I finally got the wings finished and working, so with my fingers crossed, I sat through two performances during which they worked flawlessly! 
It was brilliant! 
Molly did a fantastic job and I think she loved the attention and the enthusiastic response from the audience.

Obviously I needed to have a go with them :-) so I bought some festive cheer to the office for the afternoon. While there were calls for me to do a full striptease routine I manfully resisted, if only because the tight bastards only tucked a fiver down my Y fronts.  

This years Christmas card photo?

Now I need to think of something else to do!

Molly's Articulated Wings costume test3

Mollys wings more or less complete and ready to go! 1st dress rehersal is today so fingers crossed everything works :-)
The feathers ended up being made from paper with steam curved barbeqe skewers as the spines, I wanted big feathers and this seemed to be the best, and cheapest way of making them. The fluffy bits are cheap (£3 for 2m) feather boa's from the market.

Overall i'm really pleased with how they have come out, I think molly is too. :-)

Finally got the wing mechanism working smoothly. One of the problems I was having was getting them to work  when pulled by a 7 year old girl, who isn't quite as strong as I am. Apparently. Arranging the leavers to give the right mechnaical advantange to overcome the elastic needed to return the wings to the folded position did take a number of trial builds.

Next is making the wing shaped peiices and then making lots of nice big feathers. the end is in sight!

New project! Articulated angel wings.

Well its school play time of year again, This year I gave the children only one request, make sure they were given a part that required wings.

Seth was assigned the part of narrator, (As were all his year) so no wings there. Molly on the other hand is...drum roll please...THE ANGEL GABRIEL! only the most kick ass of all the angels and well deserving of a magnificent pair of wings.

By the next morning we had version one in card ready to test, it was OK but could be better so morning two saw an improved version.

 

 



 So there we go, transfer the shapes to foamex for the next version (after adjusting the pivots to allow the wings to move with less input from Molly)

Next version should be up on Monday :-)

This is far to much fun for the kids to use it :-) 

The plan is to mount the control box on the dashboard eventually so that drivers of any size can reach it. 

It has surprisingly good Off Road ability, however after half an hour we are already talking about how to get a little more speed out of it. 

And after playing tetris with the garage contents I even managed to fit everything in without having to dismatle it!

Obvioulsy there is still lots to do, I can't see it being "Finished" untill next spring, painting the chassis will have to wait untill we get a warm weekend to sart with! I'm also building a fake engine to cover the motors and batteries at the back. 

Karl

Been working on the odds and ends that will make the buggy look cool, lights dashboard fittings and the screen. And this -

Just need to drink another big tub of milk and eat two more cans of sweetcorn to finish the other side!

karl

Molly Mini Manx first test video

It Drives! the mini buggy Moves!

In between rain showers I managed to nail it roughly together and an hour later the kids were whizzing up and down outside!

 

Video coming soon!

 

The test drive highlighted a few issues, the steering is poor, it went twice as fast in reverse, and as yet the steering wheel is fixed on, but otherwise it was a roaring success!

 

Mollys mini manx moves!

This was a bit of a milestone,  for once it managed not to rain for a couple of hours and everything seemed to drop into place/ Things fitted first time. I found that elusive bit of steel that was exactly the right size for the job and by the end of the afternoon I had the steering welded onto the front end and the back end fitted braced and supporting most of the electrics.

 

As you can see the battery tray is just a temporary thing to test everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If  it doesn't rain tomorrow (which seems unlikely) I'd like to refit the body, finish the battery tray and attach the steering wheel so that we can have a test blast up the road :-)  Fingers crossed!

 

Min Buggy Roll hoop stock. (God thats a dull sounding title!)

This rain is a bit of a bugger, not been in the garage for a few days now. Still found this in the metal skip at work today.

 

It might just be me but even when this was assembled into an occasional table and laying on its side in the skip my first thought was "Roll Cage!"

Its not actually as shiny in real life as it looks in the photos but it is the perfect diameter for a scale rollover hoop in the buggy with enough left over for an engine cage too :-)

Molly and Seth love to check the buggy still fits them every time i get the body out!

 

 This weekend I sorted out some of the bits I have been collecting for the project, the headlamps arer old bke lamps I think, and are smaller than they look in the photo :-)

 

I also spent some time re-doing the front end making it bolt in and replcing the front cross bar with a piece of square section. 

 



Steampunk ray gun 2

Right Car is now MOT'd so lets get back on to some updates.  

Picked this up at the weekend at a local boot sale, it was only a couple of quid but it will make a nice Case/control box for the gun. I'm picturing this as a 50's 60's alternate reality piece rather than the victorian/edwardian standard steampunk style. It won't have a lot of brass or gears, but will have some nice early electronics etc.

Steampunk Raygun part 1

Sorting my mk2 polo out for its MOT this week so I don't expect to get much done on the buggy, so here something else I'm working on between other jobs, I find its nice to have at least two prohects on the go then when progress slows on one you can jump to the other.

I have always loved the Steam Punk aesthetic and for a local show a couple of years ago I built a steam punk walking stick (I realise its got no gears on but I see the steam punk style as quite all encompassing. :-)

 Its made from a piece of found wood and various bits of pipe car parts and an old derailleur mechanism from a bike. As you can see it came second, I think the hand made birthday card won :-)

The current project is a ray gun, Its been underway for months, on and off, and started when I found an old model areoplane engine which when taken apart and rearranged looked really cool.

As you can see the handle is from a kids waterpistol and there are a few bits of electronic equipment stuck to it with blue tack to get a feel for the design.

Mini buggy now sitting on all 4 wheels!

 Here we go! I decided in the end to make a subfrane for the back end, I couldn't work out the positioning otherwise so it seemed like the best option, also if  i can keep it reasonably self contained and bolt in we can always use it in something else or upgrade it at a later date if they start racing (there is a tot rod racing series :-))

 I still need to cut the front end off and widen it, at the moment there is not much in the way of steering lock, hopefully an extra inch in width will in make a lot of difference.

 Ill probably push the wheels forward an inch too, which will again help with the steering lock. Ill be replacing the round tube with square section and bolting it in so it too will be removable if needed.

 

Quite pleased with how that looks :-)

buggy rear wheels.

Finally got the spacers finished, they are plastic, but should be plenty strong enough for this application, and they were nice and easy to cut and drill :-)

This is the complete assembly of one side with the motor and some of the framework to weld into the chassis. Next step is to work out where to weld the framework to centre the wheels in the wheel arches. With a bit of luck it could be on all 4 wheels by the end of the weekend. At which time I'm going to realise i have nowhere to put it! :-)

Dalek video

finished the buggy wheel adapters, they will be tomorrows update, hopefully!

tonight its the Video of the dalek in action.

 

This was the first test run, hence the lack of bumper, i hadn't got as far as putting it on yet.

Really pleased with how it went, we had cars stopping to take photos as they were going past.

More dalek goodness

Been making a pair of wheel adapters for the buggy to fit the rear wheels to the Motor flanges that's going to take me a couple of days so until then here is more dalek.

 Here is a close up of the head, with the Union Jack, and plastic beaker eyes.

 And here he is at the school fair where he went down a storm!

Video to follow...

The next exciting episode of how to build a Dalek.

Did a little more buggy yesterday, but nothing worth taking a picture of. Discovered Ill need some wheel spacers/adaptors machined which may take some time.

So here is the next exciting episode of how to build a Dalek.

Paint! this is the first of three coats, needed to cover the foam. This coat is a little light, I started with a tin of olive green from B&Q and mixed in loads of different poster paints until I was happy.

 

 And here he is together again. I'm working out the drive mechanism at this stage, which is a cut down electric wheelchair with the control box extended to give you a long cable remote.

 

 

 The shoulders still look a little rough but they will be covered by the equipment these daleks carry.

Just snatched a few Min's on the buggy, but its too dark for photos.
So here is more dalekness.

 

 A slightly blurry shot of the skirt and shoulders with the hemispheres attached (80mm Styrofoam balls from ebay, for less than a tenner, 100mm balls were more than twice the price.)(100mm is the correct size but how many people know that!)

The Bumper and neck rings are all made in a dense urethane closed cell foam. this has a reasonable surface and takes paint quite well if primed.

 

Just in process of adding the foam to the shoulders, getting the correct glue was a challenge, but I found expensive hot melt glue sticks £5 for 5 sticks!!! were worth their weight in gold :-)

This was about the first time I actually built the stack, and i was over the moon! :-)

Here is he next exciting Dalek building episode.

The head and shoulders pretty much ready for paint, untill I decided to cover the bottom ring of the shoulders in foam as well...you can also see some of the wiring in the eye, it has leds built in which flash. A bit.

buggy steering

Spent some more time working on the steering for the buggy, it will be a heavy thing, and with the size of the tyres as well it needed a "proper" steering system with some geared advantage. This is based on the seat runner mechanism from a top of the range car.

 

 After cutting down the runner to a block holding the gear and welding on a 1/2 UJ from a socket set the steering is ready to mount.

 

 Here is the front Axel tacked in place on the chassis.

 

 

Close up of the spindle and track rod ends, all from some sort of lawn tractor and via ebay.

The dalek has gone to a new home in Blackpool :-(
He will be sadly missed, the front room is making me feel agoraphobic without his hulking presence taking up half the space.

OK, didn't get time to open the garage tonight, so ill have to go back to dalek posting. Someone is coming to look at him tomorrow so I may be dalek-less by Wednesday!

 

On with the build, I continued to box in around the gun mounts, Its amazing how strong card gets once there are a few pieces folded and glued together.

 

While working on the body I was also making the eye, (a magic 8ball) and the cowl over the eye post, which was a card base coated in body filler and then smoothed out.

The Gun is a combination of Torch parts, chrome tube and alu strip offcuts.

 

Starting to get there now, the shoulders look odd as they don't have the rings yet which bulk them out a lot. I have added glassfiber to the inside of the skirt to strengthen the hardboard.

Mollys Mini Manx

The kids have decided that my next project (More Dalek later) must be finishing the 1/2 scale buggy I have been building for the past 6 years (well not really  building, more contemplating.) So here is the first post on this project!

We got the body from East Coast Manx, and if they are still in business (they are, just checked, http://www.eastcoastbuggies.co.uk/) then they do a lovely half sized buggy!

The idea was to make it ready for Molly once she was old enough. Unfortunately I had also intended to finish my Trekker (More later) and do an MA. Kids do tend to mess up timescales. :-) 

So I managed to get a motorised golf bag which I thought would be perfect as the power source, however the more i thought about the more I doubted its ability to move our increasingly large offspring! 

I built a chassis for the buggy and got a set of wheels and tyres and everything was going slowly but well.

 The chassis is made from the square section steel legs of some old furniture we were throwing away at work (The Metal skip is a favourite dinnertime destination :-) ) Its a simple perimeter frame with points to attache the front and rear assemblies.

This is the lawn tractor front axle, its a monster!

Here is the modified version. Not sure yet if this is staying...  

This is the back end I put together using the golf caddy, this is definitely not staying I have now got a much more capable drive pack from an electric wheelchair. Ill be having a look tonight to see if its going to be feasible to keep the suspension but if not ill solid mount everything.

Back tyres/wheels are brand new and came from ebay, fronts are very second hand from a lawn tractor, they will be fine for now but I will probably need to sort out some more tyres eventually. 

More Dalek building!

This is the little chap I'm going for, he is an Ironside from an alternate reality second world war story. There were two reasons I chose this particular dalek, the paint (as he is not shiny the surface wont have to be as perfect) and the bags/webbing around his shoulders which also cover some of the details making the build easier. 

padded out the shoulders in card, using lots of vertical strips to get the shape. Also built new gun boxes. 

There are a couple of layers, this is the first. 

Close up of the gun boxes. The ball part of the socket is a Tupperware bowl and the plunger leg is from the BBQ.