Introduction: Steampunk-look Altoid Tin

About: Middle aged geek username also works at yahoo.com, mac.com, comcast.net, wharton-10.arpa

I don't know whether I quite understand what makes something "steampunk", but one of the common characteristics seems to be the use of metallic finishes (especially copper and brass) rather than the modern paint & plastic look. Well, you can get Aluminum TAPE in most hardware stores, Copper TAPE in better garden shops (snail deterrent), and brass "shim stock" (foil, in thickness up to "pretty thick"), so it seems to me that you can potentially make things somewhat steampunk-like pretty easily, by applying tape and foil to "ordinary" objects.

In this example, I use some copper tape to make an altoids tin look more steampunk-like. (I guess the other thing I've noticed is that there should a relatively high degree of customization, so this is probably
only partway to being a complete steampunk-like project, if I'm headed in the right direction at all.

(Of course, I imaging for "real" steampunk, you're not supposed to cheat like this at all; if you can't machine your altoids-style box out of a solid block of copper, you should at least fold it yourself out of sheet metal. Still, I like to cheat!)