Steampunk vs. the Celtic fringe
The copper pipe was tricky. The laser-printed-inkjet-paper technique still works tolerably well as a mask, but the pipe started out more abraded than I'd like (lot of work getting the adhesives from the hardware store stickers off; next time, I'm getting Goo-Gone). I also had to hold the iron on it for quite a while before the whole assembly heated up enough for the toner to stick, at which point I could just roll it back and forth under the iron, with the paper wrapping around the pipe. It also seemed like the toner didn't stick as well to the copper as it did to the brass. That's OK for cleanup, but I think it hurts the image quality.
The USB thing is an experiment with using the Dremel. I cut a slice off of a one-inch dowel, found my longest bit, and used the workstation as an itty bitty drill press. The routed hole in the top exposes the thumb drive's LED. The rest is pretty conventional: sand, stain, and polyurethane the wood, paint a gear faux-aged-brass (a bit of gold over black, rather than a bit of black over gold like the gear drive), nail it in with a decorative tack (sadly not visible from this angle), and drizzle a bit of superglue into the hollowed-out space to hold the drive itself. I like the look and feel of wood, but the shape is difficult work with. I'm considering how to flatten the top and bottom a bit for a different one. I expect it'll involve careful use of clamps and a sanding disk on a regular drill.