Hi All,


A wedding gift for my younger brother and his lovely lady, and something far better then a new toaster

I offered (!! arrgh) to make a sculpt of them. Well, it went from cake topper to free standing, after the cake is one of those ones that is a pyramid made of all those tiny little pastries.....with the structural strength of a marshmallow!

Super Sculpey is already the base material, using Gary JD method of sculpting, with (planned) frequent stops here to ask for feedback!!!

Going to redo a bike kit, for long term strength, as not sure how well it will stand up gravity after a few years - the plastic parts of the kit I mean, not the Sculpey stuff.

Him, her, plus her son and his dog to be sculpted, a whole family deal......

Onto the pictures!!!

Plus, for the hell of it, a small frog from the garden, discovered him while tending to duties around the place! (Life is what shows up, while making other plans! )

Cheers

Very interesting project Jamie.

Jamie,

That will be a really cool present. I am not sure if you know him but Bill Chilstrom did the exact same thing for my wife and I. Everyone loved it and it was quite the talk at the wedding. Here is what Bill did for us. He even sculpted my bad right leg.

Joe

Joe,
You look younger then that day.....( if i can believe the pictures if seen from you)

Marc

Hey Marc,

LOL much younger and more hair, now less and more gray!!!

Joe

Aren't we all???

Bike frame - started

G'day

Tony, thanks for looking in

Joe, great to see a small statue of you & the beautiful bride - I see this as a long term gift for both of them, kind of thing that gets wheeled out 20 years later kind of thing!

Plus, I'll be putting the wedding date as the licence plate, so as to help Ben (younger brother) remember the anniversary date! Multiple layers here!

Marc, Carl, thanks for the look in also, appreciate it all!

Before working on the figures, worked on the motorbike frame; had my stepfather, Dave, review the plans, he pointed out some flaws in my work, so we revised them together, and this has probably saved upwards of 20 - 50 hours of work (and rework!!! - Phew!!!) because if the bike frame is wrong, the sit of the figures will be wrong, etc etc, so the 'down stream' effects of a simple wrong plan have been averted (fingers crossed)

after a practice run, decided to add some a piece of paperclip to insides to the brass tube, to add strength, and to avoid the 'wobble' as I use soldering iron to solder the parts together. Seemed to work!!

Made up a cardboard guide, to keep the angles consistent.

so some more progress, not sculpting strictly speaking, still part of the project.

Joints are a bit scruffy, I'm going to close my eyes to that, it's amazing what sandpaper and a coat of paint can do!

Cheers

Hi Jamie, what an ambitious project, when is the wedding pencilled in for.
I sincerely hope the future bride and groom realise that these things take time and can't be rushed and that they'll consider this before making their final arrangements. As if. Good luck and I look forward to following progress.

Cheers Ken

Great idea for a sculpt Jamie and quite a project to undertake especially involving the biks also.
By the looks of it the groom is going to take more putty than the bride to complete

looking forward to seeing more of this one as it developes.

Steve

Scratch building and/ or sculpting is kind of like Sudoku......
......it looks easy to begin with, then after 10 minutes, one wonders how to get all those tiny little details to align properly!

Enough navel gazing....

Ken, thanks for that. Wedding is scheduled for early April (this year!)...and therapy will begin at the reception, with vigorous application of alcohol.

Steve, yep, bike plus all figures tripled the work load - at a minimum.

I figure though that this kind of project will have a huge pay off for the loving couple, for years after-wards.

I just hope like hell for three things;

1 -I complete the project on time
2 - it survives the trip from Victoria to Adelaide intact
3- it survives the reception intact

After that, I'll have time to repair or repaint. And sober up / come to my senses

Production.

worked a bit more on the frame, by using the figure guide to estimate where the hips would naturally articulate from, particularly from the pelvis/ femur junction. They have a natural arc, and the bike should be no wider then this arc.

Once that was sorted, (an arc of about 30ish to nearly 40 degrees), got my width, then added some cross braces to the bike.

I realise, in hindsight, that I will probably rework the frame into a left & right half, get them symmetrical, then add cross braces. The current effort has a slight twist.....

Because it's soldered, I can apply the soldering iron, melt the solder and reuse the parts - cuts down on waste.

Then I started working on the radiator.

A plastic sheet, cut to size, with evergreen styrene rod glued to it, to simulate the structure of the radiator core.

Added a photo etched mesh to the front, which hides a lot of detail at this point.

I may have been better off to put the screen at a 45 degree angle instead of at 90 degree angle.....then I remind myself with these calming words....
"next time...."

Next step, rework the bike frame, and rough out an engine. That should be enough, for now.

Cheers, comments and criticism welcome

Work continues....and now some pictures.

Here is the frame for the motorcycle, under construction, taped the brass rods to a block of wood, this gave me a stable platform to work from, with out having to grow either a third arm, or heat proof skin....

Also did the front end, at the top of which is where the head stock goes, (I think this is the official terms)

for all us non riders, it's the top bit where the handle bars go, and meet the forks for the front wheel.

As this is a scratch (and hurried!) build, I didn't put kinks in where a riders legs will go, I'll just fudge around that.

It will be a big bike Ben will be riding. Fortunately, there will be a side car and 4 figures in total, so they will help 'fill the frame'.


Also can be seen how I roughed out the fuel tank, braced the insides with thick ribbing, and then gave it a skin just to seal it over. I'll be adding some extra layers on top, and the sides, to give it a more rounded tear drop effect, rather then the wedge shape it has now.

And things start to come together.....

after cannibalising a pair of Tamiya motorcycle kits, focused on the engine, checked out the dimensions for the forks, and checked rough sit of the rider to the frame itself.

looking OK so far.

The engine unit, even massively incomplete, is starting to look like an engine now, from the side and the 3/4 view.

After getting most of the frame done, I am about ready to do the head stock (handlebars & forks) and then I can split my time in a rolling fashion between sculpting, construction, and painting.

some of you may have noticed a brass rod coming out of the rear of the body block - this is a working handle, and will become an anchor point for fixing the bike to the kit in the future, then building a seat around that.


well, progress so far. More real soon.

cheers

Brilliant Jamie. You're definitely out of your comfort zone on this project, and doing a great job.

Jamie good to see soem more progress on this one and that bike is starting to come together very nicely, you definetely have your work cut out here mate but it looks like you are handling it well.

Steve

tony, thanks for that. Never really though about the comfort zone thing....it's kinda like going for something though - obstacles are those scary things we see when we take our eyes off the goal!

Steve, thanks for the look in, hoping when the figures start to progress, you'll be offering an insight or two!

Cheers

Everything is looking good so far!
I think I'll try to do something like this for 2 friends of mine that are getting married.It would be pretty nice.I've seen a lot of the regular cake toppers and I'm not very impressed.
What you are doing here is a very nice gesture.

Carl,
thanks for the look in,

Paul,
it would be great for you to do a cake topper!

mine actually wont be sitting on top of the cake - too big, too heavy. But it will probably be the "wow" factor of the night.......

more soon!

cheers

Wheels and frame coming together now...

...wow, a bit of Deja Vu.....or Deja Moo, the thought that I've smelled this brand of fertilizer before.

Last post, I was struggling to get the spokes on the wheel correct.......

which meant rework, rework, recalculate......

In the end, I dug out some styrene tubing (the Evergreen stuff) and glued a whole bunch of layers together till I had a decent hub. Kept the original rims, as I couldn't be bothered scratch building those, when I had some adequate samples at hand - just carve off the supplied spokes, smooth out the marks, and proceed.

I used the system of dividing the 360 degrees of the circle by the amount of spokes I wanted (Ten spokes, arranged in staggered pairs), which gives me a unit of 36 degrees apart. Worked it out on a graph paper, plopped the prepared rim on, and drilled away.....OK, easy bit done.

As for the hub, they are still 36 degrees apart, just much closer together.

Switching to a thinner wire helped, as the first rod was too thick....by comparison, it looks like a wheel off a steam locomotive!

As for the hub, it turned out that by measuring the distance between the spokes, (about 2mm) I could set a compass, and 'walk' the compass along the tape.

the tape is laid flat on the work bench at this point, by the way....

attach tape to hub, drill holes in a marked points...

one thing I did guess right was to leave the spokes over length, and attach them only to the hub. As I added more spokes, it has a tendency to auto centre.

Double check against plans on graph paper, the glue the rim wires into place, once everything is centered.....


Once I got the first wheel done, I found it easy to complete the second rear wheel....

then I built (and rebuilt!) the forks on the front, and got them attached to the head stock.

Lots of language used to encourage the soldering process......the kind not to use in front of kids, your mum, or the vicar......

Now I have my basic frame work done, which now means I can return to the figures, and get those dimensions correct, as well as the likenesses......

reviewing time, space, and the need to work, shower, eat and so on, I may have to simplify the project just down to the happy couple. The Son and the dog, in the side car, looks like they may have to wait......