Thoughts on canisters

That’s because there’s no place for the LED’s light to refract and reflect. It’s the same as when you’re driving at night in the fog: your headlights light up all the fog around you, because the light is refracting and reflecting against all those water droplets.

I wanted to keep the same effect, but enhance it. I started looking around the house for something that would hold a group of tea-light printed circuit boards and allow me to gain the effect of the tea-light cover.

It didn’t take long: we drink a lot of powdered drinks in this household and many of them come little tubs that are sold in a 4½-inch high, 2½-inch wide semi-translucent plastic canister. The label is attached with the Glue from Hell, but otherwise, this is a perfect container.

I’ve now built about a dozen structure lights using these canisters and they have all worked perfectly.

A couple of different ones are illustrated here; they’re all ultimately made by Kraft, which I suppose uses the same factory and buys the canisters in huge bulk. In addition to the Kraft products — the various Crystal Light flavors (fruit punch and decaf ice tea are big here at the GT&E) and Tang — I’ve seen Wyler’s Lemonade in a similar container. There may be others; when I was at Safeway today, those were the only ones I saw.

Note that the Wyler’s product and the Crystal Light Sunrise flavors have lids that aren’t the same translucent plastic; I haven’t tried one of these, so I don’t know if a dark lid would change the outcome. My only real concern would be that the lid could be seen against the white interior of the building.

And if you can figure out how to get the label’s glue off the canister, I’ll credit you and your process right here; I’ve tried hot water and soap and isopropyl alcohol, to no effect. Now, I just make sure the glue-and-paper is always facing the rear of the structure.

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