Helping Hands

Tinkering with soldering irons, components and wires there is never enough space on my desk to complete some of my projects or I have to put it aside for another day....so....I decided to make an all in one workstation that would keep my project together and be light enough to place elsewhere until I could come back to it hence the 'Mega-Helpful Steampunk Helping Hands'!  This is still a work in progress so here are some preliminary photos:

Frame for holding the PCB, magnifying light for those pesky tiny IC's

The box is an old cutlery canteen well sanded.  The magnifying lamp was my old table lamp minus the base.  The frame and uprights are brass and copper.

At different stages from pale to stained to varnished.  (I used Danish Oil)

I changed the 'look' by using a hand held magnifying glass and and old sewing machine lamp.

A bit of TLC and the lamp looked great!  This was bought from The Bower

The next steps involve mechanising the opening of the jaws for the PCB, adding a soldering station and a power rail for testing completed projects