Ideas wanted for 'punking an electrical gauge.

[Tower]

So these just arrived in the mail today:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm building an electrical panel with a master cut off knife switch and other controls for the Towers electrical system and decided that it need a couple functional gauges.  These where the closest that I could find to a vintage style and although I could use them as is I think it would be better to punkify the dial card.

So far I have several ideas:

A: Scan the old gauge and then design a new dial that maintains the same scale for the marks but has a victorian font and maybe a decorative flourish or two. Print out the new gauge and glue to the old dial backing (currently an aluminum card)

B Same as above but print the design on thick card stock, forego the backing and wire a light inside the gauge box so the light can shine through the paper from the back

C Same as above but instead of a printed dial try my hand at brass or copper etching and forgo the light.

D:

For context the gauges are going to be mounted in a metal panel painted a weathered brownish bronze color. All the power for the whole building will run through this panel and gauges will show both voltage and amperage of the system. Don't expect the voltage to change much but as things are turned off and on in the house I expected the ammeter to jump around. The panel will me mounted in my living room wall on display.

[von Corax]

Rotate the gauges 45º when you mount them, so they are diamond-shaped rather than square. Reorient the text on the cards to compensate.

[SPBrewer]

I like "B" and von Corax's suggestion.

[Antipodean]

1/ Use roman numerals for the values.
2/ Make the hand of the gauge more grandfather clock like!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.google.co.nz/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=983&bih=577&q=Clock+hands&gbv=2&oq=Clock+hands&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=1953l5125l0l6468l11l11l0l0l0l0l671l2562l3-5.0.1l6l0

3/ Paint the black surround and finger adjustment to look like brass.
4/ Add some Victorian style filigree to the outer edges.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.google.co.nz/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=983&bih=577&q=Victrorian+filigree&gbv=2&oq=Victrorian+filigree&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=1750l10359l0l10812l13l13l0l1l1l0l391l3343l2-1.9l10l0#hl=en&safe=off&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=filigree&oq=filigree&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=14125l14125l1l15265l1l1l0l0l0l0l375l375l3-1l1l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=70d16c26cf170e77&biw=983&bih=577

[Professor J. Cogsworthy]

I like "B" and von Corax's suggestion.

Consider hand writing the cards

YES turn them 45 degrees

YES add the light

[robotmastern]

I don't think you have a ammeter rated high enough. You need at least 100A but I would go with what your main breaker pannel is fused for

[Tower]

Power to the house is limited to 25 amps so 0-30 seems right.

[robotmastern]

Power to the house is limited to 25 amps so 0-30 seems right.

25 that's it?
do you even have a microwave?
my house was built in the 1950s and has 2 100A main breakers and 2 30A breakers for the washer and gas dryer
and 2 independent 20A and another 4 15A ones for the rest of the house, its impossible that the whole house is limited to 25A
a house built now needs to have a main breaker for 250A, according to my electronics teacher there was a time when a 50A main breaker would have been OK but i have never heard of a 25A limit

[Tower]

25 that's it?

yep.

There were no power poles near my building site and I didn't want to spend my construction money on having new ones put in. I also live in fairly dense forest and a new power line would have needed a fifty foot wide and quarter mile long swath of forest to be cleared, something else I didn't want to deal with.

So my solution was to convince a neighbor to let me run a 300 ft extension cord from their powered chicken coup to my house. That line is on a 25 amp breaker so thats what I have to work with.

Someday I want to get solar but thats a ways off money wise and I actually like having a maximum limit. Instead of just buying electrical crap when I want to I actually have to find out exactly how much juice everything uses.

And its really not a problem once you think it through, for instance, I can run the toaster or the electric tea kettle but not both at the same time, and its better if the refrigerator isn't running when I run either (the lights dim if I do but it doesn't pop the breaker)

I can run one power tool at any given time without a problem.

All my lights are CFL's so with every light in the house turned on I'm only drawing about as much as two regular lightbulbs.

Stove is propane and works off a small portable tank that I drive into town to refill every other month. Water heater is an on demand one that I built myself in steampunk fashion that also runs off a portable propane tank.

I had a microwave, (which you can't use at the same time as the toaster) But I never figured out any use for it other than softening butter or re-heating a cup of coffee so I gave it to my neighbors.

This electrical box that I am building is actually going to be the interface where the the extension cord plugs into the house wiring right now it is literaly a cord screwed to the wall with bare copper wires sticking down into the plug sockets and since its been that way for four years now I think its time to do something better.

Its nice too when the power goes out, all I have to do is unplug one cord and plug in my little generator and the entire house lights up as if nothing happened, and even with no electricity at all I still can cook, heat my house, and take a hot shower. (Water is gravity fed from a tank on the top floor of the tower, filled once a week via garden hose from my neighbors well) And as long as my laptop is charged I have TV.

[oldskoolpunk]

Is this what you wanted?

This is just a quick Photoshop job, of course. If the gauge is square, this mounting is an option. The background here is slate, which, being both insulating and fireproof, was commonly used for electrical switchboards of the period. Slate floor tiles are easily available at low cost, although difficult to cut. A brass nameplate completes the design. "Elliot Bros, Ltd" is an actual 19th century electrical manufacturer from London. The font is Trinigan FG, from the H.P. Lovecraft Society, which took it from a book of 19th century font samples.

[Tower]

Wow...thats a nice mockup. I was actually leaning against tilting the gauge, I though maybe a diamond shape would look weird, but that is actually pretty cool.

And slate......very interesting.  One of my crew members on the ambulance owns a tile flooring company....very interesting.

[robotmastern]

I see your out in the boonies where the law doesn't apply as strictly.

[Tower]

I'm actually about 1/4 mile from where it would. I like to pretend its the boonies but its really only a few miles from town.

Not to mention, when is the last time someone walked into your house to check your electrical panel? Just because there is a law doesn't mean its enforced. Our courts would be clogged to oblivion if judges actually issued search warrants for everyones utilities.

[Uncle Arthur]

Tower? How is your site for wind? I have seen some darn nice home brew setups for that if you are clear enough or high  enough to catch a breeze.

[Tower]

Its not good for wind.  Sure, there are some great storms from time to time but I'm nestled in some foothills that shield me from any regular wind. 

[Uncle Arthur]

Bummer. I am located on top of  a ridge and get breeze nearly all the time. Looking seriously into some wind power for the shops mainly.

[von Corax]

You don't happen to have a stream nearby, do you?

PS to oldskool: That's just about exactly what I had in mind!

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

[Antipodean]

Sounds like quite a nice set-up you have there. Do you have Phone/Internet access there or do you travel to find access?

Monitoring both the mains voltage and the current draw is a good move. Just a bit of a heads-up my friend, you mentioned the lights dimming – that situation is called a brown-out. Brown-outs can cause lots of damage to electronic equipment, especially fridge motors! Things start to overheat and can cause fires in that situation as well – it would be a shame to lose the chicken house if the over-heating occured there, all for the brewing of a cup of coffee. Having something catch fire in a forest is not what I would want to have happen.

[oldskoolpunk]

If you want to monitor current, the way to do it is with a current transformer. These are widely available and cost about US$20. They're a simple toroidal transformer. One lead of the circuit to be measured goes through the center of the toroid, and the winding on the toroid produces a current strictly proportional to the current being measured, but far smaller. A typical ratio is 1000:1, so 100A produces 100mA on the sensing output. The current transformer goes in the electrical box, and the low-current, low voltage sensing output goes to wherever the meter is, typically on 20 to 22 gauge wire.

You can even get clip-around current transformers, which, like clamp-around ammeters, do not require cutting or disconnecting the wire to be measured.

[Tower]

Sounds like quite a nice set-up you have there. Do you have Phone/Internet access there or do you travel to find access?

Its actually the only conventional utility I have.  For a while I was using  a wi-fi repeater to get internet from the neighbors house but that was slow and unreliable so I finally got my own internet line in december. The phone company was willing to lay about 1/2 mile of cable for only $35 so it seemed like a good deal.

You don't happen to have a stream nearby, do you?

I do but its a regulated irrigation ditch that only runs in the summer.  I do have water usage rights on it but I don't think that would cover building a dam. When it does run I have a nice little hydraulic ram that pumps 1400 gallons per day on gravity power alone that waters my yard and garden.

If you want to monitor current, the way to do it is with a current transformer. These are widely available and cost about US$20.

Thats exactly how much the meter cost that I just received. It has a little coil of thick wire that makes about half a dozen turns around an iron armature attached to the needle.

Right now I'm working on the switching mechanism for the box. I'm going to have a large handle on the outside of the box thats electricaly insulated from a shaft on the inside. Swinging the handle will turn the shaft and actuate some kind of switch on the inside underneath a round glass porthole.

Right now I'm trying to get it so that the shaft turns a crank and raises or lowers three copper "control rods" that complete the circuit and send power to each floor of the tower in turn as they slid up or down.