Paper Mâché Carousel - Central Column and First Primer Coat - Part 35

The old saying is that something taking a long time is like watching paint dry.  Basically, I have been doing just that this week; watching paint dry and watching paper mâché dry.

I have been adding layers of paper mâché to the central column.  From the standpoint of a picture, it does not look as if much has changed from last week to this week.  However, if you were to see it in person it would look much thicker this week.  I now have two layers of paper mâché on the inside and three layers on the outside.  

I still need to add at least one more layer to the inside, and two more layers to the outside.  Although this piece will not be bearing the total weight of the roof, I still want it to be plenty strong.  I do not want the weight of the roof to deform the cylinder.

Each layer has taken about forty-five minutes to an hour to apply.  It does not look as if it should take that long for each layer, but part of it has to do with the difficulty factor.  This is a tall cylinder and trying to work on it was hampered by my being so short that I had to either stand up to see into it or hold it on a slant, which then wanted to roll.  

The time for each layer also included the prep time for tearing the paper to the correct size and prepping the flour paste.  If the paper is the correct size, it will be easier to smooth it onto the project without a lot of wrinkles.  Fewer wrinkles mean less sanding and fewer defects in the finished piece.

I find that making the flour paste mixture works best if given a few minutes to hydrate.  I stir it constantly during that time to get rid of any flour lumps.  That way I have a very few lumps in it and that cuts down on sanding time later in the project.  Sanding is my least favorite part of the process.

While waiting for the paper mâché to dry, I started to add the first coat of primer to the underside of one of the plywood bases. Clearly it needs a second coat.  

I am using Gesso as a primer.  All of the pieces will be painted with acrylic paints, so I decided to use a primer that I knew was compatible with the paints.  

So that is all the progress for this week.  It does not look like a lot of work, but really it was about four hours across multiple days.  At times like these, I just remind myself not to get frustrated with how slow the process can be sometimes.  When that happens, I just have to tell myself to focus on the next step.  As long as I just make the next step, I will be closer to finishing this project.  

Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next update.

Next Step on the Carousel - Main Supports - Lining for Electrical Opening - Part 34

 I am reposting the picture of the carousel from last week because some readers may have missed it because the blog post was late.  Somehow, I managed to not hit the publish button.  I did not notice it until I signed on the blog on Thursday.  There are also more pictures after that to show what I have been working on this week.

I had just finished running my first test of the carousel with all the animals on it.  The test was to make sure the animals would all go up and down as planned and stay on the track.  It passed.  Nothing is screwed down or glued on yet, so things look a little out of kilter after the test.  Scroll back for the previous post for more details or folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com  

Now, on with the next steps that I worked on this week.

I began the paper mâché work on the oatmeal box that is the center support.  I removed the top and bottom from the oatmeal box and covered it with two layers of masking tape.

Yesterday I added the first layer of paper mâché to it.  Even using longer strips of newspaper, it took better than an hour to get it covered inside and out.  I will be putting on more layers, but it may take me a couple of weeks to get this part completed.

Once the cylinder has all of its layers of paper mâché, it will be painted and decorated.  I will be blogging more about that later.

Although the cylinder is strong enough to hold up the top platform on its own, this is not actually the main support for the carousel.  It is only decorative.  The central support column will be something else, but I will blog more on that later when I install it.

This is the underside of the bottom platform of the carousel.  I had my husband drill a hole through the platform so I could run the electrical cord for the rotating platform that turn the other two platforms. The plywood is pretty rough, and I was concerned that in time it might damage the insulation on the wiring.  I used some wool felt and lined the hole top and bottom.

I lined the top of the platform in the same way, then added an extra round piece of felt on top of that.  When I run the cord through it, I will probably cover that section of the cord with some electrical tape.

The platform in the center is where the rotating platform will sit.  Regular readers may remember from a previous post that my rotating platform was about a half an inch (1.27 cm) shorter than the humps that make the animals go up and down.  Adding the platform was my fix for that problem.

This is about all that happened this week.  Check back on Monday or Tuesday for the next post.  

First Full Setup of Carousel with all Animals - Part 33

Readers, I apologize for the late post.  Apparently, I never hit the publish button.   I did not see it until I signed on this morning.  

Regular readers may recall that I ran into some problems with the carousel last week.  After I downsized the platform for the carousel, one of the animals was causing a problem because it was too long.  The cat had a long fully extended tail.  It was brushing against the nose of the animal behind it.  I substituted the rabbit for the cat and that worked out without further trouble.  I really wanted to use the cat but sometimes on a project you have to make a change in direction in order for things to work.

Last week was a busy week for me and I really did not have any time to work on the project until this past weekend.  I was able to get some time to dry fit the whole carousel.  

Nothing is glued in at this point.  It was just a trial to make sure that everything was going to work as planned.  This was the first full test run with all the animals on it.  I was pleased that the animals all stayed on track and went up and down nicely.  

The photo makes it look like the poles are not straight up and down.  They are in real life, but since nothing is glued in place, yet the platforms tended to shift during the test.  I was in a rush, so I did not stop to true up the platforms before I took the pictures.

The next step on the carousel still has to do with the bottom section of the platform.  The motorized platform that will turn the middle and top platforms is electrical, not battery operated.  I did not want to have to take the carousel apart every time the battery needed changing.  The cord for the platform needs to come up from below the carousel.  I did not want to have the hole drilled for the cord earlier on because I needed to make sure where the sensor would face so that the remote could turn it on easily.  

The hole for the plug will be one inch (2.5 cm) in diameter.  I need half an inch (1.27 cm) in diameter for the plug to be able to clear the hole.  I need the extra space because I plan to line the hole with felt to keep the plywood from wearing on the cord.  I may also wrap that part of the cord with a little electrical tape for extra insulation.

This photo shows the rabbit and the ram.  

You can see the dowels extending above the top platform.  I have not cut off the extra length on them yet.  They might be only a little higher than the knobs on top or I might leave them slightly extended and put some pennants on top that will go up and down as the animals move around the platform.  The plans for the decorations for the carousel are subject to change.

I have a cautionary tale on one thing about the carousel.  The knobs that served as the feet of the platform and on the top platform have very little surface area for gluing. They are spherical, so there is only a small amount of surface touching whatever it is sitting on.  The ones on the top platform have even less space after they were drilled so the dowel could go through them.  I have had to go back a couple of times and reglue some of them.  

I think I have fixed that problem once and for all.  I used some Liquid Nails and troweled it in with a flexible painter's knife and really pushed it into the crevices and up the sides of the spheres.  The top ones may need a little sanding.

If I were to do it over again, I would probably go with some square blocks or flat circles rather than the spheres.  The spheres are more decorative but harder to work with overall.

The animal behind this horse is the rabbit.  The ears are pointing in different directions.  At the moment it looks a little weird, but the painting detail will make it more recognizable.

The next step after drilling and lining the hole for the electrical connection is to start to work on the central pillar.  The outer layer will be the oatmeal box covered in paper mâché and painted.  Even as an empty box it is strong enough to support the top platform, but it will also have some inner reinforcement.  I will be blogging on that in a later post.  

Once those tasks are completed, I will be onto the finishing the floor of carousel and painting the base and ceiling of the other two platforms.  Then I can get on to decorating and painting the animals.  That is what I am really looking forward to doing.  But this whole thing is a process.  The platforms need to be ready before I can go further.

Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.

Corrections on the Carousel - Part 32

It has been a week.  There is a lot going on now that Spring has arrived.  This week I have not had much time to put into my carousel project.  What time I did spend was working on fixing some problems that have cropped up.

Last week, I worked on drilling the holes in the animals so that they would be able to be mounted on their dowels.  That was a lot of work, and I had to give my hands a few days of rest before proceeding.  When I did finally get a chance to work on the next step, things just started to go a little wrong.  Fixable, but definitely some things needed change.

The problem started with the top layer of the carousel.  Regular readers may remember that there are small spheres that needed to be drilled to fit the dowels.  They were glued over holes that had been drilled in the plywood.  Their purpose is to help keep the dowels perpendicular to the other platforms.

I was assembling the animals and the layers of the platforms to give the carousel its full test run.  The previous tests on the carousel were done with only a couple of animals to make sure that the animals would stay on the track as planned.  The trouble started when I was tilting the top layer to insert the dowels.  Even though I had checked to make sure the drilled spheres were firmly attached before I started, they immediately started to roll when I started to push the dowels through.  The problem is that the spherical shape did not have enough gluing surface to give the spheres a firm hold.  So, I had to begin again on that segment.  I had to file off the old glue and then file down the bottom of each sphere to have a flatter gluing surface.  For good measure, I also used a thicker glue than before. That seemed to fix that part of the problem.  

I have not totally addressed the second part of the problem.  If you have been following this project from the beginning, you would know that I have had to make some changes from my original plans.  The main change was that I needed to downsize the carousel. I had originally planned to have two rows of three animals.  The problem was that to make that happen, the carousel was so large that I had absolutely nowhere to put it.  I cut the size down to eighteen inches in diameter and at first planned to use four animals, then decided that five animals looked better.  (In art, odd numbered gatherings look better than even numbered gatherings.)  So, I drew the pattern and my husband drilled in the five holes.  When I had set the animals out on the pattern everything looked okay, but it was only after the animals were mounted on the carousel that I could see the problem.

It was all fine until I started to put the animals on the carousel for the test.  I had wanted to use the two horses, the tiger, the ram, and the housecat.  It turns out the cat's tail is so long that it brushes the nose of the animal behind it.  I had also made a rabbit when I was making the six animals.  I think I can make it work if I substitute the rabbit for the cat.  The rabbit is a little less long and has a short fluffy tail.  The tiger may also be a little close to the other animals as well.  I did not get a chance to check that because by that time I was a little upset and thought it was better to quit for the day until I calmed down and had a little perspective on the problem.    I was really hoping that I would have a new picture to show you with all the animals on the carousel.  That is where I left off on the project this week.

So, the project is not ruined, it merely needs a little change to set things right.  I have a really busy week, and it is unlikely that I will even have a chance to work on it until the weekend.  I have some choices to make.  I can use the rabbit instead of the cat; I could cut off the cats tail and replace it with a differently shaped tail that would not be in the way; or I can change course and decide to make more horses and just have horses on this carousel and use the other animals on a smaller carousel.  I won't be able to decide until I can get back in the studio and work it out.    I will let you know in the next blog post. 

Check back Monday or Tuesday for the next post. 

  

The Next Step for the Carousel Animals - Part 31

 Today's post may seem a little short, but I have been working on this process for the past week.  I really made a lot of progress in small places, although I did not take as many photos.

Last week I was gluing up parts of the carousel including the wooden ball that sits on a dowel.  That ball end of the dowel is the part that will ride over the bumps to make the animals go up and down.  This week I wanted to get the animals ready for the dowel end that will be the pole to be able to go through the animals.  I had hoped to run an initial test with all the animals on the platform.  Unfortunately, getting the dowels through the animals was harder than I thought.

This is a view of the Ram, from above.  The ram was the hardest of the animals to make a hole in.  The ram's fleece was made from paper clay.  It felt like it was made from concrete.  I had been using an awl to poke through the initial hole on some animals, but this one was a no go on the ram.  I liked the awl because it was long enough that I was able to poke both the top and bottom pilot holes at the same time.  The paper clay was so tough that the awl could not be poked through it.  

I ended up pulling out a small hand drill that I keep in the craft room.  The good news was the drill was able to get through the paper clay with minimal effort and no additional damage.  The bad news is that it is a small drill and the drill bits were not long enough to go through and drill the second hole at the same time.  It took a lot of meticulous measuring to get the second hole in place.

This is the hole on the underside of the Ram.  The holes were not drilled that large to begin with on any of the animals.  I drilled smaller holes and then used a small round file to work on the holes to make them larger.  It required a lot of testing to make sure the holes fit the dowel firmly.  They needed to be large enough for the dowel to slide through the animal but tight enough to fit snugly for it to hold when it is glued to the dowel.

While I was filing, I had to keep checking to make sure the holes were in alignment.  So, it was filing the circle a little bit and check, file and check, repeat until done.  

I did this for all the animals.  The horses were easier because they were just paper mâché strips and flour paste.  The awl poked through those easily.  The ram, tiger, cat, and rabbit all had additional layers of paper clay to form their fur.  

Anyway, this is a picture of the ram on its stick.  It has not been glued to the stick yet as there is much work to do on all the animals before they are ready for permanent mounting.  They need to have the decorations added and painted before they are mounted for the last time. In this photo the stick is not perpendicular, just propped up against a lamp to give you an idea of how the animals will look.  

By the time I finished the last animal, I was pretty much ready to quit for the week.  It was enlightening as to how thick the paper mâché was.  I think it was nearly a quarter of an inch (6.35 mm) thick on both the back and belly of the ram.  I think that I will have plenty of area for gluing on this.

Anyway, that is the progress for this week.  Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.

Working on Gluing Things Together - Carousel Project - Part 30

 This week I did not have a lot of time to work on the project, but I have started to glue pieces together.  Things are starting to move quickly on this project.

These pieces are the dowels that will hold the animals and the wooden knobs that will drive over the bumps that will make the animal go up and down.  The drilling was not perfectly sized, and I had to use a rasp on each one to get the final fit.  I also found that the dowels are not exactly symmetrical also.  

The dowels will be set aside until it is time to mount the animals on them.  It is another one of those "which came first the chicken or the egg moments."  I would like to go ahead and paint them while they do not have the animals mounted on them, but I have to glue the animals to the pole because the glue will not hold as well on paint.  As one person on the internet had explained in a video I watched years ago, "the hold of the glue would only be as strong as the hold of the last coat of paint."  His advice was spot on and although I no longer remember who that was, I would like to thank him for that piece of sage advice.

I am not sure I have mentioned the size of these round platforms recently.  Each of the plywood platforms is eighteen inches (45.72 centimeters) in diameter and one half inch (12.5 mm) thick.
  

The round, flat wheel shapes have been glued onto the second layer of plywood.  This layer is where the animals will be placed. They have been drilled out to slightly larger than the dowels (pictured above) because they are guides to help hold them straight up and down.  The dowels need to be able to move freely with no friction.  The dowels will be inserted upwards from below the platform and the knobs on the ends will rest on the bumps that make the animals go up and down.  

I might have preferred some differently shaped pieces here, but I wanted to use what I could find at the local craft store rather than trekking into the city to find better pieces at a wood working store.  

 This photo shows the third platform which forms the roof.  The dowels with knobs will come up from beneath the roof and poke through the holes in the knobs.  Once again, the knobs will help guide the dowel to keep going straight up and down.  I had actually thought that this might be a set of the wooden wheels would be underneath these knobs to make a more decorative look on this section, but I think that it made for a better glue joint without them.  The wheels are not flat on both sides.  One side has a small indentation in it leaving just a couple of thin areas that make for a very small gluing area.

At this point the dowels have not been cut to their final length.  I have not yet decided whether I want the dowels to be flush with the top of the knobs or whether I want to have them extend slightly higher than the knobs to show how the mechanism works.  

The main thing is that the dowels need to come up into the knob to reinforce the dowel being plumb.  The rotating platform will drag the knobs on the dowels over the bumps, and the friction is going to cause the knobs to slightly lag behind the platform.  The reinforced areas will help keep the drag to a minimum. (See previous blog posts for a photo of the bottom platform with the bumps attached.)

I gave the glue twenty-four hours to dry before dry fitting the platforms together (along with the oatmeal box that is a stand in for the central column) and gave it a test to make sure that everything was lined up.  The knobs on the dowels fit across the bumps and everything stayed in line.  The knobs went up and down as hoped.  I was ecstatic!  I can hardly wait to see what this looks like with the four other animals attached.

This photo is the same from last week.  I did not take another after the test.  The animals have not yet been mounted onto the dowels.

Once again, many thanks to my husband who did the sawing and drilling and helped out with technical advice.  This project is much the better for his input and encouragement.

Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.

A Sneak Peak at How the Carousel Build Will Look and Project Update - Part 29

 This week I was able to put some of the parts of the carousel together to see the shape of things to come for the carousel.  I won't keep readers in suspense.  I am blogging about this first because I know that most readers will want to see that.  This is the first picture.  Although nowhere near completed, it gives me some inspiration for the future of the project.

The bottom platform holds the rotating mechanism (see previous posts for photos of that).  I will post more pictures of it in future posts.  The second platform will be for the animals and will have a plank wood floor overlaying the plywood.  I have not yet decided on whether to cover the first layer with a curtain or leave it open so people can see how the mechanism works.  I cannot completely close it in because the rotating mechanism has an on/off switch and an eye so it can be turned on and off by remote control.  Either way, it needs some kind of access.

At this point, the top looks a little high, but that is because the horse is not yet fitted to the pole.  It is just propped up against it.  Once the horse has the holes drilled for the pole to go through it, the horse will not be standing on the platform.  It will be about a half an inch off the ground.  It needs some head room to make sure that when the horse is moving over the higher section of the bumps below that it has enough clearance to make it look right.

Although the animal forms are complete, they do not yet have the saddles, bridles, or the flower and ribbon decorations.  I did not want to start that part of the project yet until I knew where I needed to drill the holes to mount the animal on the pole.  I cannot begin the painting of the animals until all of that is complete.  For those new to the carousel blogs, I say animals not horses because there are different animals on this carousel.  It will have two horses, a house cat, a tiger, and a ram.  I had seen a carousel once that had those animals and more, and that carousel was an inspiration for this piece.  Although now, seeing this prancing horse on the carousel makes me sort of wish I had made all horses.  I hope that will pass.  I don't want to spend months making more horses, but I remind myself that there is still time.

Imagine the future top of the carousel.  It will not be flat.  I am thinking it will have a multi-colored top that will look like a circus tent.  The protruding parts of the dowels will be cut down to an inch or half an inch above the ball on the roof.  More on the reason for those balls will be in future posts.

The center pillar, which at the moment is a full box of oatmeal to make it sturdy enough to hold up the plywood, will be the oatmeal box reinforced externally and internally to make it strong enough to carry the weight.  It may have some other filler in the center for extra support (but not oatmeal).  Once that is completed it will be painted and probably have some mirrors on it to reflect the animals as they go around the circle.  

Anyway, this is the first glimpse I have had of how the carousel might work.  It is just the basic start of the project, but it has given me a lot of encouragement.  I needed it.  In long term project like this it can be discouraging at times.  When I think of how much work needs to be done to complete it sometimes, I just want to crawl into a corner somewhere.  The only way to combat that is to focus on just the next step.  That is all I have to do today is the next step.  The project will finish in its own time.  

I do sometimes sell a piece when I have held it long enough to become bored with it, but I do not like to do things on commission because I don't like to be under pressure to complete a project.  Some people thrive on pressure, but I am not one of them.  Making things is my "happy place" where I go to escape the stresses of life.  I don't want to complicate that.

Today's project update is to show that the holes have been drilled out for the balls to fit onto the dowels that will be the poles for the horses and the ones that will sit on the roof.  The craft store did not have the balls and wheels with the size hole that I needed.  That is probably just as well, because I am finding that the dowels are not exactly uniform throughout its length.  Even after drilling, I am finding that I need to do a little filing with a small file to make the balls fit where I need them to fit.  Some of them have to be tight enough to hold when glued in place.  Others need to be loose enough to support the dowel but allow for free movement.  

So, as I said earlier, I only need to focus on the next step.  One step at a time this project is moving forward.

Check back next Monday or Tuesday for the next blog post.