Every once in a while I let my excitement for a project get the better of me. In the process I manage to bite off WAY more than I can possibly chew. The project I'm working on currently is one of those.
It started innocently enough. (sense a pattern here) A good friend of mine overcommitted himself and I figured I might just bale him out. In the process I jumped into his shoes... and good.
He needs to build a world class display for a high end garden show in the big city. I figured it would be a wonderful opportunity to show off one of my new welded steel sculptures... a good time to test the market in this presticious show.
But then we got to talking and decided a large piece was just the ticket... maybe 10 feet tall... yup, that would do fine.
The dragon will be picking petals off of a flower... she loves me... she loves me not... and obviously is biased towards the former... and will be placed in the middle of a large flower bed for the display.
I figured I had built a 4 foot bird in about 10 hours so a 10 foot dragon should only take twice as long. I was a bit optimistic it seems. It turns out that a 10 foot dragon has about 10 times the surface area and the scales are considerably smaller than a birds feathers...
I have 30 hours into this crazy thing so far and am maybe a third of the way through. And the Thursday deadline is coming kinda fast....
Its going to be a loooong week!
Initial sketch
Progress so far
-grampa dan
[ May 23, 2005, 10:05 PM: Message edited by: Dan Sawatzky ]
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Hey Dan,
You're dragon around a couple of extra spaces. Kill off the spaces between the brackets and the image address and we can get a dose of dragon breath.
Edited for:
Dan was already doin' what I was tellin' him while I was tellin' him what to do.
[ May 23, 2005, 10:03 PM: Message edited by: David Harding ]
Posted by Kelly Thorson (Member # 2958) on :
Are each of those scales individual? Looking pretty cool already. I wouldn't be able to leave the head for last though - it would kill me. Looking forward to more pics.
Posted by Dan Sawatzky (Member # 88) on :
Kelly
Each of those scales is cut by hand with my PLASMA CUTTER and then welded into place. Actually I cut up a whack of them and then weld until my arm is falling off and then back to cutting again.
The good news is that it uses up ALL of my scrap plate in the shop (as well as two whole sheets of new stuff)
I have to work from the tail up so the scales overlap.
Doing the head will be the REWARD for slogging through the endless scales on the rest of the project.
grampa dan
Posted by Talisman (Member # 1869) on :
Cool!
Posted by Peter Arnott (Member # 4650) on :
Dan, that is going to be absolutely brilliant when it's finished.
This new CNC router your getting, is there any way you can hook the plasma cutter up to it? Might take the ache out of those arms. Just a thought.
Posted by Dennis Raap (Member # 3632) on :
Cool project Dan !!!
Posted by bill riedel (Member # 607) on :
Dan, you are proving to us that anything can be done as long as you have the imagination and the love of the challange. After doing this, the next bigger project will be a piece of cake. You get my vote for one of the very best.
Posted by Janet Bakewell (Member # 725) on :
Good luck with that, Dan... it's beautiful! Hope you make it 'til Thursday!
Please post more pics when you're done.
Posted by Pat Welter (Member # 785) on :
Holy dragons breath Grampa Dan...looking really cool...Are you fighting dragons in your sleep yet???
Posted by Peter Schuttinga (Member # 2821) on :
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
and then welded into place. Actually I cut up a whack of them and then weld until my arm is falling off and then back to cutting again.