Hi guys... I found steampunk a few days ago for the first time and loved what I saw :D
I was also intrigued by an instructable by Horatius.steam, A light box for camping driven by an old camera electronics and a low energy light bulb. I couldn't resist pulling an energy bulb apart to see what it actually looked like. I managed to break to first bulb trying to remove the plastic base.
I didn't have an old disposable camera handy but did have a broken electronic fly swat, basically a battery operated tennis racket with a high voltage wire grid to electrocute the bugs on contact. They only cost £1 so i don't mind pulling them apart - I had already made a small electric fence to keep cats away from my aviary with the circuit board from one of these rackets a few months before, so was hoping that it would work in a similar way to the high voltage camera flash circuit board. Well, as you can see from the photo's it worked...
once i had tested the concept it was just a case of finding something to house the individual parts. the glass shade is actually a small spice jar that I edged with copper foil tape for stained glass making, the base and lid is the top and bottom parts of a thin wooden box and the copper strands are the solid core from power cable, they come up through the base and i fixed them to the foil on the jar with solder to hold everything in place.
I added a few coloured glass beads to suggest polarity and a few spring coils plus a little imagination. I wanted to simplify the on/off switch and ended up with simple sliding bar that shorts the "red" and the "green" contacts on the front of the base and creates a full circuit between the batteries and the small circuit board that you can see fitted under the base.
It doesn't give out a huge amount of light but I have enjoyed every minute of time that this little project has taken, I have never played with this style before and didn't have much laying around to put into making it - i will look out for brass and copper cogs dials knobs and spindles from now on... I have this little SteamPunk lamp sat on my desk and when the power went out a few hours ago it proved its worth :D
I know i haven't really made an instructable but this is a variation on somebody elses existing idea.
If you do have a go at making something similar, have fun... I did :-)