first floor of the Police Station has an office with desks including a stationary phone and a type writer.
• A great detail that has been consistent throughout the Modular House series is the design of the sidewalk dimensions. It also include the usual details like the street light, plants and a bench.
• The usual round 2×2 tile clock has been updated with a red second hand and shows another time.
• A funny detail is that the theme with the donut shop continues throughout the building. Four different places I found a “hidden” donut.

Negative

• I’m not a fan of the new design of the box and especially not the black background of the instruction manual.
• I have several hundreds of the black Technic pins with friction, but still I think it is a big annoyance that the set does not include the two pins for connecting the set to a neighbor building. The set actual list two of those in the parts list but they are used for the bed in the apartment. Usually these are included so I don’t understand why this has changed?
• I like that the front has plants on the sidewalk but I dislike the bricks used for the two small green bushes. They remind me about part 3470 trees.
• The back of the building is a little boring and it seems like something is missing. It’s just the big empty baseplate without details. The tan colored part of the building is also a little boring. The 1st and 2nd floor looks almost the same almost without any details.
• Even though I like the different depths of the buildings seen from the front I think the green part with the prison will almost be hidden in darkness if a tall building is connected to the right side of the Police Station. (I tried by connecting the Book Store on the right side).

Final thoughts

The build process was a great experience with a lot of entertainment. I really liked that the bricks was sorted in that many bags so it was easier to manage the amount of bricks. There was a lot of positive things to mention about this set, but please go back to the design of the earlier boxes and instruction manual. I think this set is great value for the money and still I get surprised by all the great details and creative building techniques.
The worst thing is that we have to wait another year for the next Modular Building to arrive? What will come next? Now there is a fire and a police station, maybe a hospital? Actually I don’t hope so. But the speculations has already started.

As usual the Modular Buildings looks even better when connected together.

Indlægget Review: LEGO 10278 Police Station blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.