At first the "rider" was to be fastened to the seat. You can see the initial plan to carve a gluing plug at the "riders" butt which would be glued into his seat in the photo below. I decided against gluing the rider to the seat. The rider can be easily place on his seat by placing his hands on the handlebars and pivoting him down onto his seat.
With the design laid out, removing excess wood on the band saw was simple.
The scooter is carved in tupelo wood. The rider is carved in basswood.
(And it will be the last carving I undertake in basswood!
I worked extra hard to remove all the "fuzzies" from carving him with burrs.)
Once again I was fortunate enough to be able to trim the sketches off the piece for references.
At first, I can get reasonably aggressive removing wood on both pieces.
To begin fitting the rider, I had to stop at the stages above to give me some room to "fit" him to the scooter.
About this time I began to give serious thought as to what I can get away with regarding the handlebars. It's safe to say they'd be broken by the time I could get them thin enough to do the job.
Working my way into the handle bars and the gauge cluster I reasoned it best to use a piece of metal for the handle bars. But, how do I glue a round tube so it will not rotate in its place.
Thanks to a local craft store, I picked up a selection of soft (bendable) aluminum rods.
They fit the bill perfectly. I bent them with pliers so I could make tighter bends however, the soft metal marks easily. (I can live with the marks!) The way the aluminum marks so easily gave me the idea to make bigger "gouges" (similar to knurling) using the plier jaws in the center of the rod which will be glued to the top of the "forks" giving the glue something to "bite" into and prevent the handlebars from rotating. The notch for the handlebars was completed by first drilling a 1/8" hole through the point where the handlebars would be fitted. Then using a tiny rotary saw made two slices to make a notch to slide the handlebars into the fork area.
After adding lots of instant glue, I fit a small piece of wood (with a fair amount of pressure) into the cut out for the handlebars and finished it off.
After much finishing with fine and extra fine burrs the pieces were ready for sealing and color.
You may notice at this point, I removed the base at the tires. I originally planned to leave the base on so I would have a reasonably good support on the finished mount rather than tiny spots at the bottom of the tires. It worked out better to remove the base. Plus, I had better access to the underbody of the scooter.
At last, both pieces are ready for sealing.
All along I kept planning how to secure the scooter to the base so it will hold up under being handled. I came up with the idea to run a long thin woodscrew through the mount and into the most central solid section of the scooter, in front of the rear wheel. I added a 1/8" dowel to the front and rear wheel to prevent the piece from pivoting.
I learned a good lesson when tightening the screw to hold the piece to the mount. I needed to draw the piece down strong enough to "bottom out" the dowels in the tires. Then I fitted the rider only to notice.... he didn't fit properly from the seat to the handlebars. He was sitting almost on top of the rear seat back rest! The scooter was flexing due to the force pulling down on the center of the scooter.
Thankfully, the piece didn't crack! I backed off the screw and the fix was in
Here's "JJ's Wild ride."
Oh, as you can see "JJ's" having a bit of trouble controlling his "wild ride," he can't stay in his own lane!
Of course, every motor vehicle is required to have a license plate...
And... of course working for Disney, you have to have a "hidden Mickey!"
And, of course, for safety, the headlamp must work! It and the gauges are painted with "glo-paint!"
So long!
