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Make sure to press the tape down well before painting to avoid leaks and blotches. But even if you have some slight uneven lines — the end result will be great. TheDeathStarhas so many little bits and dots, it will look like you wanted it this way 😉 Winter holidays Furniture Storage & organization Beds & mattresses Kitchen & appliances Home textiles Lighting Baby & kids Home décor Kitchenware & tableware Rugs, mats & flooring Bathroom Outdoor Plants & planters Home electronics Pet accessories Home improvement Laundry & cleaning Smart home IKEA Food & Swedish restaurant Home Accessories Making hollow spheres out of concrete usually involves building layers onto an inflatable ball. I wanted to build it the wrong way around - to have a pattern on the outside. It didn't seem like it would be particularly easy to do but I wanted to try anyway.. Transparent Plastic Sphere: To use as the mould. I found a cheap ball for hamsters (~16cm diameter) that splits in half and has a handy access hole. You can usually find plastic balls - I had a similar size one that was briefly full of chocolate pieces...
I cut a bunch of optical fibres (from a cheap led lamp thing) into lengths of around 4cm - longer is better because we can trim them later. I've read that some glues (e.g. super glue) can heat the fibres and damage them. I added a dab of wood glue on the each hole and pushed the fibres through. Having a light inside the sphere can help see where the unfilled holes are. Paint the ball completely or work in segments — it all depends on your taste. Lastly, they peeled the masking tape not long after painting.
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Drill & Bit (1.5mm) & Hole-saw bit (54mm): To make holes. Also to cut out a circle to make the super-laser part. Hook: Hanging heavy things from electrical cable is not idea. Use hooks to take the weight. A threaded tube and nuts would have been better but I couldn't find any locally.
I used a 1.5mm drill bit to drill a bunch of holes on the sphere. The grid markings on the surface of the sphere was handy to follow. Since the fibres are around 0.5mm, this hole should be big enough. I kept drilling until I got bored - which wasn't long. Add trench / panels
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I saw a transparent plastic sphere at a local shop and immediately thought of making a Death Star pendant lamp out of concrete. This was sparked by looking at a whole bunch of helpful instructables about how to make concrete pendant lights. I've also seen instructions about how to make a Hollow Concrete Sphere and about passing light using optical fibres. I wanted to combine those three concepts whilst playing around with concrete/cement. I drilled the big hole a little above the equator for the super-laser. I duct-taped both inside and outside to stop the plastic from shattering/splitting. Using a hole-saw bit means that you can reuse the circle of plastic as the super-laser. This circular offcut was flipped over and hot-glued into place. Sketching the damage outlines Plastic Fibre Optic Cable: I got this from a cheap light toy. If the lengths are short and straight, you can use clear fishing line too although it won't be as bright. Where the predrilled holes were, I pushed dressmaker pins through the craft foam and the cement. This is obviously easier to do whilst the cement is still wet. I didn't push the pins in complete so I could pull them out more easily. Fiba Tape: Alkali-resistant tape to add tensile strength to concrete. The grey grid pattern shown underneath the transparent sections should also make it look a bit like the building structure.
She’s provided a scanned template of the laser in 3 versions. The template was drawn by hand so it was hard to get a clear scan. But you may still be able to use it as a starting point for a template. It fits on a sheet of A4 paper and is meant for the 52 cm diameter version — for the smaller ones you’ll need to size it down. The tape will force the silicone to form weird grid patterns unless you really push it into the gaps. To get a cleaner boundaries, I pushed the silicone from the centre of the mound outwards. More tape The closer the tape is to the surface of the shell, the more visible it will be when the light shines through it. I didn't cover the deep-damages sections (areas with the hot-glue mounds) with tape yet. After searching for some reference pictures for Death Star 2 from Star Wars Episode VI, I sketched out with a sharpie where the damaged sections should be. There's a line of damage that runs across the entire front (below the super-laser) and the whole top-right and bottom-right sections are deeply damaged, concave and exposed. The edge of these damaged areas show the lattice structure of the space station but the middle be indented. Deep damage sectionsOnce you’re satisfied with the look of your pattern, you can paint a darker shade of paint over the whole ball. Craft Foam: for marking trench-ish shapes. I've tried using oil-based clay but found that stuff hard to remove from the concrete once set.
It'd be great if we can cement the optical fibres into the Death Star. However, fibre optic cables (even the plastic ones) snap, break and pull out easily. It might not matter if I used an actual mold (e.g. a ball within a ball) and poured the concrete in...but I was going to be slapping a concrete mix onto the inside of a ball. So I pre-drill the holes and use craft foam to cover them. Then I'll remake the holes with pins after the concrete has been added.Who hasn't dreamed of owning a half-destroyed battle station made of concrete that functions as a light? Anyone? Okay, so it's not exactly practical but it was fun to try to something new. The next step is to prepare your favourite cement mix. Cement is not good for your health - I made sure to wear goggles, a mask, nitrite gloves, and did all the mixing outside. Storage & organisation Furniture Textiles Kitchenware & tableware Kitchens Lighting Decoration Rugs, mats & flooring Beds & mattresses Baby & children Smart home Bathroom products Laundry & cleaning Plants & plant pots Home electronics Home improvement Outdoor living Food & beverages Christmas Shop Shop by room PVA glue & mold release: To seal the foam. For the release, I used a bike chain lubricant spray though some other oils should be fine.
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