All Fired Up!

Cool! Icicles

Chris in Canada writes:
I have found a way to make some really beautiful 'trashicles' for house eaves. These are crystal clear, and with care can be made to have the bumps, forks and rings of the real thing. All you need is an empty plastic water bottle, scissors for cutting the bottle, wire cutters or any strong cutter for cutting the ends from the finished icicles, two pairs of tweezers/needle- nose pliers and a candle of any sort, as long as the wick and surrounding wax is fairly clean. Unless you want a dirty icicle, that is. ;-)

Step 1- Cut off the neck and bottom of the bottle, then snip out a rectangle about 3/4" X 2". This little bit will be a test piece to determine how much time, heat and pulling you'll need to shape the icicles. If you follow the instructions carefully, you'll have made two icicles, but if something goes wrong, relax. It was just a materials test, not the real thing yet, and the materials you used failed to perform as expected. Just repeat the test until the results are acceptable. Can you tell I volunteer with primary grade ESL students?

Step 2- Light your candle, and holding each end of the strip in the tweezers or pliers, lower the centre of the plastic into the flame bit by bit until the strip starts to look wet, then remove it, trying not to pull it out of shape. This is the furthest into the flame that you can go for good results with your particular plastic. Too much heat and it will liquify rather than stretch, or poof into a tiny self-extinguishing flame at the mid-point of the strip.

Step 3- Next, test how it pulls by lowering the strip into the flame again. When it starts to look wet, begin to pull and stretch the plastic gently and evenly, at the same time moving it slowly up and out of the flame. You'll see and feel it getting very soft when it first looks wet, and then becoming almost liquid. As it comes up out of the flame it will stay soft for a few seconds giving you time to start stretching it into a strand. Work slowly, and when it starts to resist the pulling, simply reheat the strand by passing the whole thing through the flame for a few seconds and pull. Pulling slowly will leave the icicle completely clear, and pulling faster will result in tiny bubbles forming which is a common feature of most very large icicles. Repeat as needed until the strand thins out to almost nothing in the middle and breaks apart into two plain icicle shapes. Cut the icicles off at any length you want, possibly leaving a bit of the strip attached (then bent at a 90 degree angle with reheating) as a secure base for the glue if you are making thicker or longer icicles. Smaller icicles cut flat across can be attached with a dab of SuperGlue or simmilar.

Now you can make the basic tapered shape, try twisting the strip as you pull to create bends and twists, or make a forked shape. Cut a lengthwise slit about 1/4" long starting at one end of the strip. Hold the uncut edge in tweezers/pliers and working slowly, heat the cut end using the other tool to pull alternate halves of the end into separate strands. Let cool until firm (10-12 seconds), hold the icicle in tweezers just at the point where the forked section joins the main icicle, then heat and pull the rest of the shape. For rings, make a basic shape. Place the tweezers/pliers where the first ring will be, heat the icicle right above the pliers and give a little tug followed by an immediate push, being careful not to squeeze the tweezers/pliers. Let cool and repeat along the icicle as desired.

WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SPRAY THESE WITH SEALER, FAKE SNOW OR GLITTER ETC... DITTO FOR NAIL POLISH AND ENAMELS. ANYTHING OTHER THAN WATER-BASED PRODUCTS WILL CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE TO ALL YOUR HARD WORK.

Happy Trashcicling.

The Cutting Edge

CAUTION: These knives are sharp and actually cut. Do not use in a child's dollhouse, and watch your fingers when you are making them.

If you need realistic knives for a kitchen or table setting, serrated knives are easy to make from the metal cutting strip from a box of aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Peel the strip from the box, then use old scissors or metal cutters to cut a piece about half the width of the strip and the length of the knife including the handle. Snip this strip at the point where you want the handle to end, cutting from the serrated edge to the middle of the strip. Trim off the serrated edge on this handle end, fold the handle in half lengthwise with pliers and squeeze to flatten. Trim the blade end to form either a pointed or slightly rounded end depending on what the knife will be used for, and round off the ends of the handle slightly. Finish by applying a few coats of paint or nail polish to the handle to thicken it and conceal the overlapped metal edge then seal with a clear sealer or clear nail polish. To vary the blade size, just make the starting strip wider or narrower.

Happy knife-making. :-D

Chris in Waterloo, ON

Remembrance Day 2013

Remember Snoopy and his fights with the Red Baron? (Manfred von Richthofen)  One of the famous Canadian aces of the WW1 era was Billy Bishop.

Although it has been said Billy was not the best pilot, he was a crack marksman, which prompted the Germans to put a price on his head.
There is a musical in his honour,  Billy Bishop Goes to War

 

The small Billy Bishop airport located on the Toronto Islands at the base of the city of Toronto The airport is used by civil aviation, air ambulances, and regional airlines using turboprop planes. 

Also well known during WW1 was William Barker.

Trimming the Tree

Easy Christmas Tree Trims and Garlands

NOTE: I shared this idea several years ago on one of my groups and apologize if you've read this T2T already, but with Christmas coming up it may be helpful to some.

Here are three easy steps to make teensy silver tree garlands and curly-cue icicles:

1) Find a guitar player who uses metal wound strings on the 3 or 4 lower strings and ask him/her to save the old strings the next time the strings are changed. (Classical guitars strings are the best source because they are real silver wound over a fibre core, but any metal wound acoustic guitar strings will do the job. I haven't tried using violin strings, but the G and D strings should work as they are close in diameter to the higher guitar strings.)

2) Cut one end of the string off at the point where the string straightens out, find the end of the metal strip and gently pull it to unwind the metal from the core. Hold the core end in the other hand and go slowly so you don't stretch the 'spring&# 39; out of shape.

3) For icicles, cut the spring into 1/3 to 1/2 inch lengths stretching the springs if needed to open them up a bit. Attach a loop of sewing thread to one end with CA glue. For garlands, slightly stretch a long piece until it looks good to you and wrap it around the tree, outdoor pillars or railings, a mailbox or whatever you fancy.

BTW, you can also use the metal strips in jewellery both RL size and mini, and it can be soldered.

Chris in Canada

Playing in the Sand

Chris S. has another terrific idea to keep in mind:

Every winter, our city places bins of a very coarse sand mix, with an old shovel or tin scoop, anywhere there is a slope on the road that causes problems for motorists when there is ice on the road. I make a point of filling two dishpans with this stuff every year as soon as the bins are in place, as I have a sloping driveway. Over the years I have found this mixture to be a great winter source of small stones that are perfect for use on houses, fireplaces, stone walls in any scale, even 144th!

Among the sand and boring grey gravel, I have found lots of white and pink quartz, Fool's Gold, granite of every colour, black and dark green stones with sparkles of mica, and beautifully rounded and polished river stones. Once washed in dish detergent, rinsed and air-dried, all you need is some tacky glue (or CA glue for "larger" stones in 1:12 scale), the surface to attach them to, and your choice of "mortar" to fill empty spaces and make it look realistic. For 144th and 1:48 I use craft paint liberally applied to small sections, then wiped off the tops of the stones with a damp sponge or shop towel. For 1:24 and 1:12, I use a mixture of craft paint and a texturizing medium pushed down with a brush between the stones, or (my favourite) I mix up a small amount of real mortar in a Dixie cup. By using the 'real thing', I actually save quite a bit of time since I don't glue the stones down first. I just brush some glue on the surface, smear on some mortar over that and then place the stones. When the surface of the mortar starts to look dry, I wipe off the stones with a damp cloth or sponge. With the small amount of mortar used, it dries very quickly, so by the time I have completed the second area, the first is ready to be wiped off.

Magazine holders

 Posted by Chris Shibata:

If you buy salt in a box (round or rectangular) with a pull
 out metal spout, you have the makings of a magazine
 holder for 1:12 magazines, cookbooks or ???. Snip out
 the spout leaving about 1/4" of the surrounding
cardboard. Soak the piece in some warm water with a
 few drops of dish soap or shampoo for a few minutes
until the cardboard gets soggy, then remove the metal
part. Rinse the holder off and dry. On the side that will
be the back of the holder, there are either two or three
little triangles of metal sticking out (depending on the
container) and you can either bend them back and flatten
them into the holes they were cut from using a pair of
pliers, or snip them off to create a decorative open design
on the back of the holder. Cut a snippet of card stock to fit
across the bottom of the holder and glue in place with CA
glue, WeldBond (or any glue that will stick to metal). If you
have opted to flatten the triangles, now is a good time to
brush a good thick coat of glue over and around the edges
of the triangles to seal any teensy gaps. When the glues
have dried, paint the holder with a sealer (clear nail-polish
 works best) then paint with craft paint and seal with a
brush-on product like Delta Ceramcoat. For a kid's room,
these look nice painted in co-ordinated colours, with decals,
paper punch-outs or tiny stickers on both sides, and filled
with age-suitable books.

HINTS:
1) I prefer the Satin finish since it doesn't produce much
glare in photos, but the Matte also looks good, especially
on darker colours.
2) If you have nail polish in the colour you want, skip the
first clear sealer coat, but make sure to dull the shine with
a brush-on sealer at the end