The Personal Reactor...

[Timothy Jay Nelson]

This is the piece that started it all! The origins of Reaction Designs and my love of Steampunk metalwork. This is an entirely hand fabricated personal nuclear reactor! This piece was designed as the endgame for all steampunk technology. As you may know nuclear power is made by creating enormous amounts of heat through fusion or fission which then generates steam and the steam powers turbines to create energy. My thought was: "if only that could be harnessed to power a human being! Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Simply strap on Professor Nelson's personal reactor and buzz the day away with the natural zip of portable fission!" I like to point out that I conceived and fabricated this several years before Iron man became the huge phenomenon that is it today.

For every artist Steampunk or not there is a crystallizing moment; when you realize the work that you love to make and how that work stems from that which fascinated you as a child. Whenever I talk to artists in any field I love to hear what those moments were for them. That is the most fascinating part about art for me. How and when the medium or the form turned into and intimate connection with the soul of the creator. During construction I literally feel in love with this piece. I found myself wanting to keep working on it even as my eyes fell shut at the bench from the long hours I was keeping at the University and the nearly full time job I was holding to help me pay for it. I began to wish that it really did work to power me so I could stay in the studio until it was done.

This piece was conceived to quell the frustration I had from growing up as a child of Science Fiction where Nuclear energy not only powers laboratories for super scientists and mad geniuses alike, but radiation gives ordinary people amazing super powers! The reality of Nuclear power is obviously less desirable, with the various disasters that have happened trying to control it and the horrible side effects and death that occurs from actual exposure to radiation. So this piece stemmed from a desire to see more of my fantasy mix with reality. Perhaps someday we will be able to get superpowers but until then, I will continue to make devices that blur the lines of reality!

2 inches in diameter. Composed of Sterling Silver, Brass, and Titanium.

[John Harris]

This is excellent! What is inside the vial?

[Timothy Jay Nelson]

Nothing is inside the vial actually, It is just a glass tube that I frosted to better diffuse the light, Then I  installed an LED inside the silver coupler to give it the distinctive green glow

 

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[marcus marguillier]

That's great. Love the fantasy.

It has the potential for a movie (or at least a wonderful dream)...