100 lanterns to make

For my daughter's wedding I am making 100 lanterns. The parts which have been laser cut from sheet balsa wood arrived yesterday. The two assembled laterns are the prototypes to prove the design before the 100 sets were cut. The larger lanterns will have 3 watt 12 volt lamps and be hung around the trees at the venue. Some of the small lanterns will be "hand held" on wands with an LED lamp and battery in the handle. Others will be 2 watt 12 volt.

The "glass" is thin slightly diffusing plastic and 400 pieces have to be cut by hand.

8 larger 10 watt lanterns for the BarBQ area will be hand cut from ply wood.

The other part of the project is 372 lamps ( 3 watt 12 volt ) hung from 12 catenaries in the wedding room.

The only good bit is that the wedding in is May but for my daughter's peice of mind they have to be ready by Christmas. ( and maybe a test run for some of the lanterns at the village Christmas Fair )

It is a weekend event with on site accomodation and a camping field, most guests will arrive on Friday and leave on Sunday.... Bar B Q friday evening and if weather is good an open air buffet Saturday evening in the orchard.

Good luck, the wife and I ended up making 600 bunting flags last year for my Daughters wedding!

The battery saving circuit for the hand held lanterns has been tested and it will give over 4 days flickering candle effect from a PP3 battery. Uses a PIC processor to create pulse width modulation with a pseudo random number generator controlling the PWM value. The lamp is a MES 12 volt LED warm white but still needs a bit of amber filter to add a tinge of yellow to the "flame". PCB is 0.85" by 1.025" so fits in the handle with the battery. Just need to get them made and then assembled.

The same PWM circuit but with a bridge rectifier and a fuse added will be used to flicker effect the 12 volt 200 mA incandescent lamps in the lanterns that will be hung around the trees in the orchard. These will be fed either from mains via wound transformer if cable route possible or a car battery

Using different maximum and minimum values for the pseudo random number generator allows the same hardware to support the different needs of the LEDs and incandescents. Processor is the 8 pin MicroChip 10F200

Corner piece fitted to a side panel. The 3mm offset is to allow the base plate to be fitted


almost 160 side panels with corners fitted


this jig to set the 3mm was worth the effort to make it



the white bit is the knife guide to cut the corner pieces accurately


And this is the first of this batch of 40.

The battery box for the hand held lanterns.


This PCB controls the LED lamp to create a flickering flame effect.


This lantern is one of the originals made about 25 years ago.

Then the lamp was an incandescent and the battery pack was in the person's pocket. The idea was to keep track of our daughters at out door events like the village bonfire night.
The battery boxes will be the handle at the end of the wand.

The first iteration of the flicker effect software in the lamp driver.

A small oversight was how to cut the pyramid tops for the lanterns. Too much attention the electronics and not enough on the final assembly. ( Hence the thread looking for mini mitre saws that wouldn't cost the earth ).



After some experimenting I have decided to use my large mitre saw to cut the balsa pyramids to a few milli-metre over size and then sand down to the right size. Hopefully the ragged cut edges will not be more than a milli-metre or two and dis-appear during the sanding.

The majority have been completed and are now at my daughters in plenty of time for the wedding in the summer.

The next idea is to use some of the spare kits to make lanterns for the table centre decorations

The next task is lamping the 15 large lanterns to be used around the venue grounds

Hand held lanterns on the dance floor.




The prototype table decoration, A battery fitted into the base powered the LED and there were flowers in the watering can. The signs were the table names on the day




Now I can get back to working on the cottage, after a good tidy up. It really was a dining room table project.