Light Bulb Opening Construction Article Part 5

How to Open a Light Bulb for a Ship In Light Bulb Model
by John Fox III

The metal end cap from the light bulb still has a lot of glass and hard glue attached, which will be removed and cleaned in this article part. The photo above shows how a needle nose pliers was positioned around the stem of glass protruding from the metal cap.

This photo shows the same bulb end and needle nose pliers, positioned as in previous photo, but with the cloth covering the "working" end of the pliers. This is done of course to minimize the danger of broken glass shards flying around when a hammer is used to break the glass stem.

The results of breaking the glass stem are shown in the photo above, the wires are snipped to remove the glass stem end.

This photo is just another view of the results of using the needle nose pliers and hammer to break the glass stem in the metal end cap.

This photo shows the metal end cap after clipping the wires and removing the end of the glass stem. Note that the glass turns in on itself from outside to inside, leaving a sort of ledge/pocket.

Here is a photo showing how the needle nose pliers was positioned in the center of the ledge/pocket mentioned in the photo above, along with the hammer used to hit the pliers handle ends. When doing any of the hammering to remove glass and glue in the previous and following photos, care was taken to use only as much force as necessary to break the glass. The idea is to keep the metal end cap from being deformed or dented. What few accidents happen along these lines can be corrected later, but not if the deformation is too severe.

This photo shows the results of hammering to remove the glass ledge/pocket. A good bit of the glass inside the metal end cap come out at this point. Note the darker glass end inside the metal end cap, it is most desirable to not damage that particular piece of glass with all previous, and any further, work.

This photo shows how the needle nose pliers and hammer are used to lightly tap the remaining glass in the metal end cap. Nearly all the glass, and the hardened glue, can be removed in this fashion, but simply rotating the metal cap between hammer hits. As noted above, care is taken to keep the metal end cap shape as much as humanly possible.

In this photo you can see the last of the removed glass and the metal end cap, following the proceedure outlined above.

The next part of the article will explain the methods used to remove the rest of the hardened glue from inside the metal end cap.
 
 

John will be continuing this article on how to open a light bulb model in future postings. The full article is available on the CD mentioned below. Previous parts of this article will be available for download from the main Construction Area page when new parts are posted on this site.
 

John has recently re-edited all of his previously published articles into "web" format, and has them availabe for sale on CD. Please visit the Awards & Articles page to get more information on this CD. This CD includes all the parts of the Opening a Light Bulb article, including those John does not have space to keep available on this site.