Slide of the Month Extra- Home grown slide

April 2017

Time to make: 1 hour (give or take a few years)

Original design: Nature









An old friend once told me "slides don't make themselves", well maybe I had to do some work but there is no way I could have designed this myself.  I was removing some bushes from around my house about a couple of years ago and I noticed the nice contrast in the colors of this wood. Thinking about a different project, I decided to keep a section of the trunk to see what I could do with it. Knowing the wood would have to be completely dry, I set it aside in my garage until this year. When I started to cut the wood up, I was amazed with the patterns I was seeing and these slides were started. Both were cut about 3/4 " of an inch and sanded smooth. I glued a wooden loop to the back and three coats of clear poly later they were ready to wear.

Slide of the Month April 2018 - Diver's Helmet

April 2018

Time to carve: 2 hours

Finishing: 1.5 hour

Boy's Life July, 1976

Design: Wayne Mason








An interesting idea, weigh down a person with a big metal helmet while pumping air down to them. There is pretty good video of an old diving suit out on you tube.

Carved out of Poplar and the grate is made out of regular paper staples. I also used some small nuts super glued to the carving. Its painted with black, rose brass and yellow brass metallic hobby paint

Side of the Month Extra - (Carve a face) 70's Scout

March 2018

Time to make: 3 hours

Design Bill Macfarlane

Original concept: Bill Burch








So while I was carving the Bill Burch slide of the month I got an idea. I was a Scout back in the 70's and I thought what if I did a Scout of that era. Complete with the red beret and sunglasses, it is what I might have been wearing at a Camproee or Summer Camp.

First I sketched out the basic design and with another a block of maple, I cut out the profile of the slide. Taking what I learned from the original care-a-face slide I did, the details like the chin turned out much better than the first. I finished the slide up with hobby paint and gave it a couple of coats of poly.

Slide of the Month March 2018- Carve-a-Face

2018

Time to make: 3 hours

Boys Life "Slide of the Month"

April 1975 page 54

Original design: Bill Burch and John Taylor






Bill Burch had been carving bolo slide for years and has been at many Scout functions including National Jamborees. I was told he had tied over 48,000 slide before his death on September 25, 2012.  A fascinating article about him can be found here and a moving video here. It's with honor I try to recreate the Slide of the Month he did for Boy's Life.

Starting with a block of maple, I cut out the profile of this face then turning it on its back, I cut out the outline from the remaining wood. Lots of cuts and wood removal before I could start shaping the slide. Countless breaks to sharpen my knife and then the sanding.Painted with hobby paint and given a couple of coats of poly.

Slide of the month - Voskhod

 February 2018

Time to design: 3 hours

Time to print: 4 hours (your times may vary)

Finishing: 3 hour

Original design: Bill Macfarlane

Try it yourself : Voskhod slide





The Voskhod space capsule was a larger modified version of the Vostok capsule large enough for two cosmonauts. Voskhod 1 was designed as an unmanned mission and Voskhod 2, a manned flight, included a inflatable airlock for the first space walk by Alexey Leonov. 

The mission almost ended tragically as Alexey space suit ballooned to a point he could not reenter the airlock. Luckily he was able to reach a valve to release some of the air out of his suit so he could get back through the airlock.

Based on the Vostok design by nemilya I was able to modify the model to include the airlock and backup retro engine in Tinkercad. To my knowledge this is the only model of the Voskhod ready for printing on a 3D printer. It was printed on the same SeeMeCNC Orion printer I did the Vostok on because I could not seem to get a good print on the Ultimaker 2. The green is spray paint and the top and bottom is silver craft paint. The inflatable airlock is painted with a white paint pen 

...and speaking of stamps- Stamp shadow boxish

January 2018

Time to make: I lost track of time (I was having so much fun)

Original design: Bill Macfarlane

Years ago I saw a wonderful book that had been cut around illustrations in the book and layered together to form a piece of art. I though to myself recently that this same process would make some great slides so I went looking for pictures of Scouting stamps. I enlarged the pictures to the size I wanted the finished slide to be and made several copies of the image. Using an old 1993 Almanac we were throwing away, I pulled out several pages to about a 1/8 inch thickness. I coated the edges these pages with some Mod Podge and left it overnight to dry. The next day I cut out the images of stamps and glued them to the pages. Using a band saw I carefully cut out the images and pages into their shapes.  Once again using Mod Podge, I sealed the outside edges let it dry over night. Now here is the interesting part. With an x-acto knife, I cut away the background of the stamp leaving just the frame and the principle parts. The first stamp above, for example, I cut away everything but the frame, the Explorer Scout (saluting), the Boy Scout, and the Cub Scout.

I did this through all the layers of the paper pages. Once done I coated the inside of the areas I cut with Mod Podge and let it dry over night. Taking another block of the same image, I repeated the process but this time I only left the frame,  Boy Scout and the Cub Scout.

Mod Podge to the inside cut surfaces and set this one aside to dry. The third block left only the frame,  the Cub Scout  and Mod Podge treatment.

The forth block had everything cut away but the frame and more Mod Podge.

I also took this opportunity to  Mod Podge around the part I removed to give me a solid piece to cut out the Scout symbol. I cut half the Scout symbol out and then Mod Podged.

When dry I cut the other side of the symbol and applied Mod Podge to this side.

 The next day, I painted the inside edges of each with some black paint. When the the paint was dry,  I started with the another block that had nothing cut from it and glued the first block to it using the Scouts and frame as my guide to alignment. For the third layer, I glued the second block, the one with only the Boy Scout and the Cub Scout, to the first and bottom block. The forth layer was the Cub Scout block and the final layer was the frame block. When the glue dried I trued up the sides and the painted the sides. To finish the slide I glued a loop to the back and gave the slide a couple of coats of poly.

I enjoyed making the US Boy Scouts Stamps and even the stamp of the first and only Chief Citizen Scout.

***NOTE: Editorial comment ahead ***

Some might notice I have not include the 2010 Scouting stamp.

 I don't consider the stamp to be a representation of the Boy Scouts of America.

Slide(s) of the month - Stamps

January 2018

Time to make: 1 hour

 Boys Life "Slide of the Month"

"Button 'N' Things" May 1959, page 58
Kenneth Damm

"Postage Stamp" July 1987, page 56
Robert Schleicher

"Stamp" May 1978, page 67

Wayne Mason



When I was a Scout, Stamp Collecting Merit Badge was a very popular merit badge to earn during the cold days and nights of winter. Now when you combine two hobbies, (a philatelsideist?), the results can be stunning. 

The first stamp, a 1929 1 cent Ben Franklin, is mounted on a coat button. The loop is a coat hanger which the ends are glued into the holes of the button. But more on this slide later...

 The middle slide is made using wooden knob with  a 3/4 inch eye screw, to form the loop, screwed into the knobb.  The stamp is a 1939 "50th Anniversary of Statehood" for Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota 

The last stamp is mounted on a thin piece of 1/8 inch painted plywood with a wooden loop glued to the back. When is a stamp not a stamp? Well when I was researching this stamp I discovered the Republik Maluku Seltan I have is a private issue stamp with no postal value. Henry Stolow, a stamp dealer in New York, Munich and Berlin, had many stamps of "doubtful validity" created with deliberate printing errors and overprints. In addition he also involved in creating many fake stamps for the Indonesian Maluku Islands as an independent nation.

 Originally, the "Buttons 'N' Things" slide showed a picture of the coat button with macaroni letters spelling out

Pack 3
Den 2

Well, I'm out of macaroni letters but have a couple of other items mentioned in the article which could be mounted on coat buttons. Besides a stamp, a small radio tube and electronic parts were also mentioned as something interesting for a slide. I decided to mount a nixie tube