The Quest for the Perfect Glow
I’ve always been captivated by the ethereal glow of tritium watch dials. For years, I wore a Marathon watch—back when they had the classic non-metal bezel design on the watch crystal. The newer versions lost that aesthetic appeal, and I eventually switched to an Apple Watch. But I never stopped missing that distinctive tritium glow, that constant low-level luminescence that needs no charging, no UV exposure.
Since then, I’ve been searching for keychain fobs or zipper pulls with tritium vials that I could attach to my backpack. Something that brings back that same ambient glowing color.
The problem? Most tritium keychains on the market are, frankly, ugly. They’re over-designed, weirdly proportioned, and fail to showcase the simple glowing vial itself. I wanted something minimal, something that lets the tritium be the star.
The LED Alternative
The video sparked an idea: maybe I don’t need to carry around a radioactive vial at all. What if I could recreate that aesthetic glow using an LED Edison element, a glass fuse tube, and a simple key ring? Same minimalist look, same warm glow, minus the radioactivity.
The video creator has an entire collection of projects in this wire aesthetic style, and it sent me down a delightful rabbit hole.
Discovering Circuit Sculpture
I first encountered this distinctive wire sculptural approach through Mohit Bhoite’s work. His freeform circuits are miniature works of engineering art—functional electronics suspended in brass wire frameworks that look like tiny architectural models or spacecraft.
A Whole Community
It turns out there’s an entire set of people building around this aesthetic. Hackaday has a dedicated category for circuit sculpture, featuring dozens of makers who’ve made the electronics themselves part of the assembly.
Anyways, if anybody sells a cool portable tritium vial, let me know. I’m prob not going to actually get around to building the LED fuse keychain.
Another led project, that almost looks like Edison elements, but looks to be flexible, noodly, LEDs: