Friday, May 31, 2013

ABKachina Installed

It took about 10 days of fiddling, starting from here, but I seem to have "finished" the Airplane Barbie Kachina:


And now maybe (part of the name) makes more sense:


The rest of the name can be traced to my friend Brian's vision of the result of my move to New Mexico: Giant Barbie Kachina. So it's kinda too bad that I had to place it just out of the site lines for my uphill neighbor to be able to truly appreciate it.

There are three layers which each move or spin independently. The bottom hair rotates clockwise in the breeze. The middle power-unit spins counter-clockwise with added propellers. And the top plane-hy-bird (with feeder) tacks in the breeze and flaps its wings -- this was the original idea that morphed slightly when Michael and Melody gave me a squirrel-proof bird-feeder partway through my "design" "process".

I would like to point out that exactly zero (0) new materials were purchased in the making of this monstrosity. Much of the metal is recycled or left-over, a few hardware bits and bobs are new-old-stock, and I used about a metric-S.L. of MIG welding wire sticking the bobs to the bits -- especially when kludging the thin galvanized fence posts to the top plate to make the tripod. I also need to add special thanks to Kaahl in the Attic for remembering that I had all those copper-float half-balls left over from The Eightfold Path.

The wind has been going like gang busters all week.Wednesday it blew the thing over and then tore up the plane-hy-bird on re-entry. But it seems to have held up since then...

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