Building a better battery

Well, lets start at the beginning, shall we?  XPS foam, what is it?  It's the stuff you can find at home improvement and building supply stores.  Extruded polystyrene foam (XPS) comes in a handful of colors, the stuff used here, by me, was pink.  This is NOT the insulation board made from many small pellets or balls.  You could use that type, but you'll have a lot more work to do to smooth it out.  A word of caution, wear a dust mask when working with this and be very careful with paint, glue, or solvents around this stuff, they dissolve it like crazy.

OK, that said, I chose it for it's easy of use, it shapes great, and it's relatively cheap.  I used 5 minute epoxy to glue it together when needed, did most of the cutting on a bandsaw, and used a very poorly built homemade lathe to shape the body.  I used a belt/disc sander to smooth and sand the foam along with hand sanding for quite a bit of the curved surfaces.  

The handle was made from a 90 degree radius piece of PVC electrical conduit, the bend in it were PVC fittings from the plumbing department, and cast resin for the attachment points that connect it to the body.  This was glued with a general purpose PVC cement.  It was basically built using all the same tools

After the foam was shaped, glued together, and sanded smooth a few things were applied to seal, strengthen, and smooth the surface further.  The first layer was wood glue just brushed it right onto the foam.  Following that was "glowder" my name for a wood glue and baby powder paste I mixed up.  You have to spread it thin, and you can smooth it with wood glue and a soft brush.  After that I used bondo spot putty, which makes a BIG mess when you're sanding it down.  You will probably look like you just came from mars when you're done with that.  Of course, if you're only making one item you can avoid that "shell" technique, they do make hard coatings that you can apply to XPS foam safely to for a strong shell, or you could apply an epoxy and fiberglass shell directly to the foam.

There's not really too much to say past that, but I'll answer any questions anyone has if I haven't given enough information here.

Proceed to the construction gallery