Mr. Crab is just about ready for a night out on the town...
...first I just had to finish his manicure...
...add some studs for that trendy goth look...
...and finally get him all shined up!
He's still lookin' a bit pasty, but once we move him outside his color should really improve.
Well, things are starting to come together now - just a few more pieces and we'll be ready for color!!!
So, it dawned on me today that there are not a lot of "people" pictures in this blog series. And so I decided to remedy this situation post haste - with a few lovely shots of yours truly!
(me again...being consumed by the giant crab!)
This is where you insert tab A into slot B, except here tab A doesn't quite exist yet. But a few cuts, some bends, and couple choice curses when it comes out too small, and I'm ready to put it all together!
I wasn't quite sure where I wanted this second claw to go; at first I thought it would look good just resting on top of the bigger one...
I liked the "relaxed" feel it gave the crab (nothing like a chillin' crustacean), but the claws got a little too busy and convoluted. They needed some room to breath! So, I sat and I stared, and did some drawings, and a whole lot of thinking, and I finally decided to move them apart.
It was starting to look a lot better - much more 'active'! But being three-dimensional, you have to look at it from every angle - and from some view points the claw looked great, while others left a lot to be desired. So I kept moving it all about; tying it down, lifting it up, and twisting it all around, until...
...it was just right!
(There's nothing super important going on in this picture - it just makes me laugh because it looks like the crab is flying a really big kite.)
Once I had the claw in just the right position, with the perfect angle, and exact spacing, I realized that it was going to be tough to work on it with all those ropes attached...so I built a little stand, and welding right on!
It isn't a pretty stand but it does the job :)
And then once the claw is connected to the body, I can just cut the stand right off, and no one will know it was ever there! (I mean so long as no one checking out this blog ever tells anybody, that is).
I was beginning to wonder what I was going to use for the second claw, as I used up my motorcycle fenders on the first one. So I took a trip down Rt 1, stopping at all the motorcycle shops along the way, looking for one more fender. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone body who had any...that is, until my last stop at the Harley Davidson shop - thanks Shawn!!!
So, I matched one of the Harley's up with the last old fender I had from the Ant project, and magically I had my second claw!
Then I took a length of pipe, and welded it to two disk breaks, creating a little spindle.
And if you turn that spindle on it's side, it becomes a claw hinge - just like that!
And here it is all welded together - just need to add the face plates now...
So here we have one of the front claws ready for action. (I ran out of primer today, so I used some left over black and blue paint instead)
Wow, that little claw was heavy - but here it is put in it's place.
My grandfather came by for a quick visit after I got this part attached - he called it a "really big nut cracker". I think he's right!
So, I still wasn't completely sold on my claw design - I just couldn't decide if I liked the smaller half of the claw sticking up, or if I should try something else. And after much deliberation, I decided that if I just cut it off, I would have to worry any more! If it's gone, then it's gone - time to move on!
Once it was gone I knew I made the right decision! I grabbed another fender for the new top half, and I was immediately in love :)
Getting closer to the finish point...
...even closer...
...now I just have to fill in holes, let it dry, and it'll be ready! Again, I resorted to bond-o as my gap filler (with a little bit of sticky-backed metal mesh). As I'm working with vehicle parts, it just made sense to use vehicle repair methods...no need to reinvent the claw!
Ok, so the first step is always 'taking inventory' - here I have a propane tank, a section of pipe, a fire extinguisher, a scuba tank, and a "refrigerant" tank. Once I've got all my parts for making the crab claws laid out, I can try and see how I'll actually use them together.
So then it's time to starting cutting things open. I used the big white tank to start with, since it was roughly the size I had in mind.
However, the tank wasn't quite the right shape, so I decided to try and cut out a section on the tip to make it a bit more pointy.
Unfortuantely, you can't always envision how things will turn out, until you actually do it. So now that I have a big white whale, it's time to make some changes and bring it back to the crab claw I was aiming for!
Luckily, I still had some left over motorcycle fenders from my giant ant project, so I slapped one on Moby here, and voila! - we have a claw!
Finally, it was time to figure out how this guy was going to attach itself to the body...nothing like doing exploratory surgery on a giant crustacean. So, I got it roughly in the right place, and then took some measurements for the "arm phase".
The next step was to do some priming, that way I could keep the metal from rusting. It's also a good way to see how the pieces look all together. When the sculpture is made up of different pieces, it's easy to get distracted by the different colors. When it's all one color, you can focus on the actual shape of the form, and see if it's working.
I decided that the tiny gaps between all the little body pieces looked too messy, so I got some more Bond-o and got to work filling them all in.
Next, I'll just let it all dry overnight and come back tomorrow to give it a quick sanding.
Here is my new best friend Andrew cutting out some crab "feet" for me. I have come to realize that hard work just isn't much fun, so it's always better to get someone else to do it :)
We found a nice piece of 1/2 inch steel plate about 3 feet wide and 8 feet long (the first piece was about four times as big - so if you ever need to build a football field out of solid steel, I know where to look), but I only needed a few little wedge shapes. So a few heated moments later with the torch we had the six pieces!
Unfortunately, the shapes were still kinda rough, so I just hit them all with my trusty little grinder, and voila! - nice and smooth.
Then they all took a wire brush "bath"...
...and they were ready to join the party!!!
