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A collaborative effort by two Fe-Mell Mythical Beasts, JeanetteWifeMoMhorphin & Raeful Ladybug (Christine)
North Elmham has a ruined medieval chapel, but almost next door, the "newer" church of St Mary the Virgin, dates from the C14th. There are an impressive collection of carved C15th pew end and poppyheads, with a wide variety of animals, birds, mythical beasts, and heads.
Variations on the theme of dragons are always popular as they are associated with evil, as well as St George.
It's hard to see, but the wing arms are a three-part sandwich construction. The innards of the sandwich are carved to be pressed on by the actuator rods smoothly as their angle changes.
I'd been concerned about the clearance between the wing arms when they were close, so I made that part as small as possible, but it was still going to be close.
The left actuator rod was not glued in straight, as you can see, and tended to stick. As it turned out, the first problem solved the second; when the wing arms would bump together it would unstick the left wing arm.
Yellow fuse protrudes from the dragon's rear and continues up its back. This wasn't safety fuse; it burns at 0.6 seconds per foot. It was pretty cool; next year I'll be sure to use a lot more of it.
This picture, and most of the subsequent ones, was titled by Marina.
What I'm doing is turning the gears to make sure that the wings still flap now that they're covered with tissue.
By the way, this gives a pretty good view of the fuse running up the back. It continues up the neck, and will light the mouth on fire.
Here's how the proximal wing segment joins to the the distal, along with the rod that controls the wing joint angle. The smaller parts are balsa wood, so I covered them with cardboard to prevent the wood from splitting.
The placement of the rod connection was critical, and you can see where I had to re-drill the hole.
I made a sliding bolt to keep the bottom plate in place. I was pretty proud of this bolt; it worked very well. As it turned out, I ended up snapping the handle off so I could glue over the whole thing.
The front legs were made of 4 layers each of cardboard. I didn't worry too much about the creases in the cardboard, as long as there weren't going to be two layers with the creases aligned.
The head is put into place to see how it looks.
The eyes are tracing paper, colored with an orange highlighter, and glued on to the inside of the eye holes.
The torso is balanced on CD cases, which are really quite useful as you can make two stacks of arbitrary yet perfectly matching height. That's hard to do with books, and they also repel glue fairly well.
One side of the horn is done, so then thin cardboard is glued on to the other side. The extra is trimmed off with scissors, and then the horns are painted gold.
This is a diagram of the general plan of the torso. The upper diagram is a side view, and you can see the gearbox, with gear and bearing housing, and the rubber band chamber behind (to the right of) it.
The non-rectangular area around it is the "spine", as I called it, which will be four layers of cardboard sandwiched together.
The lower diagram is a top view of the gear box and rubber band chamber, with none of the workings shown.
Notice the two little glowing people cavorting below. Gives you an idea of scale. They really are ENORMOUS.
Scales being glued on to the neck. You can see it's dark out the window; it is in fact about 2 AM the night before the party.
The dragon's nostrils are 30 grain, 50 caliber charges for black powder muzzle loaders.
The plywood rectangles are the front and back of the gearbox. The gear axles will poke through the large holes. The small holes are where the main pivot board will rest.
Welcome to the photo set for Bunny Burn 2008.
The Bunny Burn is an annual tradition in which vaguely marshmallow-bunny-related things are built, and then friends gather to see them set on fire.
This photo set is divided into three parts:
- The construction of my project, the dragon. Those photos are immediately following, but might be a bit dull if you're not interested in cardboard sculpture.
- Pictures from the party and of everyone's finished projects. Click the link if you'd like to skip ahead.
- Pictures of everyone's projects on fire. Skip ahead if you want to see these right away.
Previous year's Bunny Burn sets can be seen at the following links:
2007: Robots. Construction, Robots, The Burn
2006: Amusement Park
2005: Pirates