A small steampunk laser pistol hand crafted by me in the workshop from brass, copper and mahogany. It does indeed house a genuine laser which is operated by the trigger.

It measures 5″ x 3 3/4″ it weighs 3.65 ounces.

This Steampunk kaleidoscope is one that I designed and built especially for the new Mechanical Art and Design Mueum in Stratford upon Avon,  MAD Museum

You wont be surprised to find that the kaleidoscope is made from mahogany and brass and once again features a Victorian brass candlestick as a pedestal.

The image wheel is the most ambitious I’ve attempted so far in view of the fact it’s going to the MAD Museum and there’s a lot of kinetic art in there I wanted something with a strong mechanical appearance.

I knew I wanted two separate image wheels, one to create the patterns seen in the mirrors and one to provide colour changes, simple idea but how to do it, that was the question. A little research led me to the discovery of Geneva mechanisms, the device which is used in film projectors to advance the film one frame at a time. That was the easy part!

Many drawings and many many hours of model making and trial and error and I had my two image wheels to mount on the front of the kaleidoscope. Each revolution of the large image wheel moves the colour selector once.

Now all I had to do was make a mechanism to turn them, a good rummage through my stock of old clock parts and many more hours of trial and error, assembling, disassembling and reassembling and I had the finished kaleidoscope.

To say it tried my patience is putting it mildly! I will try and put together a video of it in action.