How To Make a Green Lantern Ring

Malfourmed writes "Step by step instructions for making the ultimate comic book geek jewelery — Green Lantern's power ring. Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner and Alan Scott variations all included. Now someone find me a Katma Tui or Arisia to go with it, and we might just have ourselves a proposal!" The bigger problem of course is that there's no battery available to charge it, so it's just costume jewelry. Anyone have other good costume ideas?

What? No John Stewart ring?

Is it because he's black? Also, these rings seem to be lacking in actual power, so I'm rather disappointed.

Re:What? No John Stewart ring?

No actally, he uses it to transform and become Superjohn!

http://chrisdidthis.com/b3ta/run.gif [chrisdidthis.com]

nostalgic ....

In brightest day, in blackest night
        No evil shall escape my sight
        Let those who worship evil's might
        Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!

Re:nostalgic ....

Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!

Of which we have none. The article is about how to make an investment casting. The web is full of them. The library has shelves of books on the subject. I've shown grade school kids how to do it.

This is Slashdot; I was really expecting (hope springs infernal) an article, however shoddy and silly, about how somebody put an LED and lens into a ring to make it give off Green Lantern's light.

Slashdot, reporting on copper age technology; today!

KFG

Re:nostalgic ....

In loudest din or hush profound,
My ears catch evil's slightest sound.
Let those who toll out evil's knell,
Beware my power: The F-Sharp Bell!

Re:nostalgic ....

In loudest din or hush profound

This isn't just a cute parody. This is from an Alan Moore [wikipedia.org] Green Lantern story where they tried to recruit someone to the Corps who lived in a lightless world. The inhabitants had no word for "light" or "lantern", so they translated the concept to that of sound... which these inhabitants were intimiately more familiar with.

The story appears in the collection DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore [amazon.com]. Highly recommended.

Where's the LED?

At least add a LUXON UltraBrite green LED in there in order to qualify for a ./ frontpage...

Either get a Sony laptop battery or...

The bigger problem of course is that there's no battery available to charge it, so it's just costume jewelry.

Attached a wire to the ring, stick the wire into the wall outlet, and get the charge of your life!

cool to make, but cheaper to buy

DC will sell you one for $25. The Planet Krypton set of 5 was only $100 and had Hal, Kyle, Alan, Sinestro and Power Ring versions.

Re:cool to make, but cheaper to buy

Yeah, it may be cheaper, but if you don't want this ring enough to make it youself, why would you want it at all? It serves no purpose aside from establishing geek cred, which is then taken away by virtue of you having bought it. A computer is something with a legitimate purpose and necessity, yet around here it's blasphemy to admit that you bought a pre-made system rather than building your own. For little things like this, the fun is in making them yourself. You could buy a pre-constructed enterprise model to hang from your ceiling, but if you're going to do that, wouldn't you rather get the 1000 peice model with the LEDs and fiberoptic lights to build yourself?

Geek Cred?

What the hell? I thought the whole 'Street Cred' thing was total crap. Now there's Geek Cred?

If someone really feels this need to prove their self to some sort of community through 'cred', they need to get a life...

If someone is putting presure on them to do things for 'cred', that person needs to realize that those people are not their friends and are just using them...

Battery Casting

It would be cool if we could cast rings from a material that was entirely a battery, then enamel it with an insulator, and mount LEDs on the surface, connected thru the insulator to the battery. Maybe two halves, separated by an inside insulator, and bridged by the LED. Maybe with a small airgap in the insulator, so squeezing the ring closed the circuit.

And how about some chips in there, too? A socketed LED, swapped out for a recharger? Swapped out for a photoreceptor for recharging under bright lights (or Sun + magnifying glass)? Dual-use LED/photoreceptor? Frickin' lasers?

Maybe this is how the Green Lantern's alien outfitters came up with the tech: reading Slashdot. Something about that color scheme looks familiar...

Re:Battery Casting

You could always make it out of plutonium. It'd glow nicely then. Wear it for long enough and you might get superpowers.

Legion Flight Ring

I'm with the responder to the original article that wanted a http://www3.flickr.com/photos/saldana/234320198 [flickr.com]Leg ion Flight Ring instead. Yes, a Green Lantern ring is a superset of a Flight Ring functionalitywise, but I'd rather be a Legionnaire. DC sold one about 15 years ago but it was pretty crummy, alas.

How to dress up as a cheeto...erm... thing I mean.

This guy [tripod.com] wanted to dress up as the Thing (from the Fantastic Four); But the endresult [tripod.com] somehow reminds me of a Cheeto in spandex. Still great effort though. :)

May I be the first to say...

What the heck are you talking about? Make a what now?

ebay

ebay has them for under $10. Some even with an LED.

Of course they gouge you on the shipping.

Don't need batteries

when you can go to garage sales and buy up 1,000 old watches. Just scrape off the radioactive materials and cement them on your power ring.

I would never buy this...

After how badly I got ripped off on my "one ring". Geez, for 300 USD you expect for it to at least work. That was so embarrassing.

But that one ring worked!...

It sure made $39.95 disappear from your sight, didn't it?

Hmm.

If I was going through the trouble to do this, I'd definitely do it in something other than Al. Maybe brass, or even bronze, which should be as easy to melt as AL. Maybe not as authentic looking, but a lot classier.

Or if your must have it green, then make it copper and let it oxidize; prepare to have your finger turn green too.

Investment casting is boring. Try 3D printing

if you are not so good with a dremel too but possess even minimal 3D modeling skills why not check out 3D printing. For something as small as a ring it wouldn't be too much $$$ and you have the ultimate control over the shape... say it won't be a big deal to include a battery compartment and an LED mount

Alternate power source?

Given the lack of connections to the Oa battery, can't you possibly get its green energy from kryptonite? At least that stuff is found on THIS planet. An added bonus is that it can help you ensure that you are the only superhero guarding sector 2814.

Rings ???

What is this ? The fashion channel or a website where you can discuss technology, computers and have a pop at the actions of the US Administration. Honestly if I was even remotely interested in rings I'd visit a jewelers.

If you stop about halfway through the process...

...you've got yourself a nice miniature marijuana pipe on a ring [instructables.com]. Gives the name "Green Lantern" entirely new meaning.

This is great!

At last i can put that green Ferris jeweler's wax, A furnace , a centrifugal caster a bunch of spare silver to good use.. And to think, i was just about to throw it all out.

Oh great...

From the article:

First you need to carve a wax model of the ring. I use green Ferris jeweler's wax- it's available from jeweler tool supply shops

OK. Without using Google, how many people know of any jeweler tool supply shops? I must have missed this one....

No Silver Age science fiction fans out there?

When I first read "Now someone find me . . . Arisia to go with it", my first thought was that I'd really like to have a Lens of Arisia, as described in E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman novels. The Lensmen are almost certainly the predecessors of the Green Lanterns, if not in actuality, then in philosophy and form.

Forget the Green Lantern...

I want step-by-step instructions on how to make a glowing piece of the radical rock..... THE AGGRO CRAG.

Big Let Down yet once again

Slash dot has really slid into uselessness for the most part, and this kind of article is a great example of the crap I have been seeing of late here. Slashdot, clean up your moderation, your quality of articles.

Semi-dumb

Why in heck cast something out of silver that you are going to paint?

An Easier/Cheaper way

This project might be a lot more accessible to folks by using PMC (precious-metal clay). It's pure silver in a formable plastic base, much like modeling clay. A two-part mold could be created from Fimo, Premo, Sculpey, or some other modeling compound. The mold would be baked and dried and the PMC would then be formed within it. Once dried to a sort of rubbery hardness, the PMC can then be heated (called sintering) according to manufacturer's directions with a soldering or brazing torch. The clay base disappears There's some shrinkage involved in this process; again, manufacturer's directions should be followed. (The original mold should be made somewhat larger than the finished product, but there's a formula.)

A stray thought or two: Last week's market price for sterling silver was $12.50/Troy ounce. It can take as much as 20 OzT to create something the size of a man's ring. That's a lot of silver. If you just want to wear it to a Halloween party, you could get a reasonable effect simply by fooling around with some Premo.

Casting in silver by traditional methods would certainly yield a fabulous result, but your outlay in equipment and metals will be equally fabulous.

How do I know this stuff? Well, it's what I mostly do these days. These folks [riogrande.com] have everything you could possibly need for either method.

Cool Costume Ideas

From The Summary:
>>Anyone have other good costume ideas

I can think of 2 that I've wanted for a while:

1. A lightsaber that feels more or less 'real', looks real (meaning that it glows) and can be used for duelling. No really....I'd pay $200 for one out of my entertainment budget if I knew that I could rough around with it. The current generation of 'realistic' light sabers, I believe, aren't intended for sparring.

2. A Bat'leh (bad spelling...a Klingon Sword). IMHO, this is the most badass TV/Movie weapon to come around in a while. I couldn't picture anyone wanting to spar with an big alluminum or stainless steel version of this, but I imagine that one would get a pretty good workout from using it as a training or martial arts instrument. Imagine showing up at a Karate tournament and doing a Kata with a Bat'leh?

A costume...maybe hard rubber...version of one, while still kind of dangerous..would be great to top off a Klingon haloween get-up.

No battery available?

The bigger problem of course is that there's no battery available to charge it, so it's just costume jewelry.

But I thought that all tech men carried batteries?

Cheap jewelry ...

like this will turn your finger green.

I prefer this...

http://www.instructables.com/id/ENZV0W9TPLEPZY2UJT / [instructables.com]

Guy Gardner's ring

Guy had the best ring. Plus it was different from the regular GL rings as he got it during crisis. It'd be cool to have a yellow ring. One that worked too. though I'd settle for a Legion flight ring.

How to make a Green Lantern ring...

Just call him on his cellphone, duh!

Alternatively...

If you want a professional piece, ask Russ Sharek of the Morpheus Company [dare2dream.com], custom jeweller to the eclectic. He does completely unique piece-work and has had some fairly esoteric clients. He did this impressive fibre-optic based Green Lantern ring [dare2dream.com] for Harlan Ellison.

He also did my missus' engagement ring.

Battery to charge Power Ring

It is only necessary to visualize the battery charging the ring. Both the charging and the use of the ring happen on the astral plane. As with all modern magic, the activity accurs first on the astral plane then is mirrored here. As above so below.

Re:Green lantern ring?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't get it. Why would you want a lantern hanging from your ring? And a green one on top of that..

I think the lantern on the Alan Scott ring is a replica of the lantern that was used to charge his ring. It is green because that was the color of the metal used to form the ring, and Scott was guided to give the ring that form when he created it. The form of the ring's charger, in turn, was based on a old railroad lantern. Scott wears a logo on his chest of the same type of lantern.

The rings that Jordan and Stewart wear (and Rayner used to wear) are based on the Green Lantern icon worn on the uniform, and reflects the central power battery on Oa. The reason Rayner's ring looks different is that his ring was an improved version with no yellow weakness and no 24 hour time limit on its charge. He is the only Lantern that comes to mind that has a ring of that design, the other Lanterns wear a ring of the Jordan/Stewart design.

Rayner recently evolved as a Green Lantern, becoming The Ion. His ring and power has been internalized and he is much more powerful than the other Green Lanterns. He is the next step in the evolution of the Green Lantern Corps.

On the ring mentioned at the beginning of post, I like the design and think that it is how a green lantern ring would look in real life.

Re:Green lantern ring?

Actually Rayner's ring along with Stewart's were just the same old tried-and-true ring technology as the Corps had already had for 10 billion years, but the reason it had no yellow weakness is because the yellow impurity was actually the immortal yellow alien being named Parallax who corrupted Hal Jordan and took over his mind. Parallax was living fear itself in some sense and so the Green Lantern power was corrupted over that spectrum of visible light. So you see in the graphic novel, Green Lantern : Rebirth, that the yellow weakness 'has a name' and that name is Parallax. Jordan/Spectre managed to purge Parallax from Jordan and then Jordan (resurrected), Rayner, Gardner, Stewart and Kilowog with the help of the Guardians cast Parallax back into the Green Lantern battery 'prison cell'.

So the end result is all the power rings (excluding of course Alan Scott's magic-based ring) are once again susceptible to a yellow weakness, but it caused by fear generated by the Parallax Fear Anomoly. So any powerful Green Lantern can overcome the yellow weakness now, but it is considered a mark of a novice Lantern to still have their constructs blocked by yellow.

Phew!

Re:Green lantern ring?

For all I know, the backstory now in place might be incompatible with explicit statements from 30 yrs ago. The whole Crisis on Infinte Worlds / Zero Hour / Infinite Crisis mega-story arcs retconned (altered the history of the DC universe) each time.

The current spin is that Parallax was a super-villain destroying planet after planet with fear, feeding off it, and the Guardians imprisoned him in the Battery and stripped him of his sentience billions of years ago. Since then the Guardians hid the fact that they did this because they didn't want any crazies to try to release Parallax. But recently, they imprisoned the renegade GL turn villain Sinestro inside the Battery, and while in there with his yellow power ring, he awoke Parallax. Then Parallax and Sinestro worked to take over Hal Jordan, and briefly turned Hal Jordan (to the outrage of nearly everyone) into a super-villain who single-handedly killed almost every single active Green Lantern in the universe and then destroyed the Battery, releasing the Fear Anamoly in full-force. He (that is, Parallax, which is how Hal Jordan became known) then tried to recreate the universe in his own image and started the Zero Hour story arc where Parallax kicked hte Justice League's butts time and again. But then Jordan's good side won over at the last minute and he saved the Earth from destruction by restarting the sun which had been "put out" by a Sun Eater intergallactic weapon.

Only two years ago or so, did it emerge that Jordan was possessed by Parallax. To the outrage of everyone, when the story arc was being played out, no mention was made of possession and it appeared that it was Hal Jordan himself of his own free will murdering Green Lanterns left and right.

Would it be better if...

Would it be better if we had yet another fucking video game article? "OMFG T3H PS3 1S T3H 3>P3NS1V3!!11!1!eleventy!!1" Yeah, I'll take investment casting over that shit any day, thanks.

Re:Forget that...

Was it the Invisible Woman who first called him Mr. Fantastic?

Re:Wow...

(NOTE: I didn't actually know this until reading another Slashdot post on this thread)
Green Lantern is DC comics, n00b!