Half tubes that fit in a suitcase - The complete DYI tutorial
So we went to Vietnam: four flights, 40 hours door to door. With all of the problems currently going on with flights (delays, lost luggage, pets prohibition), we tried to see if we could split the tubes in two. Here’s how we managed to do this:
There are two main problems attempting at combining two small tubes into a long one:
It’s not going to be as solid
You’ll have a line in the middle of your light painting trace (the joint)
Solidity
Based on the idea we proposed back in October 2019 while working in very extreme wind, we made extenders (same size as the half tubes). One goes in the center to snap the two half tubes, and the two other on top just to make sure everything stays firmly in place. The extenders are gutted T8 tubes, as seen on the light-painting store. To make your own, simply slice a blank T8 tube from one end to the other.
Two half-tubes (sugar with melted-lines texture) and three extenders
One of the extenders (gutted tube) used to connect the two half tubes
The joint (that annoying line)
A long time ago, during a music jam, my friend Rod Glaubman (RIP) explained to me this fabulous trick: when you hit a false note, keep going back on it. It’s going to feel like it belongs there. This is what I went with with the joint. As there was no way to get rid of it, I decided to add more of it! Ah! Going back to the texture tutorial, we were already into something. However, this trick didn’t work with Milky tubes (only with holographic / reflective tubes). So we some time to find a solution for this. We tried with hot glue and beads. Both worked, but the beads are less messy ;)
The beads are just some self adhesive plastic pieces used for arts-and-crafts projects (isn’t always about this? 😆). We simply stuck some of them randomly on the protective slices (or cake collar roll) before assembling the tubes (see the holographic tubes tutorial at 1:28 for protective slices or cake collar roll)
Beads in Milky tubes, melted plastic in Reflective tubes.
Two milky-white half tubes combined (with beads for the texture and to hide the joint). The lines are subtle, right? :)
Two xPink half tubes combined (with beads for the texture and to hide the joint)
A close up of the whole deal! Notice how the tube junction looks pretty much the same as the beads.
Final notes
This was way more solid than what I expected! We shot for 4 nights in a row with no issues at all. But the conditions were great with only mild wind. I would never use this in strong wind
The half tubes and the extenders are all 20.5” long, meaning they fit easily even in small suitcases. If you have a bigger case, you can split with a different ratio to have a long and a small segment. This would make the whole thing even more solid (make the extender as long as your long segment)
Am I going to do this again? Absolutely. For any short trip where I don’t want to carry an extra long bag with my tubes. But this is never going to replace my solid long (41”) tubes.
We did try with two extenders except of three. It worked well and it is suitable in mild wind
The color of the holographic tubes might be a bit duller due to the addition of the extender (to be confirmed!)
Let me know if you end up trying this! I’d be super happy to see where you’re going to bring this 💖