I Made a Shark (his name's Nibbles)

With the house being at a pretty stable place and having a space between the holidays and school/more house work starting back up I figured it'd be a good opportunity to make something new. I went and saw my friend Barbara after Christmas and among a bunch of other stuff she gave me there was a few chunks of a rusty old sawmill bandsaw blade which was screaming to be made into some teeth. We'd watched some of "Inside Nature's Giants" too, including an episode with a Great White, so when I grabbed a couple bits of blade that bowed into a D shape easily I knew a shark would be really nice to do with those blades.

I cleared out a spot in the carport to lay out some scraps and see what might fit where. A couple of old ladie's bike frames seemed to have a good shape for a tail, a leftover hunk of motorcycle highway bar would make a fine dorsal fin, a conduit spine, and a couple chunky bits of motorcycle and scooter frame would make a good base for the chest and head.

Cut, bend, bang, clamp, and weld and the basic structure came outpretty easily. Also after I cut the bike frames to make the tail I realized how nice and similar the leftover frame chunks were to the shape and size I needed for pectoral fins. I only managed to hit my foot with a hammer twice in shaping them the rest of the way to where I needed them too.

Before going much farther I wanted to get the whole thing up in the air at the level you'd be looking at it from so I didn't wind up attaching something in a way that'd look fine on the ground and awkward at eye-level, so I went about making a square peg fit in a round hole. The scooter frame chunk was in about the center of the body and had a nice reinforced chunk of tubing that used to support the handlebars and floorboard on a scooter in a previous life, and I figured it'd work well as a sturdy pivot in it's current life. I also found out that this hole was just about the same size as a small hitch receiver which I no longer had any use for since I traded my trusty CR-V for a Tacoma a while back. I've never seen a square peg go in a round hole so well.

Now with the whole thing lifted in the air I put all the big fins in place and welded the top jaw up too. It was starting to look like a shark, but only from the side. Long-ways it only looked like a shark if you squinted and turned your head sideways, so I needed something to fatten up his cartilaginous bones. Rust-locked rims from a kid's bike looked just about right, but I didn't have enough to fill in everywhere I wanted to. I tried a local bike shop near my house to see if they had any similar wheels, but they only had aluminum ones. Then I tried the trusty rusty cycle shop near my dad's house since I needed to get a few things straight on my bike too and sure enough they had my bike right and a mess of small rims waiting for me before the evening was out.

The next morning dad brought over a bunch of lumber and plywood for the new roof, so I had to retreat to the back yard to work on the shark. The rims worked out great to fill in the body and give him some shape, but I was still worried about how I'd make the nose and head work out. My scrap pile is already on the skimpy side since the move, but it always seems to have something tasty and just right for what I need if I kick it just right. Turns out football helmet face guard + motorcycle chain guard = shark nose.

After that it was pretty close to done, so I added the last bit of highway bar as a back fin, another row of teeth, and a few other little bits to complete it. Since the archer looked so much better and felt so much more done once I wire-wheeled and clear coated him, I did the same for Nibbles. I made sure to go thick on the teeth, and that bandsaw blade feels nice and slick now. Can't wait to do some more stuff and see when I can go hopefully clog up the art walk again.

I Made an Archer

It's been a long while since I got my welder and since then I've gotten a good deal better at using it and know what works well with. I've also gotten my scrap pile back up in size and there's been some nice goodies on it from sources as different as the woods behind my house and the local Harley Davidson dealership. Three of the best pieces to it were a pair of slightly scraped up exhaust pipes and a chunk of a motorcycle frame that reminded me of a slender torso.

I'd been thinking about getting a decent bow and arrow set to practice and get some stress off with, and with a pair of pipes that looked like a set of legs and a chunk of frame that looked rather like a fit chest, I decided that those and some motorcycle handlebars could be used to make a nice sculpture of an archer. I figured a human figure would be pretty cool to make and since I just so happen to be in such a shape myself I also had a decent pattern to go on too. As I was making it there were countless little moments I'd check the angles and shapes of things I'd done against how I'd do them myself. This photo of myself (taken by Bri Miller) was actually very useful in getting the positions of the arms right. I hadn't realized the drawing arm was basically turned upside down before seeing myself doing it.

As with the dinosaur, I started from the feet and worked my way up. The feet are made of hardware from a garage door with their angles and positioning modeled with my own as a rough reference. The left arm is a truck jack, and the right arm uses a small shock absorber to spring back and hold tension on the bicycle chain that is the bowstring.

The head was easily the most difficult part to make. I didn't have anything that already looked something like a head, so I had to find all sorts of little bits and burn my hands holding them in place while I tacked them together. having on welding gloves made it too awkward to not let some parts slip. I especially like the way the eyes came out. One is part of a bicycle's crank and the other is a ball joint from a car's steering rack.

The fingers were all made from motorcycle chain. #420 for fingers and #428 for the thumbs. The arrow head was the only part made from plain stock specifically to look like it does.

When it was all said and done, I moved the archer off of the temporary wooden base I made for him and welded up a steel base made of railroad tie plates my friend Barbra gave me and an old motorcycle highway bar with a nice twist in it. I also ran over the whole archer with a wire wheel to get the bulk of it's rust off and sprayed it all down with some gloss clear coat. He's looking pretty snazzy in the front yard now taking aim at passing cars, bikes, and one bright orange dinosaur.

Barbra also came by to see the archer and take some very nice photos of it just after the first sun-shower of the year. The first photo of this post is one of hers in face. They came out very nicely and you should definitely check out those any other stuff of hers here ,here ,and here. She also did a nice backdropped photo of my orange dinosaur here.