^^ yeah but you'd see the string, you'd need a good diffuser behind the gauges. they're clear.

 

dtn is right, the blue doesn't let a lot of light in. i tested it with a high intensity lamp and it does give a hell of a shade. hmm...

i might just use a light blue color and see how that works on stock. then compare that to indiglow. what's the point of indiglow when it would work just as good stock?

i guess what i was looking for is a nice bright dark blue color, but i've found out that's impossible without LED's.

 

the theater gel should diffuse it plenty. enough at least so you wouldnt see a definable string through the clear gauge piece, theater gel, and then gauge face.

and on the off chance you do, just scrape up the side of the clear piece opposite to that which you attached the el string, which would be the front.

 

^^ no, gel does NOT diffuse at all. it's basically a tinted lens. It will not distort one bit. Here is an example of what i'm talking about... imagine the clock numbers as the EL ropes One layer of scraping will not do it. it will look like a blurry image of the same thing... you need to do multiple layers in order to fully eliminatenly the clearness

Think of a gel filter like a clock lens. Basically you're just tinting and in no way distorting. You have to add distortion. If you scraped the back side of your clock lens up with steel wool, it's just going to look slightly diffused and you're only going to see the shiny side. You have to do multiple layers to get the desired effect.




My clock is an example of a filter and is trying to tell you something.



HKC: get light blue gel filter. It is the same as dark blue, but less tinted.


Also, the further away you put each layer, the more diffusion you'll get, so if you can manage to put the EL behind the plastic with a layer of light blue on top of it, and then a layer of light blue behind the gauges both scrubbed, it would be good.

 

perhaps you're right on the gel, but im thinking of the whole thing together. the clear parts of the gauge faces themselves are not perfectly clear, and will diffuse it. also, attaching the string to the back of the clear pieces will make it far enough away that it diffuses plenty, and if it really needs to be done, giving the clear gauge parts a scuffing up with some sandpaper will be more than enough.

and re-read my posts to see i've been saying get the el lighting behind the clear pieces the whole time. wink1.gif

i was just thinking...

i would ditch the blue gel altogether and give the back of the faces a couple shots of nightshades spray tint. it will make the transparent parts of the faces have a smoke look to them, yet still allow blue to shine through.

like inverse blue-lighted stock gauges. mmmm that would be badass.

 

^^ his gauges stock used to be tinted, but he removed that. it's just clear plastic. If this were OUR gauges I'd go ahead and do this to normally with no difusion and no filter. His F2 gauges present the problem because they have clear numbers and tickmarks. With our gauges, we could put a light source right behind it and it will diffuse properly. This one wont.



The nightshade might work. I'd get some clear plastic, like a document protector or a plastic bag to nightshade before i did the gauges or anything important. If you mess up, you can easily replace a document protector. That nightshade will make your numbers appear very dark durring the day. Could be interesting.



Then again, since we're on the topic, you can get a can of shriners cobalt blue pearl coat from walmart and spray the same document protector to just get blue. Pearl is pretty translucent when sprayed just once and will let alot of light through. It's a candy paint.

 

oops off the nightshades if you mess up.

what im saying is that yeah, with his faces they dont have a coat of translucent white over them like our stockers, but no way in hell are they perfectly clear. you cant see through each marking like a piece of glass. they are able to diffuse light, and should do plenty especially with the clear gauge pieces inbetween them and the light source.

 

I dunno, i don't think it will work.

 

dtn i like your digital boob. cool.gif

wow this is all inspiring, i think the paint might work better and i definitely will try to pick up some and try it on some transparencies and see if it works better.

you can see the back of my gauge there, good searching dtn. i had to wipe off all that paint and get it to be clear, pretty much like stock. i'm all up for doing this right and looking good.

they only have niteshades in black though...

 

^^ i had it in my photobucket from when you were asking about these the first time. I was asking if they were difused there or if that was reflection.

If you have an extra $7 buy a can of shriner's blue kandy paint at walmart. it's transparrent. I think it will work. worth a try at least.