I Made This One Week Friends Light

I've just completed my latest crafting project: an acrylic edge LED light inspired by the anime series One Week Friends.

One Week Friends is an endearing 12-episode romance. It's about Yūki Hase, an anxious high school student who befriends a lonely girl named Kaori Fujimiya. With a compelling story, charming characters, and great music, it's easily one of my favorite animes.

Yūki in particular is a well-told character. He's truly realistic in that although he's heroic, he's also a teenager. Yūki is immature with tendencies toward jealousy and insecurity, so he's remarkably human. I decided to make him the subject of my latest project.

The lamp consists of a sheet of acrylic measuring 12 x 8 x 1/8 inches thick. It rests inside a slot in a wooden box made of 3/4 inch thick plywood. The bottom is a shelf of 1/4 birch plywood that rests in grooves that I cut into the front and sides using a router. Aside from the bottom, the components are held together with corner braces that I had left over from another project. I stained the wood with a pecan-colored combination stain and polyurethane.

The light turns off and on with a toggle switch mounted on the bottom. The shank of the switch is only 1/4 inch long, which is why I made the bottom shelf only 1/4 inch thick.

The back of the light is open to permit easy access to the electronic components.

An LED acrylic light functions by engraving an image on the sheet of acrylic. I used an engraving tool to draw the image of Yūki. When a strip of LEDs is held along the edge of the sheet, the engraved image lights up. These two tutorials were particularly helpful is showing me how to build the light.

I glued the LED strip to the acrylic sheet, which rests on inverted corner braces.

The LED strip connects to a 9-volt battery, which is mounted in a holding bracket, and to the toggle switch.

It's been a fun project and I learned a lot from it. And now that it's done, it's time to start another! I'm not sure what that will be, but I need to figure that out over the next week. I have little room aside from a single section of wall space, so it's likely that I will build another lamp. Whatever my project is, it must be a complex electrical task--more complex than my Ninja High School lamp. Perhaps it will involve a 2-pole switch or a small electric motor. It must not have a motion sensor, per my wife's orders.

I am a fanboy, so I will probably incorporate some aspect of my pop culture interests in it. Right now, I'm gravitating toward Macross II: Lovers Again, one of my favorite animes.