Here’s a perfect thing to carry for Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day or any time you want to add a bit of steampunky veracity to a time-traveler costume.

A couple of years ago absinthetic–whose splendid Wonderland Expedition Kit I’ve mentioned previously–dressed as a 19th-Century time traveler for Halloween and built the “Chronotheric Fluxing Capacitron” to use as a prop. He’s got a photoset up on Flickr, and while it doesn’t give any detailed instructions there are enough different angles that it should be possible to put together something similar. He listed the materials in a post on the Brass Goggles forum:

The clock case was just that; a cheap plastic clock I got at a yard sale for $1. I removed all the guts (except for the handsome clock face).

The backing of the “backboard” is just some leather/vinyl material I had leftover after making some curtains for my bedroom.

The “time dial” is a gold (well, fake gold) napkin holder, with the glass face of a broken pocket watch and a “time circle” graph that I created in Adobe Illustrator.

The thingy in the center is just a doorknob, another yard sale find.

The “lightning” is an EL cable I acquired at an electronics store. Originally I wanted to use a chasing LED circuit, but I couldn’t find any chasing circuits in time that would fit what I needed, so the EL cable (usually used for bicycles or other things you would want to illuminate at night) was used as a substitute.

The “glass tubes” came from a $1 plastic ‘parade baton’ that you’d get for a little kid…I emptied out all the glittery stuff from the inside and cut the tubes to size. The metal caps are just some capping devices from the electrical section at Home Depot.

Otherwise, everything else was just glued down with Gorilla Glue. The EL cable cost about $20, but the rest of it cost me less than $10 for everything (yay yard sales!)

This is a great use of repurposed objects and the results are splendid. It would be a fun project to build up over time as you found appropriate bits at thrift stores and yard sales.