Today I learned that if you don’t update WordPress for four years, it starts to crumble apart like a sand castle with the tide coming in.

Anyway, here’s a video.

So, yeah. This is going to be a long one, and does not follow my traditional format. I mostly used video instead of photos to document the process for this army display, and there is a lot of it. This article will mostly just be the relevant videos embedded in order, but with a few photos I did take added where appropriate to explain processes that weren’t feasible to cover in the videos.

I’ve never tried this format before, so it could suck. That could happen. We’ll see, I guess.

The Technical Walkthrough Video

Most of the work on this project involved cutting custom vector shapes out of Fresca box cardboard using a Silhouette Cameo 3 CNC cutter. If you know what all of those words mean, you can probably skip this video and still understand the rest of the update logs. Otherwise, I suggest starting here and enduring the hour of tedium so you have some idea what the hell I’m doing, because I definitely do not explain it as I’m going through the rest of the project.

October

I put all of my small update videos into six monthly compilations. For each month, I’ll embed the video, and then provide any photos afterward that felt like they fill in a gap somewhere in one of that month’s updates.

The aluminum frame at the center of the truck was made from bracelet blanks. I think the idea is that you use engraving tools to etch patterns into them, then curl them around your wrist.

For my purposes, these were just a convenient-to-purchase slug of metal that I could cut and drill into the shapes and sizes I needed. In this early photo, I’ve used paper templates printed from my Illustrator files, plus a sharpie, to transfer cut and drill markers onto the strips.

I did all of my cutting with a dremel, using grinding wheels.

The wheels wear down as they cut. I went through a lot of wheels.

I used a vise to hold the strips still, and then tightly held the dremel in two hands to cut. It’s fairly easy to make straight, accurate cuts as long as you grip hard with both hands.

The same is not true for drilling. Try as I might, I found that I couldn’t make the drill bite accurately where I wanted it to on a smooth aluminum surface. As a result, the first few holes were a millimeter off where I needed them.

After some experimentation, I added an extra step to the process– I first used a metal spike (from my sculpting tools) to etch a cross over the precise spot where the hole needed to be.

That provided just enough of a groove to keep the drill from drifting.

These are… most of the bits that made up the first stage of the frame. I ended up running out of aluminum strips, and had to hunt around at multiple Michaels locations to find one that had more stock.

Once all of the cuts were made, the strips locked tightly into each other.

I used twisted bits of wire to join everything together. Some through holes drilled for that purpose, and others just around the Xs where two strips cross.

The X-shaped vertical risers helps firmly lock the frame into a stiff rectangle.

November

November was a very busy month, but also had by far the most videos recorded, so there’s less to show here in the interstitial.

Hey look, it’s lights.

This is the most precisely-measured LED circuit I’ve made so far. The tolerances were absolutely tiny.

I am not a good solderer, so I had to re-do several of the joints before it all agreed to work.

Between the two glowy inner components, the nozzle on the right ended up looking much cooler than the column on the left. I find that amusing, because the way I displayed the army at the end made the less-good column very visible, and almost entirely hid the better-looking nozzle.

My tendency to waste my own time on details that no-one but me will ever see does make me chuckle, in between the bouts of sobbing.

Oh man, these stupid things.

#1 in  this beautiful MS paint drawing shows the wires I showed you earlier (the twisty pig tails) that I used to secure the unmoving joints. Those are easy to make, but limit the movement of the piece; if I swung the arm upward, eventually it would bump into the pigtail twist and stop turning. I needed the arms to swing most of the way around without obstruction, so whatever solution I applied to the final arms needed to not wrap around the top edge of the bars, and instead be fully secured just on the sides.

My initial solution for this was to use these:

They’re used to make jewelry; they’re a long piece of wire with a pin head on the end. In my initial mockups, I found that these worked well– the pin head stopped it on one side, and then I could curl the wire on the other side to secure it. Which all worked fantastically until the heads started snapping off. Apparently they aren’t welded on very well, and can’t take any stress. Sooooo that solution was out the window.

The other three numbered concepts above were candidates I came up with to replace the pins.

#2 was a really simple bent piece of wire. I switched to using these in my tests, but it was obvious they couldn’t work for the final construction, because they constantly fell out. The wire needed a larger stopper to above going back through the hole.

#3 was the same thing, but with a cardboard washer added. I could then super-glue the spare end to the cardboard, and that would be enough to hold it.

#4 skipped the washer, but put a more complicated twist onto the wires that would be much harder to fall through.

Here’s what I ended up making in the end:

The pieces I made were kind of a combination of #3 and #4. I made wiener-shaped wire twists, then put them through (1) a washer, (2) both metal strips, and (3) another washer.

Then, I used a spike and pliers to flatten the skinny end out, making it wide enough on both sides to not go back through. Finally, I super glued the wire to the washers.

All of this was very annoying and fiddly.

Booo.

As mentioned in the video, sewing the cardboard slats onto the conveyor ribbon required pre-punching the holes. On the test piece, I did this by lashing a dime onto my thumb with a band-aid, and then pushing on a needle. This turned out to still be quite painful; my thumb got very tired and sore just punching out these first few holes.

So for the full strips, I made a new tool. I made a hollow inside a wooden handle, and then put the needle inside it. This gave me a punch I could grip with my entire hand, which hurt a lot less.

Yay less hurting. ^_^

Sewing. *nods*

As I discussed in the video, I used a paper strip on the back to help me track where the holes were. Once all the sewing was done, I glued the cardboard slats onto the back at regular intervals, and then cut the remaining paper out to let it bend better.

December

I have almost no notes for December, because very little new work was done this month– just “more of what I’ve already been doing”.

The front area used cereal boxes instead of Fresca boxes, which you can see here by the lighter colour. The larger panels were needed to cut out the wide, flat shapes. This material turned out to be thicker than the cardboard I had been using, and much harder for my cutter to cut through.

Given the difficulties I encountered, In the future, I’ll probably try to avoid designs that need such large panels. I’d rather stitch together a few smaller ones than deal with the much harder cutting process. 🙁

This satellite dish was a copy of one I made ten years ago on my first Infinity terrain:

I put the LNB for the new one on upside down and didn’t notice it until it was too late.

January

January was sculpting month. As mentioned in the video, I decided not to slow myself down by trying to capture the sculpting. Besides, there are SO MANY sculpting tutorials on this site stretching over the last decade if you really want to see how I do it.

But, I did take pictures, so I will give a VERY FAST FLYOVER of the process here:

Referring to a skeleton diagram, twist wires into an armature. Mount it to a cork.

Apply Green Stuff epoxy putty around the wire.

While the green stuff is still soft, wrap Fimo polymer clay around it and squish it in. The clay doesn’t stick to metal on its own, but the clay will mix with the green stuff, and the green stuff will grab the metal.

Add more clay.

Add details.

Bake.

Ta-da.

It was very easy to find reference of a capybara skeleton from the side and top.

The Internet does not contain an image of a capybara skeleton from the front.

Does not exist.

Had to improvise.

Oh hey look it’s the same process.

First capybara.

More.

February

I did almost nothing in February that merited extra notes. Except the boat, which I didn’t spend much time on in the video.

For the boat, I made a side profile shape that felt adequately boaty. Then, I made top-down boaty cross sections, and then narrowed that shape at what felt like a good rate. I cut all the shapes out, and slotted them into each other to form this comb shape.

I then wrapped a few layers of aluminum foil around the cardboard to form an outer skin.

Finally, I glued layers of tissue paper around the foil.

Ta-da. Boat.

March

Any pictures of the work in March would just be pictures of finished, painted models.

So let’s just jump to that section on its own page.