Materials Needed:
Barbeque grill lighter
RCA cable (or any 2-wire composite cable), about 16" length
35mm Plastic film canister with lid
Small block of scrap wood, approx. 1.5" cube
Adhesive Velcro tape
Approximate Building Materials Cost:
Lighter $0.99 (found ours at a 99 cent store)
Cable - $0.25
Canister - $0.50 (Arbor Scientific if you need to buy them)
Wood - n/a, scrap
Velcro - n/a, scrap
Total $2.04
Tools Needed:
Small screwdriver set (eyeglass set)
Hot glue
Electrical tape
Wire cutter
Wire stripper
Needle-nose pliers
Soldering gun and solder
Awl
Assembly Instructions:
1. Take apart the case of the lighter, separating the two halves.
2. Disconnect and remove the butane tank from the lighter.
3. This step is optional! Remove the trigger mechanism and disable the safety. On our lighter, the safety is housed in the trigger mechanism and is spring actuated. Removing the internal spring disabled the safety. Depending on the mechanism of the lighter you use, this might be more or less complicated. It's not necessary to remove the safety, as the lighter no longer contains flammable gas under pressure. Removing the safety just makes operation of the lighter easier. Once the safety is removed, put the trigger unit back into the lighter body.
4. Reassemble the lighter (without the butane tank). Make sure the trigger still causes a spark at the nozzle tip.
5. Using the wire cutter, make 6 or 7 cuts around the tip of the nozzle and then peel the strips back (like peeling a banana) towards the base, exposing the central lead. Cut off all but one of the strips. Our central lead had a spring wrapped around it, which we also removed.
6. Strip both ends of both wires to about 1/4". Solder one of the wires to the central lead of the lighter nozzle and the other to the remaining strip attached to the nozzle.
7. Using the electrical tape, securely tape the cable to the nozzle so that the cable runs back towards the lighter body. Tape it only about 1" down from the nozzle tip. Loop the cable back on itself and again tape it securely against the nozzle. The cable should now point away from the lighter, parallel to the nozzle, as shown.
8. Fill the tip of the nozzle with hot glue as shown. The hot glue not only seals the nozzle and the solder connections, but acts as an insulator as well.
9. If you are using stranded wire, be sure to tin the sparking ends with solder to keep them from unraveling.
10. Using the awl, puncture the side of the of the film canister near the bottom. Make the hole a little smaller than the diameter of the cable/wires to insure a tight fit.
11. Position the wire ends about 1/16 to 1/8" apart and check to make sure that the trigger causes a spark across the wire ends. Push the cable through the hole into the film canister so that the wire ends are in the center of the canister.
12. Wrap a small piece of Velcro around the cable a little more than half way towards the canister end. Affix the matching piece of Velcro to the wood block and attach the cable to the block. The block acts as a support mechanism to keep the canister stable in the desired position.
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