Steampunk Finger Stylus

I use a touchpad GPS regularly at work and lost the pen stylus a long time ago; it was inconvenient anyway trying to hold the stylus, GPS unit, and drive an ATV at the same time. So I made some finger stylussss?Stylii? from old water jug handles for work. For this Instructable I added some extra parts for fun Steampunk styling.

Step 1 Cut Handle Out of Water Jug

This is simple, just cut out a small section from the handle of the jug. Slip it over your finger and use a marker to draw a shape to make a pointer. Cut out the shape of the stylus pointer with some scissors.

Comments

[AGENT.Nacho]

How do i change my avatar ????

[absolutekold]

Pity that I have paws instead of hands (seriously my thumb takes up over 1/3 of a blackberry keyboard glove size XXXL) however the little woman loves the idea so I guess I'll make her one.. for a metal one you could probably run a line of hot glue along the leading edge, smooth it, and brass leaf (or spray paint) it to make it touch screen safe-ish (although I would prefer Teflon I am not cutting up my spatula right yet) the glue shouldn't scratch but with the metal backing you could still "accidentally" apply too much pressure and break the screen. The only problem I have with copper pipe is a contrast issue. what makes this (and all steampunk) so beautiful is the contrast (old with new). using the copper pipe as a ground ring (if you added a light or something) would be ok but to do it all out of copper you would still need to break it up somehow(silver wire??) and find a different way to incorporate some brass or silver. using the copper as a skeleton over leather offers possibilities. use some aluminium wiring. hmmm may have to try it
all in all good 'able.

[ktomasov]

It's a bit thicker plastic but maybe you could use the handle from an arazona tea jug?

[Briguy9]

Yeah the proper plural for Stylus is stylii. Anything ending in a 'us' removes the 'us' and replaces it with 'ii'

[anyoldmouse]

Platypus ends in 'us', but their plural is platapodes. The plural for stylus is 'styli', not 'stylii'. No more Nintendo for you.

[08motooley]

there is no agreed plural for platypus, personally i use platypi

[spawnos3717]

What would be the plural for Wii?...LOL

[Jyssa]

bus=bii?

[08motooley]

it only works with words of more than one syllable otherwise the rule doesn't count

[Briguy9]

Oh. Well good thing I didn't like Nintendo too much. My Wii broke and is now unresponsive to the Wiimote, my Gameboy SP and DS both snapped in half, and my DS Lite doesn't read games anymore. On top of that they had to make the DSi without a Gameboy slot.

[PikminRed]

Nintendo didn't like YOU. i agree with the DSi but HOW ROUGH ARE YOU! do you expect it to hold out when you throw it? Ive droped my DS from a second story onto my tile floor. It was fine.and Snapping the DS in half doesn't do anything but break the shell. Go ebay a new one. Ive taken mine apart to mix it with special black, silver, red, and electric blue parts. ( Not the DS lite) with the Wii, what did you do? Throw the sensor bar? Buy a new one or light two candles above the tv! Jam the cd in so hard the cd broke? Jeeze dude. Nintendo stuff NEVER breaks unles you do somthing to it.

                                                  Two words:





                                                                                  USER ERROR

[spawnos3717]

Or maybe just one word...Wiitard

[toogers]

i've only had two "incidents" with nintendo devices.
1. broken DS hinge(game still worked, screen was just in a weird position)
2. (see picture)

[fruitkid101]

dude my dslite fell into the toilet by accident. how do I fix that?

[PikminRed]

let it dry out. If you tried to turn it on after that, and didn't let it fully dry, you fried something. no electronic is damaged by water. its turning it on with the water that is the problem. if you let it dry out, it will fix itself.

[valhallas_end]

Wow...I've had my DS for ages and I'm pretty rough on it, but its in near mint condition. What bricks were you throwing at it? :-P Also, the actual plural form of octopus is octopodes. It seems an animal that ends with 'us' becomes 'odes' in plural while plants (cactus) become 'i' (cacti). I'm not sure how far that runs, but it seems to be a good general rule of thumb.

[PastTheVoid]

Seriously, I've dropped my DS on cement, hardwood, carpet, tile, and linoleum. It still works perfectly fine, not even any discolorations on either screen. And I actually have thrown a brick at it.

[nicknicko]

 True, my DS has fell from like 10 feet and only once something happened to it, the L button stopped responding, but I opened it, found out a part of it was broken, then superglued and PRESTO.

[valhallas_end]

.........
You are a braver person that I.  I'd hate to damage my DS - it keeps sanity between college exams....

[Fieldownage]

 As my iPhone keeps sanity during lessons. :P

[HAL 9000]

 Yeah, Nintendo stuff is BUILT! 

[skribb]

Apart from Doedskvads correction - what about "bus"? I don't think it's supposed to be pluralised as "busi" ;D

[Lord_Forbes]

Depends on the conjugation. Sometimes, if it has a root in 4th declension Latin words, it can end with -us. Like arcus, arcum (for those that don't know, the nominative case is always followed by the genitive case so that you know the declension). The plural of arcus is arcus. Also, the below post is correct. The ending of -ii is reserved for families, i.e. Cornelii is Cornelius' family. :) Latin scholars to the rescue. Good stylus by the way, I plan on making one.

[Fieldownage]

 Correct, correct. In the 4th declension it would come out as Stylus (only the "u" pronounced longer), but by 2nd declension it would come out as Styli. Although according to dictionary its plurral is "styli, or styluses" so I quess it's from 2nd declension even though it shouldn't be latin. ;)

[Doedskvad]

Nope, it's "Styli". "Stylii" would be the correct plural if the singular was "Stylius". But the Instructable is awesome nontheless.

[Briguy9]

P.S. Awesome 'ible!

[youyougamer]

What i would do would be to make it out of metal pipe or something metal and conductive, Then bend the sharp tip over to round it and then melt a bead of solder onto the end so it would be conductive making it useful for iphones and ipads

[hardlec]

After a little time has passed:  How well is this holding up?

Also:  Would/does it work on the tiny keys on many qwerty phone keyboards?

[robbtoberfest]

 This one I made I use at the desk and it holds up fine, for ones I use out in the field I don't even paint those. It's probably too light to push those little qwerty buttons.

[spawnos3717]

You could augment the tip with extra material...like a spine.

[Batness]

How has the paint itself held up? This is a great idea, I might have to borrow some inspiration from this....:)

[robbtoberfest]

I used spray paint for plastics, it held up well until I lost the stylus. Maybe I should have made a neck chain for it too.

[freerunnin1]

if the paint starts to come off, repaint it and coat it in a thin layer of glue, to water proof it :P

[fastlines49s]

you could use this as a fountain pen for your finger

[prosper58]

Thanks for the instructable :D. I made my own yesterday. I'm not sure if you can call it steampunk, since i lack a lot of steampunk items to use. (gears, coils, tubes, etc.)

[spawnos3717]

Yours kinda looks like Borg tech from Star Trek.

[robbtoberfest]

I'm alway losing mine; and after seeing yours I had the idea of adding a magnet to stash it on the fridge or somewhere.

[VictorianVaudville]

If you use a magnet, and plan to use it as a stylus it may mess up the screen.

[prosper58]

Hah. Glad to have incoherently given you the thought. Also, I suggest using foil tape instead of paint.
(1)It's quicker than paint (2) It looks more like metal. (you can even age it, easily)

P.S- Great instructable. (5 stars)

[LNaboo]

I wish I'd had one of these back when I had a Palm Pilot!! But really great for steampunk accents so thanks for that!