Working hurricane lantern, Mark II, using battery-operated tealights

'Tis the season, and those little battery-operated tealights are in stores. They're available (at higher prices) year 'round at Michael's, but the Christmas season brings them to more stores, and at lower prices.

I decided to replace the hurricane lantern on the Titan Quest weapons cart. I was never happy with the first version. Thought it was a little crude. The lantern was cannibalized from one of those battery-operated tealights that use a round, CR-2032 battery.

It's intended to be rustic, so I hid it in a wooden tub. From what I can see. the circuit board is necessary to make the light flicker. Otherwise, the bulb can be directly wired to the battery and it will work, but you 'd lose the on/off switch feature. So, this project retained the flickering light and the on/off switch, but disguised the entire battery casing into a period-appropriate setting.

The skeleton is 4.75" tall. The lamp itself is a bit under 1", so this design can easily be adapted for MEGOs, 1:12 scale figures, dollhouses and even 1:6 scale figures.

Tutorial below:

Titan Quest Weapons Cart project (continued)

Some photos of the wagon in-progress. Serious hobbyists who build high-end wagon kits will recognize the proper, functional running gear, which was not originally included in the $2 kit. I carved it from 1/4" square wood dowels and disposable wooden chopsticks.

More realistic blueprints downloaded from the Internet :

Further along in the build, the little Rement Pose Skeleton tries out the driver's seat for size. You'll notice the compound lever for the brake. Since the simple brake lever is in the middle of the wagon, there had to be a logical way for the cart driver to pull it from the front seat. I'm not a mechanical engineer, I had to think very hard about this and built a mock up first to make sure it worked.

And, here's the Skeleton Warriors weapons cart at completion:

I did a few modifications and replacements. Instead of a canvas cover, I used a sheet of suede, intentionally cut roughly around the edges. The wagon had gained a lantern, because it doesn't make sense to be driving around in the dark. The lantern lights up, courtesy of the CR-2032 battery and round battery casing hidden underneath the wooden tub in the front of the wagon.

It's not an exact replica of the Titan Quest cart, but one can easily see the heavy influence that the game had on the final version of the $1.99 model.


RELATED PAGES:
A Collection of Toy Skeletons

Titan Quest Weapons Cart project

I have to admit it, I'm addicted to the videogame, Titan Quest. I found it at the Goodwill, where PC games are $1.99 (with no tax). I let it sit for several months on the shelf. But once I installed it on my PC, I was hooked.

It's a very long game. I loved the scenery, and thought about tying Titan Quest to Skeleton Warriors. The Skeletons are planning an invasion anyway, so they'd need to haul supplies, and the merchant weapons carts in the game gave me an inspiration.

Weapons merchant in Greece:

Weapons merchant in Egypt:

If you'll notice, the merchant in Greece inexplicably has an awful lot of fresh produce for sale, but no spears. The merchant in Egypt sensibly has spears, but has everything loaded on a less-stable 2 wheel cart.

These days, wooden wagon kits are hard to come by. It's not like the 70's, where one could get 1:16 scale kits by Allwood and Craft Master. I remember those kits.

On the low, low end of modern wagon kits is the Covered Wagon kit by Darice, which can be bought for only $1.99 (in 2015 dollars, not 1971 dollars). It's not a great kit, or even a good kit, but for the price of 2 candy bars, it at least provides a few useful parts and a framework to start. I knew I'd be making a lot of modifications, and wanted to do this old-school style, with as many functional components as possible. I had a book on Conestoga Wagons transferred from the San Carlos library so I could better understand the steering and undercarriage components.

Here's what you get in the bag. The wagon bed itself is about 6" long, but too narrow to be truly useful, so I cut my own wagon bed from plywood. The wheels could be used, but they needed hubs. The original axles were useless... fixed rectangular blocks of wood (with no steering) where you were expected to attach the wheels using a metal nail. Just... no.

Luckily, craft stores sell bags of wooden discs, so I bought a bag. It's much easier to use pre-punched discs than to cut and sand them by hand. And, I ended up using a lot of these wooden discs for this project.

TO BE CONTINUED...