For several years I have wanted to build a large steampunk Airship using yet another hull from a kids toy.
The idea is to have a couple of large dirigibles encased in a girder structure and have a ship suspended underneath. Easy right?
I am starting this in March 2023 and I have no idea how long this will take or indeed if it will ever actually get finished.
Before I started on anything to with the hull, I wanted to see if I could build the dirigibles. If not then I would move on to one of the other large projects I have in mind..
To start with, I designed the basic encasing girder structure and then added a couple of 2 litre plastic bottles.
This was the sort of thing I was aiming for. But I was not keen on how the two halves joined together, so would need to be fixed. There was too much MDF and it did not look right.
After some new bits were cut, the image below is how they will finally join together.
Sometimes less is more.
The first attempt at a propeller was okay, but it does not look good without angled blades, so another drawing was required. I’ll have to come back to this.
April 2023: The next bit was to work on the nose cone. This needs to hide the neck of the bottle.
There were lots of closely packed bits to conceal what would be underneath.
A complex design that was fun to draw, but it was tricky to build as al of the tabs had to align with the circular rings. But it did go together first time with no tweaking required.
It looks like some sort of car air filter…
Now that the basic girder structure is just about finished, I need to tackle the plastic bottles and cover them in something. The first idea is to cover them in bandage to give a decent texture.
A loft full of lead 