After ordering a tile saw and diamond blade ($80…twice the cost of my sphere! Guess I’ll have to re-tile the kitchen now…) I was able to cut the bottom off of the glass sphere that is going to serve as my Mysterio costume helmet. Once I got away from the hole at the bottom, it was quite thin (1/8″ thick) and relatively easy to cut with the diamond blade. As you can see in the picture above, the edge was a bit rough. While cleaning up the cut I did place two cracks in the sphere, which I have hopefully fixed with glass glue. (Update: the fix didn’t work.)
While working on the sphere, I have decided that walking around with a large sphere of glass around my neck (already cracked in places) may not be the safest activity. This means that I may have to build an inner plastic shield or gorget to protect my head & neck if the sphere should transform itself into sharp pieces of glass. Nothing like a costume that can kill you!
I also tried out the globe on my head, to test the visibility. Different parts of the sphere have different amounts of mirror coating on them, and in portions I was able to see out relatively well. (Well, it was relatively bad, but good enough for a costume.) Other parts of the sphere were mirrored enough so that I could only see a reflection of my face. Hopefully I will be able to position the sphere to take advantage of the high visibility areas. I may also be able to scrape or buff portions of the mirrored finish off to make a visible region line up with where I need it. [From the outside of the sphere, I couldn't tell a difference in the coating, so it may not affect the visual appearance.]
The other option is a camera wired to a heads up display, but at that point I may as well go with a “headless horseman” style costume with my head below the sphere.
My next step is to purchase a set of football shoulder pads or other similar body mounting system, and figure out a good way to allow me to attach/remove the sphere and any protective system. I’m planning on reinforcing the bottom of the sphere using epoxy putty, and I will possibly add bolts or magnets to it to allow mounting.
Here is a picture of the piece I cut out of the sphere, as well as a close up of the edge after I smoothed it out with the diamond tile saw.
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[...] the glass sphere. Unfortunately, I got excited when it arrived, and put it inside the hole in my (previously cracked) sphere before I used epoxy putty to reinforce the rim. Digression: An egg is quite strong to [...]
[...] I was able to cut this (third) sphere almost completely successfully. The only issue was when I was making the last cut to complete the circle. When the blade got very close to completing the circle, the small amount of glass shattered (breaking off the circle of glass) and started a 3″ crack, which looked very much like the first crack on my first sphere. [...]
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