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.
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