From old to new - Dragon and Dinosaur

Nov. 2017

Time to make: 2 hours

Original design: Bill Macfarlane

 So back when I was making the Hound Dog slide, I had a few turkey neck bones left that I hung on to for future slides. What struck me is how much one looked like a dinosaur and the other like a dragon. So I went with it!

The dragon is painted with a dark green and has a black wash to bring our the contours of the bone. The eyes are yellow seed beads glued in place with crazy glue. The flames are a red feather I applied glue to and split  the vanes to form the flames. I also added a bit of the black wash to the feather in places. the feather was super glued to the mouth.

The dinosaur was easier still! I super glued a couple of air-soft bbs for the eyes and painted it white with craft paint. This time a gray wash was applied to bring out the contours.

 A couple of coats of Poly to seal them and a leather loop attached to the back to finish the slides off.

Slide of the Month - The "Old Scout" Mystery

November  2017

Time to carve: 3 hours

Finishing: 1.5 hour

Boy's Life - October 1996 page 52

Design: Jeff Springer






Here is an interesting slide but not because of the design (which I like) but because I can no longer find it online. Some years ago, I did find the article and made a copy of it for my notebook but recently when I went online I could not find the article on the Boy's Life "Wayback Machine" or using Google Books. How odd because I have a copy of the page (see below) from Boy's Life and there are outside references including Scouting magazine.

Carved from a scrape piece of Maple flooring, this was a challenging slide to make. First off the wood is very hard which means my knife has to be sharpened often. Secondly I should have been wearing my Kevlar carving glove when starting this slide. A trip to the emergency room and seven stitches later, I found myself using my "third hand" portable carving vice. (I talk about the vice in the blog another time.) Carving, sanding, adjusting, and more sanding to get the look I wanted to achieve. Painting with craft paints and given a couple coats of Poly to seal it off.