Faux Tesla Coil Project-Part 14- Steam Engine

I'm late getting my post up today because internet service has been down in our area since sometime yesterday afternoon.  I'm glad to be back online.  Since I could not blog this morning, my husband and I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and saw the Chihuly glass exhibit.  It was really a unique exhibit and well worth seeing if it comes to your area.

I've been working this week on the steam engine and dynamo for the diorama.  Like the Tesla Coil, it is an artistic representation of a steam engine not a real steam engine.  I wanted the steam engine and dynamo to look like the machines of ages past, when the machine was not just a piece of equipment, but a work of art in its own right.  I'm thinking of times when machines were bronze and polished brass and steel.  I painted the boiler with a metallic bronze.   Since I posted last, I have painted and varnished the components of the steam engine.  I have glued in the pressure relief valve and the on/off lever.  I am still painting on two gauges that will be attached to the front of they boiler.  Once I have all of the other parts completed, I will be adding the gears that represent the the parts that drive the dynamo.

The cylinder of the dynamo is painted with a metallic gunmetal craft paint.  The spokes are painted bronze.  The cylinder will be wrapped with copper wire.  The cylinder of the dynamo is a plastic spool that I covered with paper mache' and then painted.  I would really have preferred to paint it, but none of the paints I have are rated for plastic.  Rather than spend time painting it and risk having it flake off later, I decided to cover it with paper mache'.  It was somewhat difficult to get paper mache' down into those tiny spaces.  I used really small bits of paper and pushed them into the openings with a skewer.

As I was starting to paint the dynamo, I realized that I had never made the base for the dynamo.  I started on that yesterday.  I need to get at least one more layer of paper mache' onto it before I can paint it.  The spool will sit on this stand with a piece of skewer as its axle.

As I posted on the blog recently, I am going back and forth as to whether or not I want to add a lab coat to my anthropomorphic pumpkin figure.  At the moment I am leaning towards making a go of that.  My big fear is that I will mess it up and not be able to fix it.  If that happens, I guess I will start over with a new figure.  That really isn't that much of a problem, but I'm getting close to the end of the project and I'd really like to be finished with it.  Tune in next time to see if it works or not.