I recently purchased a cored out stove for my freight house. I am adding an interior so the station master needed a stove for heat and hot water. I have similated led fire from model train software and I plan on adding it inside the stove. However I was wondering if there are any ideas to ad some translucent plastic material in between the flickering LEDs so it looks like "coal on fire". Any suggestions are appreciated.
Replies sorted oldest to newest
This may sound somewhat involved, but if you want a realistic looking coal fire, it works.
If there is a Michael's craft store in your area, in the artificial flower section there are various bags of "fills" for vases. One of them is clear plastic nuggets. I got one and picked out a heaping tablespoon of the smaller ones, which were about the size of a fishing sinker.
I then put them in a old blender (which I have found to be a useful hobby tool) and pulsed it until I had a pile of shards where each was 1-1.5 mm in size. Then put a small small lump of modeling clay underneath a piece of wax paper, tucked the latter until it formed the slightly curved shape I wanted my coal pile to have and then used a coat of Modge Podge to seal and harden it. Then went through about four rounds of putting a wet coat of Modge Podge ono the lump, sprinkling on a layer of the broken clear plastic shards onto it and then using a fine paint brush to randomly dab on small areas of thin, somewhat transulcent black paint. I let things fully dry bewteen each coat.
Once everything was dry I carefully removed the coal pile from the wax paper and then tested it with two flickering amber LEDS tucked inside the lump. Got exactly the result I wanted, which was random refraction of light with constant variation of light and dark areas. An additional tip - when layering on the shards, intentionally leave some small areas of the lump uncovered. That results in giving additional realism to the final result, where some areas of the coal fire appear to be flames.
Plastruct sells tinted translucent red rod material. I'd look at cutting a rod into sections and place it over the source LED. Randomize the 'pile' of cut rod to look like coal pile. Light will cause pile to glow in varying degrees of brightness.
Hot glue, if played with, makes a very realistic reflecting pile, as it cools, sprinkle black ballast or simulated coals into the soft glue before it hardens, when dry, use a drill on under side to slip LED into pile and use the tip of the hot glue gun to melt glue around LED. I use this method for BBQ grills, stoves and for campfires I lay twigs into the glue instead of coal.
Access to this requires an OGR Forum Supporting Membership
