Whatever floats 'yer boat.

A few teachers are working on the Follet Challenge in hopes of winning our school some serious cash to update the library.  The librarian has been working with our ELL teacher and they came up with a "Treasure Island" theme.  As I understand it, Follet is a book / publishing company or something, so they chose a book and are trying to get the entire school involved somehow.  I volunteered to build Raingutter Regatta boats with my Tech class, and we just finished up the unit.

I think it went pretty well, I really wish we would have had more time to tear the boats apart and let them make their own design and go crazy with ideas now that they have a race under their belts and saw what worked and what didn't.  Unfortunately, we only have about 15 good work days left in the school year and have 2 units to try and smash into that time.

Anyways, here are their boats!

Roughing out the hulls.









Primer.



Smoothing out the primer, prepping for paint.



Paint!



Oooooo, shinnnnnyyyyy....



Getting closer.



Two that I made as demo's.



RACE DAY!









Think they had fun and learned a fair bit about boating and some of the design challenges associated with them.  Had a few boats capsize, a few with sail issues, and a few with hulls that just didn't want to float right.  The ELL class came and judged the races for us and also gave out a few awards for different categories. 

Many thanks to Greg of All Seasons Continuous Rain Gutters and Siding for building and donating the "race track"!  If you are in SE Idaho and need gutters or siding, be sure to give him a call-  208-785-2259!

FIFTEEN MORE DAYS.  Am I going to survive this!?

Dans Chariot #3- Frame Construction.

Parts came in a few weeks ago for the chariot. 



Seat looks great, very light weight. I think the harness weighs more than the seat! Looks like the harness does NOT bolt to the seat (I figured it didn't), so I'm going to probably have to come up with some kind of frame for it to bolt to behind the seat. Tires are pretty small but seem very stout.

Still need to stop off at the metal place and find some axle material, but I already have the frame metal and borrowed the tubing bender so I can start on it once I decide for sure how the seat is going to mount.


Spent a few hours in the shop today. Did a few practice bends with the tubing roller.



Started doing some figuring. Had an idea about a week ago on how to mount the seat to the frame with a whole lot less headache (I hope) so let's see if it comes together.  Kinda hard to see but the seat is tipped back a bit.  2 reasons for that- move a tad more weight back and also make it a little more comfortable to sit in.  With the seat flat, your legs just go straight out.  Unpleasant.



A few bends in on the main piece.  In the back you can see the angle the seat will be on.





Bending. Almost need a taller ceiling!



Thinkin thats going to be close enough.  Looks awful strange like this, but bear with me for a minute.



Tacked the axle tube on.  Thinking the axle will be a solid shaft inside the square tubing all the way through, still haven't decided how to attach it yet though.



Doin' some more figurin'. The cross braces are going to double as the seat mount, so they need to be in the right spot to line up with the bolt holes on the bottom of the seat.



Paper seat template to get things aligned.




Need 2 pieces like this, one on each side.



Made up the braces and tacked them in. Managed to get one yucky burn through but I can fix that easy enough.



The days work. The seat is sitting roughly where it needs to be.  The wheels, obviously, are way higher than they are supposed to be- they will drop about 8 inches so they are lined up with the axle tube.  Feet will go near the bottom bend kind of where it drops off the table.





View from the chariot.



Not a bad start. Need to locate a shaft to use for the axle still, and it looks like I'm going to have to make up a "roll bar" behind the seat to mount the shoulder harnesses to. Once I get the seat holes drilled and the current frame welded and the hitch made on the end, I'll throw the wheels on there and do some testing.

Custom Hotwheels, or I *finally* finish a project!

Crazy, eh?  I actually "finished" something.  I say "finished" because I think I could have spent hours and hours on this silly little thing.  After 3 repaints, I decided it was time to focus on something important and this needed to be done.  It's good enough.  Learned all kinds of fun things doing this and looking forward to trying a few more.

Fair warning- this post is huge and has a TON of pics...

Made up a bed out of some aluminum scrap.



Trimmed it up and fit it to the body.



Mixed up some JB Weld and glued it on. Also used it to fill in the extra wheel wells.





Glued on the rear panels.





Did some quick measuring and printed out a practice frame on the 'ole 3D printer.







Trimmed up the windows and interior to fit the smaller cab.



Assemble!









Not to shabby for a quick off the cuff job. Now I can measure where the rear wheels need to go and start cleaning up the body. Have to make a few tweeks to the frame as well.

 
Cleaned up the body some more.





Punched a rear window in.



Shot some primer.



I bought a cheapo Harbor Freight airbrush a couple of years ago but have never had a reason to try it out, so here goes! Dug out my ancient dried up model paint and rehydrated them. Mixed some blue with some silver metalic to get a metalic baby blue.



As you can tell, I have no idea what I'm doing... Still fiddling with the airbrush. Think I'm starting to figure it out though.



Put some white on the top. Didn't have any masking, but I figured this was a practice anyways and the paint was probably going to come back off so I tried it anyways. Came out okay until I managed to knock it over and schmear the paint.



End of paint #1, stripped it back to bare metal to give it another try.

Attempt #2 at painting...  Airbrushed some white on after a fresh coat of primer.





Let it dry and then taped it off.



Mixed up some new blue paint- little darker this time but I like it better than my first attempt.



Peeled off the mask. It's... okay. Need to turn my air pressure down a bit I think but good enough for a first (second) attempt. Will try some light buffing when it's cured to smooth it out a little, actually looks a bit better than in the soooper up close pics.





Remember this was a "practice" to see what I can screw up. Take this, for example. My .50 cal cannon fell on the single cab.



Which of course, means experiment time! Tested a few different polishing techniques.

Wire wheel. Meh.



Buffing wheel with buffing compound. TOOO much.



Although when you clean it up it gives it a bit of a well used patina.



And lastly, buffing wheel with Turtle Wax. Worked out pretty well- smoothed the paint out and gave it a bit of shine. Just have to be real careful you don't rub through the paint.


*sigh*... Strip it back to base metal and try for repaint #3.

While I had it stripped AGAIN, I filled in the extra bits and tried to smooth out the joint.

here. You happy?!



Wheel donor:



Parts.



New frame design. Front wheels go in from the top, back wheels go in the bottom and are held in by the little piece.





Just settin together.





Check out the fart-can baja style exhaust pipe.



 Also plan on making yet another frame- will fill in the holes around the "engine" and adjust a little more for better fit. 

Getting close now!

Detail work...

Parts.



Amazing what you can do with some model paint and a toothpick. Now if I just had a steady hand.









Think I liked it in primer better.








So here you go, my first "custom" hot wheel. I think I could have spent several more hours re-doing things but it was time to call it good. As may have been mentioned a time or two, I have other projects that are getting neglected.

I think it turned out pretty good, but I have a long ways to go on the detail work.









Close ups.  You can sort of see the metallic flake in the the blue from the silver I mixed in.









Opening windows could have been a little closer...






Fun stuff.  Ultimate hobby / time-waster- takes a fair bit of skill to do right (this ain't done right...), it's not really expensive (but could be), and it definitely doesn't take up a lot of space!

Here's what I was basing my project on.   Frankie Floods single cab: