Background
First, a bit of background to serve as an introduction to my tale. Starting from about age 5 onward, I was an avid electronics and radio experimenter and also a budding little junior scientist, and, by about age 9, I was regularly building ham radio tranamitters, receivers and antennas and weird physics devices (including underground communication transmitters and receivers, UFO detectors, electronic voice phenomena [aka EVP] receivers, light beam communication transmitters/receivers and petrovoltaic receivers to monitor strange voltage/current phenomena exhibited by wild rocks, etc.), from scratch in a a makeshift radio and phsyics lab in my bedroom. Of course, being on a limited budget at the time, I quickly learned to adapt metal baking tins and metal pie plates for use as chassis and enclosures for electronic devices, to use plastic kitchen storage containers as enclosures for transistor radios) and to purchase metal pizza pans and inexpensive consumer TV antennas to modify for use in creating my ham radio antennas, particularly for work on the UHF bands, which were only just starting to be explored by ham radio enthusiasts.
This practice of identifying, locating and appropriating inexpensive and readily-available consumer items and modifying them for use in my radio, electronics and physics experiments and tinkering endeavors continued throught my teens and my twenties. And, in my later twenties and in my thirties and onward, I often used much the same methods for my weird physics and strange science experiments with non-Hertzian wireless signals, exotic energies, earth resonance generators, Schumann resonance signal receivers, Lakhovsky healing machines and experimental free-energy devices.
Okay, Lets Get on With the Tale
And now, let's fast-forward to the present, for that is where our tale today matures and develops a robust essence as well as a unique and distinct flavor and bouquet:
I had, until recently, been an Ikea virgin. In other words, I had never visited an Ikea store. Then, just a few months ago, my adorable friend Jennie, who is a Persian genie, dragged me to and Ikea store, where we spent several hours exploring the aisles. Frankly, I was, by and large, often slightly bored as we meandered through the room displays, the bedding and linen section and the window treatment section, but that all changed when we reached the extremely large kitchware and servingware section, where I noticed that a very large percentage of their wares were made from stainless steel or copper, and all were extremely reasonably priced. Eyeing all the gleaming gizmos consisting of stainless steel mesh, screen, pipes, rings (stainless steel napkin rings; the possibilities are endless...) and other shapes, I instantly experienced flashbacks to my early teenage years, when I was scrounging around for found items to use in crafting VHF and UHF antennas, parabolic dishes and microwave waveguide, and I realized in a flash that these aisles were a mecca for any radio enthusiast or strange science nutjob (such as myself) trying to craft their own homemade gear.
Well, it got even better than that, because we eventually rounded a bend and encountered yet another aisle, this one containing Ikea's offerings of pans, mixing bowls and salad bowls, a great many of them crafted out of gleaming stainless steel, and a number of the bowls exhibited near-parabolic shapes, or, better, as in the case of the Blanda Blank stainless steel mixing bowls -- and as I already reported a few months ago on a number of my relevant list groups -- they exhibited a near-perfect hemispherical shape. I took one look at these Blanda Blank bowls, which are offered in various diameter ranging from 2 inches through 14 inches, and realized that they not only would offer a myriad of possibilities for crafting conventional antennas for "normal" radio waves in the UHF and microwave region, but that they could also easily be used in crafting a number of aetheric energy devices and that the larger bowls could easily serve as perfect hemispherical antennas for focusing and distorting exotic energy fields in an interdimensional portal or space portal chamber. I proceded to purchase a number of the Blanda Blank bowls, as well as a few other stainless steel goodies from the kitchenwares aisles, and left the store gleefully, hugging the bags containing the precious stainless steel treasures to my chest. Even better, Jennie treated me to a meal of Swedish meatballs and almond cake in the Ikea cafe before we left the temple, I mean mecca, I mean, store.
Since that time, I have incorporated various stainless steel gizmos, including the above-mentioned bowls, from Ikea in a number of my designs for esoteric devices, including my prototype Violet Moth interdimensional portal/space portal. And, I must confess here that, aside from my disclosure in brief post about the possibilities offered to homebrew experimenters by the myriad of stainless steel goodies in Ikea's kitchenwares section, sent a few months ago to some of my relevant list groups (such as Alien Starship Repair, Time Space Doorways, Exotic Energies, etc.), I innocently and naively assumed that I was the only person on earth who had noticed that Ikea kitchenware (by the way, their colorful thick nylon cutting boards exhibit excellent machining properties and excellent dielectric properties, well up into the UHF region) and housewares offered a fountain of possibilities for experimenters and tinkerers in the realms of radio, strange science and exotic energy research. In other words, I blandly and quite smugly and proudly assumed that I was the only person on earth who knew of the possibilities of Ikea kitchenware hacks for radio and strange science tinkering, except perhaps for the folks belonging to my list groups who had seen my earlier post about the usefulness of the Blanda Blank bowls in crafting field focusing antennas for interdimensional portals.
The Realization
Well, I realize now that I was wrong, very wrong. Horribly wrong. My fagile ego was quite crushed when I made this horrifying discovery. The way I came to this terrible realization was this: I had occasion a few days ago to do a Google search on Ikea stainles steel kitchenware while looking for a particular item, and, while perusing the search results, I noticed a few rather anomalous results that seemed to be links to pages where folks were talking about using Ikea stainless steel kitchenware and servingware for what they called "Ikea hacks" in crafting homebrew VHF and UHF antennas for use with ham radio transponders, cellular phone range extenders and wifi range extenders and in crafting homebrew digital TV antennas and homebrew nuclear fusion reactors.
Here are just a handful of the over two hundred Ikea hacks, well, more accurately, Ikea kitchenware or servingware hacks, for crafting homebrew radio antennas, digital TV antennas and odd devices that I found in a very brief Google search; there are, in actuality, many more:
A backyard tinkerer added over 20 dB of gain to a UHF cellular radio range extender antenna using an Ikea Blanda Blank bowl:
http://www.xyhd.tv/2008/03/how-to/do-it-yourself-ikea-enhanced-35db-cellular-yagi-antenna/
A homebrewer used Ikea components in crafting a homemade antenna for a WiFi booster:
http://www.pyroelectro.com/2009/02/04/ikea-wifi-booster/
Another WiFi booster antenna project:
http://www.fakeproject.com/Ikea_WiFi_Booster/ (note: despite the website name, the webpage is not about a fake project, and rather, "Fakeproject" is the name of the band/art project crafted by the site's author.
This one used a metal Ikea picture frame....
http://sidstation.lionelloudet.homedns.org/antenna-en.xhtml
Oh, and there are also rumors in the wild and wooly world of homebrew Farnsworth-Hirsch tabeletop fusion reactors that at least a few experimenters in this field have pressed various copper and/or solid stainless steel kitchenwares from Ikea into service as containment housings, vacuum chambers, viewing ports, and electrodes.
I have also, in recent days, seen several posters on forums devoted to Joe Cells -- those near-mythical so-called "free energy" devices that are claimed by their devotees to accumulate aetheric energy, aka orgone energy and yield vast reductions in gas mileage along with improvements in engine power when installed on automobile engines -- who have spoken of using stainless steel pans, pizza screens, plates and bowls and cups in crafting their Joe Cells.
And, I heard the other day from an eccentric elderly self-styled alchemist who claims that he is using Ikea stainless steel bowls, pans and rings (those stainless steel napkin rings again!) in homebrewing the fabled near-magical substance called "red mercury" in his alchemy lab from used spark plugs and fresh egg yolks (from organic eggs from free-range hens, of course) and that he is then selling the red mercury on Ebay for $400,000 per gram to people around the world who want to use it for everything from crafting nuclear explosive devices to treasure-hunting to fortune-telling.
Finally, as I have already largely confessed, I have, over the past six months, started to employ various stainless steel Ikea kitchenware and servingware gizmos in my designs for field-focusing antennas to be used in my prototype interdimensional portals and space portals, and I use inexpensive Ikea nylon cutting boards as a handy source of hiqh-quality dielectric material for machining custom parts. And, just the other day, I was designing some modifications (some would call them "hacks") to improve the performance of an already insanely-excellent outdoor UHF/high-band VHF antenna (the Clearstream 4 from Antennas Direct) that I had purchased and installed for use in receiving digital TV signals in a my rather beyond-fringe-reception location in the mountains, and... well, you guessed it, I ended up using a bunch of epoxy powder-coated steel wire racks/grids sold by Ikea in my design. And, now I am eyeing their stainless steel screens for use in my next proj... ohhh... never mind
with care,
--Vinny
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