Realised I hadn't updated this in years, so here is a potted history of 2015 to today...

Windows in and a coat of primer on the outside.

Starting to add the insulation on the inside. Floor is still gravel/dirt.

Floor structure in, compacted substrate, breezeblocks and then insulation, a Damp proof membrane, and chipboard.  

Painted the inside of the doors and the outside is now Blue & Black. 

Next layer of the floor, recycled industrial pallet wood, 2.5" thick x 6" by about 10ft. Enough for the entire floor was about £80. It was a serious amount of wood for the money!  

Outside looking great in the sunshine

Paneling the inside, a lorry load of T&G. And lots of cutting! 

Winter and, though you can't see it, it now has a corrugated metal roof. I know that because the spare sheet is lying on the lawn in the photo! 

Latest photos of inside, Its been up now for 3years and the interior is still perfect. I was worried about it getting damp, but so far so good.  

Big Shed Project Part 4 

Once all the the woodwork was removed, (as carefully as possible as I'm hoping to reuse much of it.) The pieces were loaded into my Skoda estate and ferried home. 

As you can see the garden was a little overgrown, however our new neighbors were putting in a new fence, which made the left hand side of the garden look a lot more open. You'll maybe also notice the pear tree which has been happily growing in front of the blue shed in the picture above is not looking much less happy at the house end of the garden. hopefully it will recover next year! 

So next on the list was the shed. Well actually, next on the list was emptying the shed. It was full of stuff, garden things, lawnmowers, bits left over from the beach buggy build and lots of car parts. Everything was emptied out and 50% sold on ebay, some of it making pretty good money, certainly more than I expected!

With the contents gone I went to town destroying the old shed, it was pretty rotten, it was old when I got it and rebuilt it in our garden. The wood was stacked up and anything that might be useful was put with the rest of the wagon. Over the course of a week the rest was burnt in a dustbin incinerator.  

With the remains gone I was ready to start preparing the foundations. 

Big Shed Build Pt 3

So after clearing away all the foliage and getting rid of the old joining roof this is what I was left with. Most of it was in very good condition, even some of the wood will be cleaned up and re-used. 

Some on the other hand was a little crusty, this back corner for example, where it was completely covered by a large tree and had obviously been damp for decades!

Once I had stripped off all of the wood (and the good doors) I was left with just the frame. By now we had a JCB on the site to prepare the ground for the new sheds, so as they could see I was struggling slightly to meet their timescales, They offered to move the frame down the field slightly, this gave me more time to dismantle it and ment they could get on and put up the new sheds without me getting in the way!

Once apart, all of there bits were loaded into the back of the Skoda and moved in several trips, back to the house where with lots of heaving and swearing they were piled up in the back garden. 

More soon.

Karl's Big Build Pt 2 

Once I had cleared the trees and plants from around the sheds (With the help of a couple of guys preparing the ground for new units)  I could get a better look at what we had.

One of the issues was the roof fitted between the two sheds, whist it looked like it would fall down in a light breeze it was actually pretty well attached and took a reasonable amount of force to remove!

The video above was after the first days demolition and clearing. For the first time I could walk around the wagon and get an idea of what we had.  Overall i was amazed at how good it looked!

Lunt Fort and Roman Armour

My roman armour had an outing recently with a trip to Lunt Fort. Just outside Coventry in the UK. Its the only recreation of a wooden roman fort in the UK. To be honest its seen better days, original built in the 60's (Well originally built by the Romans, but you know what I mean!) the fort has not had a lot spent on it since. Until recently, when with some grant money, the central museum building has had a makeover.



Its still an impressive place the image above is the Gatehouse that is first thing you see. 

This is the museum building itself, they have made a lot of effort to make the content appealing to kids and the two guys that were manning the museum on the day we went were fantastic, really enthusiastic and keen to get the kid trying on clothes and armour and really engaging with the to bring it alive. 

Seth wore some of his armour I had made last year, which fortunately still fitted him, but when I pinched his Hat I found it a little tight!

The "real" armour was pretty impressive, as they were dressed the guide explained what each part did and was called before trying to stab them with a short sword to show the strength of the steel.

 Molly initially tried on mail armour, but then tried the plate on too. 

I took lots of reference shots for the next time I need to make some! (I still want a set for myself)

Overall it was an excellent morning out and I'd recommend it to any one with kids with an interest in Romans! 

Quick Viking Longship build for Scouts

This was a Sunday morning project with the kids, we have boat building session this week with the beavers (6-8 years old) which culminates in them sailing whatever they have built down the river, So i decided it would be worth knocking something up to join in the fun.

Its made of card (As you can see) and is waterproofed and held together with packing tape, given more time i would have painted it (If it survives I still might!) I was particularly pleased with the oars which came from a cheap multi pack of chop sticks. 

The picture doesn't do the scale justice, its actually around 60 cm long. I started with two sheets of card cut out for the sides, these were taped along the bottom and then shield shaped pieces of card were pushed into the hull to give it the correct profile. Everything was taped up before a deck was added and hot glued into place to give it lots of rigidity. It has quite a bit of clay forced into the bottom of the hull as ballast, so hopefully it will float upright. 

The sail is an old off cut of material, the mast a cardboard tube and that's about it.  Unless its sinks instantly tonight Ill get some pictures for an update of the boat on the water tomorrow!

Karl

Catapults for Cubs! 



This is in the same vein as the one day builds created by Adam Savage (Of Mythbusters fame), In as much as it only took me a short time to build. I probably could have built it in a day if work and the kids taxi duties hadn't interfered. 

I Started by collecting some off-cuts of wood, the longest pieces were around 3ft long, which determined the overall scale of the device. Without really planning too much I built what I felt a catapult should be, added bungee cords and was roundly disappointed in the results! It turns out Bungee cords don't actually have very much stretch, and even with dozens of them attached to the catapult I couldn't get any power into the throw. 


The day before the cubs were due to use it I dismantled the entire thing and rebuilt it into a mangonel style of siege engine, one that uses a twisted rope for power.

This worked brilliantly, a few test fires of soft sponge balls out into the road showed the potential, so the entire thing was then loaded up into the back of the car. 

Fortunately the next evening at cubs was warm and sunny, so after the cubs had made their own marshmallow firing catapults, we all went outside, where armed with 30 or so water balloons we challenged the cubs to try and catch as many as they could! 






As you can see we did have one or two misfires, but on the whole it was a massive success. 

It's still sitting in the cub hut as we hadn't got the heart to break it up.  

Karl's Big Build! 

We have bought a train! 


Well, part of a train, to be precise its an early 1900's ventilated meat wagon (already christened "Rupture Farms" by Sue.  

It has been, along with another wagon, used as a store on a local recreation ground since the 50's and has reached the end of its useful life so when we heard it was being demolished I offered the owner £50 and became the proud possessor of piece of railway memorabilia! 

In the picture top left, its under the tree on the RHS, so you can't actually see it!


The idea is to put it at the bottom of the garden as a garden office, keeping as much of the character as possible. (While taking off the rude graffiti!)

It is pretty big, (18ft by 8ft) and should make a really nice space, the ends are metal but everything is lined in wooden paneling making the entire thing incredibly heavy and solid. 

The steel used on it is fantastically think and must be an excellent quality as there is very little rust.  

Next order of business was moving it, I had 4 days to clear if off the site before the JCB moved to prepare the ground for its replacement.  

I don't think I have ever posted this, its the short movie I made while on my MA at UWE. Its the story of the first dog in space, sort of...
All of the Modelling, Animation and rendering was my own work in 3d Studio Max, I then assembled the individual scenes in Aftereffects and the movie in Premier.
Billy Bragg kindly allowed me to use his song "I wanna be a cosmonaut" as the closing track.

Karl

Kids fantasy Armour

I seem to have been neglecting this blog, in no small part due to the lack of "making" required in the kids Christmas school play costumes.

A wet Sunday gave me the incentive to start something I have been wanting to do for some time. I brought a pack of foam from amazon last year which has sat there just waiting for a project to use it on. 

Over the last month we have been to Tamworth castle & Hampton court which combined with reading the Game of Thrones books and watching "How to Train Your Dragon 2" Pushed me over the edge. 

I needed to make a suit of Armour.

Ill make a suit for Seth first and if all is good, make myself a suit afterwards :-) 

This is the start of the arm, I'm really looking forward to the painting and decoration, I'm aiming to make it look as real as possible (for foam)

More updates soon.  

village show art

Every year our friends run a local village show, and normally we enter a few photos and drawings in the hope of winning the art cup, which, to be fair we do win quite often :-) (well sue my partner  normally wins it) This year with two days to go to the show I started my painting. We like leaving these things to the last moment.

I have had some success with bankys style pictures, two years ago my cowboy riding an

ATAT picked up a 1st or 2nd.

The picture above is painted on the back of a piece of perspex, unfortunately,

this year I forgot to take my painting.

On the day before the show i did the pencil drawing entry, 

This was drawn from photos we had taken at Warwick castle last week. 

This one picked up a second place which with a couple of results with photos meant I got to bring the trophy home ! Whooow!!

Cardboard castles

After the success of the Houses as the backdrop to the kids school play we were approached by the year six teacher to see if we could knock her up a quick castle for their rendition of the robin hood story, the final school event of the year, and the last thing the year six kids take part in before going off to new schools.

Sue couldn't refuse so with a couple of weeks to get something done I started collecting the cardboard!

Working out how to make it all free standing.

The tops of the turrets

A slightly simplified Nottingham forest.

The finished paint job on the forest

Sue helping to put the last details on the castle. It stands about 7ft tall and is something like 12ft across. Its only loosely bolted together in the picture. 

And for the first time I managed to make something that folded up and went in the back of my car (a VW Polo) So it actually made getting it to school a piece of cake. 

I'm looking forward to hearing what the kids think of it later today. :-)

Cardboard houses

A few pictures of the two "buildings" made for the schools version of the ginormous turnip, all the buildings were made using some fantastic 3ply card we have our injection moulding plastic delivered in at work. The  card is fantastic, as strong as hardboard but much easier to cut. 

the roof is much thinner and was givn a few coats of paint to help it look suitably wobbly and rough.

Between the houses is Seth in his dog costume. I made the head and my wife the body suit/gloves and feet.

The turnip house, made in two pieces as everything had to fit in the back of our car.

Beach buggy tot rod rebuild

Its been a while since I have posted but that's not to say I haven't been busy, In the last few weeks I have rebuilt the buggy and built two houses for number one son's school assembly. The houses and a fence were for a production of the ginormous turnip, for which they needed a tumbledown cottage and a turnip house along with a length of fence. The same weekend the school held a summer fayre, for which I had foolishly offered the buggy as an attraction. It was a long way from being ready to use, so in the last two weeks I have welded the chassis, painted all the steel, added chrome bumper cages front and back, made and upholstered the interior panels and seats, painted the wheels and built a pretend engine(which annoyingly didn't fit at the 11th hour!)

We made it to the show and it was a real hit, not sure who much we made yet but I had over £50 in my bucket including the float so a reasonable 2h work. :-)

above, on the morning of the show, fitting the wheels.

.

My space on the field with my cottage as a backdrop

OFF ROAD!!! :-)

One of the 80's "Love Is Cards"?

It really could have been built to fit in the back of the car, there is an inch to spare in every direction.

The finished costume!

We'll i should really cover his sword with foil but as he under strict instruction to not take it out of his scabbard I probably don't have to. The Dress up day (For national book day) (Seth was Mark Anthony, his school limited it to Shakespeare costumes) was a big success and both Seth and molly (Who went as Ophilela) went down a storm.