Jimnightshade
New Member
After a while of lurking, I thought I'd see what you folks think about the build I just finished. Here's the finished piece:
And the build process. It started life as a plain old 2x6:
I drew a Nimbus 2000 shape on it:
And cut it out with a jigsaw:
I then routed the edges round, unfortunately I did not have a big enough router bit to make it fully round, so it ended up still a bit square on the finished prop:
I then started to sand, and sand, and sand again. It was at this point, when I went to change the sandpaper, that it fell on the floor and broke completely in half at the point where the grain is shortest. I won’t repeat the many things that were said (well, some were shouted). Eventually, I started over with a piece of fir, (it was the strongest wood I wanted to pay for) and got back to the same point. After much sanding and determining that it was never going to get as round as I’d like, I decided to leave it more squarish. I also didn’t want to make it too small, being a bit wary of it possibly breaking again. Continuing on, I cut Styrofoam circles of various sizes to make the football shape:
After staining with a gel mahogany stain and painting the foam black, I gathered some willow (at least I think it’s willow) from a creek that passes in front of my house and cut it to length:
After gluing each piece on separately (about five layers were needed, approximately 200 pieces), I glued and wrapped some brass wire in three places, it’s starting to look the part now:
Notice the Nerf bullets, yes I made this for Halloween for my son who is 8 and looks like Harry Potter. Well, you know the score, it was about 30 percent for him, and 70 percent to try my hand at my first prop
. Anyway, next was the metal work, which proved to be the most difficult part. Bending the two outer pieces was fairly easy, I used 3/8 cold rolled steel and got to try out my new floor mounted metal bender. It worked great for the outer pieces, but the middle bridge piece needed to be bent around a six inch die, and the largest I had was a three inch. To get around this I took the long piece of metal bar, and bent about two inches at a right angle. I then drilled a hole in a 2x4 to fit it. I purchased a heavy steel wheel made for a utility cart (about $25) and screwed it to the 2x4, then had my wife stand on the 2x4 while I bent the rod around the wheel, as in this quick and dirty drawing:
It worked great, and I didn’t even scratch the wheel, so I was able to take it back to the store after. So all the metal was bent, all I had to do was put it together. And there was the problem. I don’t weld, so my plan was to use JB weld, which I tried twice, roughing up the surface the second time, it had no strength at all and basically fell apart very easily. So instead, I tried soldering it together, which seemed to work very well for joining the two outer pieces at the top, but not for the bridge piece, which has to be at an angle away from the main structure. I tried a number of times with the solder (using a propane torch to heat the metal) but it was hard to get the solder to stay in the right places. In the end it held together, but I had absolutely no confidence in it and because of the time constraint of being two days away from Halloween, I decided to leave it like that. Next I cut two pieces of wood dowelling, drilled an offset hole and sanded it flat on one side and into a teardrop shape, glued them on for the foot rests, then painted the whole assembly gold.
I fashioned the attaching bracket out of some flat steel stock and attached the legs with a long machine screw, added another screw for a stop when the legs swivel to more or less 90 degress, then cut the logo out of some card stock and spray painted the name on both sides, and it was finally done. I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt, but I would have liked to have made it rounder, and would have had the metal welded so I could grind it much smoother. I also think the front end is a little too long compared to the back. What do you think?
And the build process. It started life as a plain old 2x6:
I drew a Nimbus 2000 shape on it:
And cut it out with a jigsaw:
I then routed the edges round, unfortunately I did not have a big enough router bit to make it fully round, so it ended up still a bit square on the finished prop:
I then started to sand, and sand, and sand again. It was at this point, when I went to change the sandpaper, that it fell on the floor and broke completely in half at the point where the grain is shortest. I won’t repeat the many things that were said (well, some were shouted). Eventually, I started over with a piece of fir, (it was the strongest wood I wanted to pay for) and got back to the same point. After much sanding and determining that it was never going to get as round as I’d like, I decided to leave it more squarish. I also didn’t want to make it too small, being a bit wary of it possibly breaking again. Continuing on, I cut Styrofoam circles of various sizes to make the football shape:
After staining with a gel mahogany stain and painting the foam black, I gathered some willow (at least I think it’s willow) from a creek that passes in front of my house and cut it to length:
After gluing each piece on separately (about five layers were needed, approximately 200 pieces), I glued and wrapped some brass wire in three places, it’s starting to look the part now:
Notice the Nerf bullets, yes I made this for Halloween for my son who is 8 and looks like Harry Potter. Well, you know the score, it was about 30 percent for him, and 70 percent to try my hand at my first prop
. Anyway, next was the metal work, which proved to be the most difficult part. Bending the two outer pieces was fairly easy, I used 3/8 cold rolled steel and got to try out my new floor mounted metal bender. It worked great for the outer pieces, but the middle bridge piece needed to be bent around a six inch die, and the largest I had was a three inch. To get around this I took the long piece of metal bar, and bent about two inches at a right angle. I then drilled a hole in a 2x4 to fit it. I purchased a heavy steel wheel made for a utility cart (about $25) and screwed it to the 2x4, then had my wife stand on the 2x4 while I bent the rod around the wheel, as in this quick and dirty drawing:It worked great, and I didn’t even scratch the wheel, so I was able to take it back to the store after. So all the metal was bent, all I had to do was put it together. And there was the problem. I don’t weld, so my plan was to use JB weld, which I tried twice, roughing up the surface the second time, it had no strength at all and basically fell apart very easily. So instead, I tried soldering it together, which seemed to work very well for joining the two outer pieces at the top, but not for the bridge piece, which has to be at an angle away from the main structure. I tried a number of times with the solder (using a propane torch to heat the metal) but it was hard to get the solder to stay in the right places. In the end it held together, but I had absolutely no confidence in it and because of the time constraint of being two days away from Halloween, I decided to leave it like that. Next I cut two pieces of wood dowelling, drilled an offset hole and sanded it flat on one side and into a teardrop shape, glued them on for the foot rests, then painted the whole assembly gold.
I fashioned the attaching bracket out of some flat steel stock and attached the legs with a long machine screw, added another screw for a stop when the legs swivel to more or less 90 degress, then cut the logo out of some card stock and spray painted the name on both sides, and it was finally done. I think it turned out pretty good for a first attempt, but I would have liked to have made it rounder, and would have had the metal welded so I could grind it much smoother. I also think the front end is a little too long compared to the back. What do you think?
