Beautiful project and tutorial from instructables user indianajoe771.

For those of you who restore vintage electronics, like radios or tvs, you know the importance of powering up an untested device slowly (for those of you who are new to the hobby see this article from antiqueradio.org). You also know the high cost associated with buying a decent variac. For me, this conflict lead me to building my own dim bulb tester (DBT, also known as a poor man’s variac) as a substitute. However, I didn’t want to build a utilitarian collection of home depot parts and wires like most other DBTs. I wanted something that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to sit next to the beautiful vintage radios I was working on. Thus I created this vintage, antique looking DBT.

However, just as my lack of money forced me to build a DBT instead of buying a proper variac, I was forced to use scraps and repurpose parts wherever I could. Here’s how I did it for less than $30, in case you’d like to build one too.

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