I have always maintained that farmers are the most innovative people on the planet, so maybe I have some farmer in me too. I often seem to be coming up with ideas or at least bringing a couple of different ideas together such as this one. I have no idea if someone else has ever done this, I'm sure they have, it's not that far fetched, but it does work great ... AND for someone it could even be a bit of a cottage industry. I could easily see someone making these little boxes and selling them at produce markets, swap meets and flea markets. They are cool little project and they could even save someone's life.
I don't actually have plans for this except what I have told everyone in the video. This was another fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants project. I only knew a one thing, the numbers need to be bold and about 5 inches or 12 cm high so with that ....
... all I needed to do was go to the computer and print out a couple of sheets with the numbers on them and that would tell me the height and length of the box which turned out to be 6" or 15cm tall by 12' or 30cm long. Depth of the box was not too important but I did experiment with that and found that about 4" or 10cm seemed to work good.
The lights I choose were simple ones, bought them at the dollar store for around $2.00 each.
The rest of the build is pretty easy, and it's something you could do in a day, a great one day project.
The one thing to keep in mind, and that is that because the numbers are back lit, you don't want the light to be too intensive otherwise they you can't see the numbers, which of course is the whole purpose. The only other thing to keep in mind is if there are other street lights close by or if your house is very dark, or some distance from the road, that can also affect how much light you need to have inside the box. If you do have street lights close by you may need to increase the light with stronger solar lights. You will need to judge these things on your own.
Otherwise, this was a fun, easy build ...
Copyright - Colin Knecht
woodworkweb.com