Soldering Onward!

So, I am fully enchaned in the arms of the Beast.

Beauty and the Beast to be exact.  That is the chosen Christmas show for the theatre where I work.  And so these last few days has been an endless line of creating strange things to mob the poor Beast's castle, including, torches.

     Now the theatre where I work is a tinder box.  Literally.  Built in the 1800's it is a large rambling hotel and opera house built entirely out of wood and plaster with very large, very old and very dry timber frames.  We do not have fire in this theatre.  Ever.  So the torches had to be lit with lightbulbs.

 this is either art... or a big damn mess.

     Now I have never done wiring before.  Technically I knew how (remembering those science experiments with lightbulbs and batteries in grade school) but I hadn't applied thatknowledge for years.  Setting up the circuit was easy.  Making it permanent...  well, that's another story.

     To get all those wires to stick to the bulb, the battery box and the switch I had to solder them.  Can I just say that soldering is hard?  Freakin hard.  I'm sure somewhere there is some solderer laughing at me, but every time I would melt the solder it would roll around and stick to the soldering iron, not the wire.  Then I forgot that I hadn't unplugged the soldering iron and went to clean up, only to bursh the hot iron away with my hand, and (yeeeowch!) burn my fingers.
  check it.  Burnination!

But now... the torches are done!  They still need some paint, but they light!  (Bwahahahah!  Liiiight!)  Now it's on to fake swords and axes!  So I'm going to reward myself with some Doctor Who (oooh, it's "Time Flight" with Peter Davidson.  I love Doctor 5.  Love him.) and some knitting on the "scarf that will never be finished"

  Yee Haw!  Fake fire!