OK, so I'd been mentioning the visiting descendant, and poplar not being aluminum, and a stack of things being glued....
Lorene has the week off from school, and there was an assignment for physics class during the break: either a paper or a craft project (which had to have some reasonable relation to physics). The "infinity mirror" optical thingamajig having been recently demonstrated, she chose "craft project", and specifically making an infinity mirror.
She asked if she could come out here to work on it - sure! - and pointed me to an Instructable, which I pondered.
OK, so there were some materials to round up ahead of time. Including the basic structural components, specified as a 7" diameter cardboard lid and a 9" diameter cardboard lid.
Cardboard lids? Big ones? No idea where to find those. Might have to machine the parts out of aluminum, or brass, or maybe wood.
Turns out some other students had chosen the same project, so a certain amount of competitiveness was involved. So, wood it is then!
Well, some of the "find locally at the last minute" items got sticky. Notably, a 7" diameter mirror; we had to settle for a 7" by a bit wider by rounded-corners mirror, which was of somewhat awkward maximum dimension. And wood. Priced hardwood lately? Yeah, silly me: it doesn't grow on trees you know! Oh, it does? Well, regardless, the best we could find in a suitable width and thickness, without busting the budget nor spending all day running around such lumber suppliers as remain in the area, was poplar board of ¾" thickness and 9¼" width.
So, chop it up into four segments slightly longer than wide, mark centers, fly-cut just-under-7" holes in the middles, laminate together into 1½" thick stacks, quantity two, and get fabricatin'.
(I did the chopping-up bit myself with a circular saw; women get so unreasonable when you return their kids with body parts missing. Also not shown here: I CADded up a quick concept sketch for the structure & housing.)
See the snowflakes illuminated by the flash! Yes, the chips were flying.
Her hair and sleeves were well clear of the rotating machinery at all times.
Put it all together, and...
It's a mirror! (Yeah, the front mirror still needs final cleaning. And window film over acrylic doesn't come out perfect the first time you try it.)
Apply power, and...
Ta-daaa!
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