Schlauch + El Wire Jacket

While wating for 205 meters more schlauch to arrive

• to see its performance
• see how it works with the loom
• determine how to make the straps
• to build the last 2x custom circular peg looms

I got the idea to play around with some El Wire.  You see, the original plan was to use blacklight LEDs to backlight tonic water (which highlighters soaked in overnight).  However it appears that literally NO ONE makes blacklight rope lights so I'd have to make my own blacklight LED vest (for my schlauch jacket).  However it appears that LEDs dont really do the blacklight spectrum very well (you can find some at 380 nm however they are very directional (20 degree view angle).

Thus I was hoping El Wire (intertwined with the schlauch) could provid the lighting necessary to see the air/water going through the tubes.  Next thing I know ... I've found a really cheap source of inverters/el wire/sequencers and am thinking about making some El Wire 'jackets' too. (that and my first bike in Berlin wannas to be playa-fied! )






The above video is from 20 meters of 3mm inner diameter schlauch (4mm outter diameter).  The El Wire was woven in every other loom (too much?  not enough?) At first we used the 4 meters of orange El Wire (2.2mm) but quickly went through that so we added another 4 meters of blue El too.

Its interesting to note how much more tall our structure is with using the thinner schlauch (the 20 meters of 3mm schlauch is nearly 60 cm tall while 4mm schlauch is only 25cm tall).

My first batch of EL WIRE I bought from "Thats Cool Wire".  Its a great website with great video tutorials on how to use the stuff.  However this time around, I'm going straight to the manufacturer (greater savings, when based in Europe and/or ordering large quantities).  Regardless, to give you a better idea of the EL WIRE I'm looking at:

Picture of Colors of El Wire
http://www.thatscoolwire.com/articleDetail.asp?articleID=21

Picture of Thickness of El Wire
http://www.thatscoolwire.com/articleDetail.asp?articleID=18

Names of Colors
http://www.thatscoolwire.com/store/item.asp?Category=168&SubCategoryID=106&GroupID=&SKU=S7-2%2E2-SPL-165

Knitting Win v1.2 (5mm)

I now have 2 'tube center pieces'
The first one I did yesterday was 20m of 4mm inner diameter (6mm outer)
I could tell it was pushing the limits of the pump so I decided to make another new one today: 20m of 5mm inner diameter (9mm outer).

The thickness of the tubing (9mm outer) made it VERY hard to knit with (the pegs only had 15mm spacing thus you couldnt have 2 tubes next to each other) however with the help of Sylwia we managed.  The 5mm inner made it MUCH easier on the pump.

Convinced enough of the tubing and technique I placed another order for tubes (4mm inner/6 outer and 5mm inner/7mm outer).  I'm hoping to get away with making a jacket using only 50 meters.  

Outstanding topics to work out include:

• open back or completely circular
• whether to add sleeves
• how to finish the ends
• how to add straps

Knitting Win v1.1 (4mm)

SUCCESS !
We (Andrea & I) successfully knitted a full 20 meters of 4mm using a double peg method (each loop went around 2 pegs) ! It seems as though were already pushing the pump to its limit with these loops (of this diameter) at 20 meters.

The good news is, originally I had estimated it would take about 100 meters to make a jacket however with the large loop size (due to the double peg) it looks like I'll be able to get away with less than 50m.

Now if only I can have Sylwia show me how to tie the knit off so I can try with the thicker tubing

Knitting Fail v1.0 (single peg stitch)

In the first 'test' we had the tubing 'wrapped' around the loom. This time we decided to actually KNITTED it using a basic looming techniques found on YouTube.

After knitting approx 3meters of the 4mm inner tubing we decided to see how it works. Keep in mind, we figure we need about 100m to make a full jacket so were only 3% of the way 'done'.

Unfortunately things did NOT work out. There were too many kinks restricting the flow causing the output to be all but a dribble however the air bubbles looked nice :S

We'll have to try a different technique or tubing or loom ...

The beginning

The 20m x 5mm (inner dimension) works great

so does the 20m x 4mm.

However the 3mm (inner dimension, 0.5mm wall) will kink too easy (same goes for the 2mm x 0.5mm and 1.5mm x 0.3mm wall).

Upon making our (shout out to Sylwia) first braid ... first observation (when using the 4mm inner x 6mm outter) is that the spacing on our prototype loom is too small (currently 14 mm, needs to be bigger ... perhaps around 18mm). Also ... each peg height is 5.5cm ... if it were longer (approx 8cm) the tubes would stay on easier

Final Facts:

5mm inner (@20m) took 40 seconds to empty

4mm inner (@20m) took 55 seconds to empty and 20 seconds to fill

Liquid Jacket

First blog in 6 years ... Liquid Jacket Edition.

Ive been working on this idea for a while. Naumann sent me this video

Its taken a couple months but Ive acquired all the materials and am ready to build.

During acquisition, it seems as quite a few others have jumped on the bandwagon like Robyn's Indestructible