| Materials needed:
2.5 mm square balsa rod (LOTS of it)
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Equipment needed:
sharp knife
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Cut 4 pieces of rod, 4.5 cm long. Stick them together as shown
in the diagramme to form a square. Do this again with another 4 pieces.
The resulting squares will be the upper and lower parts of the body.
Cut 4 more pieces, 5 cm long this time. Use these to form uprights
between the upper and lower squares, again as shown left.
Cut some of the strip 4.5 cm long, and stick it underneath the body, attached to the bottom square, roughly in the middle. Cut another piece of strip, 1 cm long (a square, in other words), and glue it to the previous strip, in the middle. This is the point where the body and the base meet, and where, on a real windmill, the body would pivot to face the wind. |
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Cut some rod 4.5 cm long. This will be the peak of the roof. Cut 4 pieces of rod around 3 cm long, and cut one end of each to 45 degrees. These will be the eaves. Glue the eaves to the peak as shown left. The angled bottoms of the eaves will be where the roof is glued to the top of the body. |
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Cut a strip around 7 cm long - the length will depend on the overall
height of the frame. Cut the top corners off, to match the slope
of the eaves frame, and cut a notch in the top to fit the peak. This
will require a bit of trial and error, cutting some away and then fitting
it into the frame, so do less than you need just to make sure you don't
ruin it.
About a centimetre from the top, cut or drill a hole through the strip. It should be wide enough to allow a rod to pass through, but still grip it a bit. This will form an upright to hold the blades in place, and make the frame a bit stronger in the middle. Make two. |
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Shown left is how the uprights fit into the frame. They should be spaced so as to divide the frame into thirds along the bottom strip. |
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Cut 4 strips to 7 cm. Glue them together into a long block.
When the glue has dried, cut off the corners as shown left - at about 60
degrees angle, and 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up one strip. Repeat this
for the second base section.
Now cut out of each base section a hole (in the centre of each, one in the top, one in the bottom, 1 cm wide and half as high as the base section) so that the two pieces can slot together to form a cross with bevelled ends. Glue them together, and you have the base upon which the windmill sits. Take care when cutting the slots - don't cut too deep, and don't bend the wood when you remove the offcut. |
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Cut a strip 7 cm long. Very carefully cut off one edge of it, roughly 1 mm wide, but it can be wider if you think it needs to be. This will be the arm of the windmill blade. Cut a section of the fly wire around 6 cm long (or however close to this your wire will allow) and 5 cells wide. Trim any bits of wire still sticking out. Now glue the fly wire onto one side of the arm, roughly in the middle. Repeat this three times, making sure you put the fly wire on the same side of the wood each time, and you will have all your windmill blades. |
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Cut some strip into a 1 cm square. This gets fiddly. VERY
carefully cut the square into two plates - splitting it along its length.
Cut or drill a hole through one plate, large enough to take the balsa rod.
Glue the blades between these two plates as shown left, making sure that
they all face the same way (the fly wire should join the blade shafts on
the same side as the plate with the hole), and that they all leave an empty
square in the middle of where they meet.
Cut some rod to between 4 and 5 cm, and glue it into the hole in the plate, making sure that it fits snugly between where the blades meet. This is the axle of the blades, and will go through the holes of the inner uprights of the frame. |
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Time to cover the frame. Each plank to cover the outside of the
windmill will be balsa rod, split in half. Just cut it to around
4.5 cm, and press your knife hard along its length. You shouldn't
make any effort to achieve a uniform length or equally sized split pieces
- it looks better with odd sized bits, as opposed to the dull regularity
of the picture left.
You should be able to fit 17 or 18 planks on the walls, and 12 on the roof. The planks at the ends of the roof need to be cut individually, and you need to leave a gap at one end for the axle of the blades. I laid one plank over immediately under this gap to form a ledge, just because it looked better. |
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A windmill needs a rudder to hold it facing the wind.
Cut two pieces of rod 5 cm long, and from some strip cut something about 1.2 cm tall and 4 mm wide. Now, using something like Blu-Tac, put the pieces together roughly in the shape shown left, with the far ends of the rods attached to the back of the windmill, a bit in from the edge. Take note of the various angles at both ends of the rods (the rods should slope down from the windmill to the post when the body is put on the base, at something like an angle of 10 degrees), marking them on the balsa if need be, then cut. Glue the bits into place, and be careful about the point where the rudder meets the windmill - this is the weakest point of the entire model. |
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By now you should have plenty of scraps of balsa left lying around. What you need are some bits 1 cm long, 8 mm long, and 1.2 cm long as indicated at left. These strips should be very thin (around 1 mm), and around 2 mm wide. Stick the door (on the right) onto the windmill in the centre of the bottom of the back wall, and the window (on the left) in the middle of the upper part of one side wall. Don't try to attach these tiny strips to each other, just glue them onto the walls. |
The construction is now be complete. You should have three separate pieces - the blades and axle, the body of the windmill with rudder, and the base. All that remains is painting and final assembly. Paint the whole thing with a slightly watered Bestial Brown (it has to be watered because the balsa really soaks up the paint if it isn't, and you get little covered for lots of paint).
When this is done, wash the base, blade shafts, blade plate, axle, and
rudder carefully with Black Ink, darkening the wood a lot, but leaving
it a dark brown, not black. This is difficult to judge, so you might
like to experiment on some other bits of balsa first. The fly wire
should be left light brown. At this point you can either leave the
fly wire as it is, or coat it with PVA glue - this will cover the gaps,
and set as a translucent layer which can be painted to give the impression
of some sort of covering on the blade. I left mine bare.
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And here we have the finished product, looking roughly like the real thing... |