When my wife got her iPhone, she didn't know what to do with her old iPod Nano. My son had gotten a portable radio with a memory card for his birthday, so we thought it would be fair if we gave it to my daughter with some speakers for Christmas. Sounded like a simple plan…
Is it a good idea to give a four-year-old something as small and fragile as an iPod?
We didn't think so. I came up with the simple idea of mounting it to a piece of plastic, like one of those white cutting boards. It was for a kid's room and that would be easy to work with, tough, and would fit with the toys and such.
I went to a supplier of plastic in Berlin. My brother-in-law said I could buy small pieces and they would cut it to size. Turned out they did metal and their place in Dresden did the plastic. If I was ordering over 100€, it could be cut down there and would come up on their regular truck. I was thinking 5€. The women at the counter mentioned they had scrap boxes for the metal and I could rummage through those if I wanted.
There was a box for brass. My mind started going. Brass… brass and dark wood… very Victorian… not bad, but how do I pitch it to a kid? Steampunk!! I've never read any of it outside of Jules Verne and I've never seen a show or movie about it outside of "Wild, Wild West". However, it was in and cool and the girl would like the idea of something SF.
This is what I ended up with:
iPod stereo set(Clicking on the picture wil take you to the set with some build pictures.)
My OCD strikes again, and I'm not finished with it. It has been up for two years, but the faceplate annoys me. It needs frames around the two holes. I think that will be done for this Christmas.
