NotBabysitting in the Woodshop - Chair Leg Dragonflies
Howdy! Welcome to the pilot episode of NotBabysitting in the Woodshop! This week Chair leg Dragonflies.
Finished product first
we'd give it a go. The basic premise is that a chair leg looks sort of like a dragonfly body so why not build it wings (from ceiling fans or scrap wood) and stick it on the wall. We're planning an outdoor theme for our baby room, so it seemed like a nice fit.
We started off by grabbing a table leg from Home Depot that looked about right. We settled on this guy ($11).
I then started looking at the aforementioned "chair leg dragonfly" pictures online and a lot looked weird. I then took a step back and looked for a picture of a dragonfly and got this guy.
The problem was clear. Proportions were off, both wings were the same size, weird eyes were added, butterfly antennae were stuck on the heads. I decided to use my real dragonfly as a template and go from there. I came up with these final dimensions:
Body - 25.5"
Upper wings - 17" x 5"
Lower wings - 17.5" x 6.5"
Step 1. Prep the body (table leg)
Take out the screw that came with it
Chop the leg in half (don't forget the safety equipment!)
The legs are 28", so we need to cut off 2.5" from the top (keep the scrap, we'll use it later)
Cut the scrap pieces in half, and BAM dragonfly eyes
Step 2. Prep the wings
The goal here is to make rectangular blocks big enough (see dimensions above) to cut wings out of later. We have a bunch of beautiful wood strips that we got for free from a local lumberyard. Lumberyards are a great place to get free scrap wood for little projects, they literally burn their scraps to free up space and tend to be people that love wood. Just be polite, tell them what you're working on, and actually put down some cash now and then.
Here are a bunch of the pieces we got when the lumberyard guys were working on a cabinetry project.
We narrowed it down to these pieces that we then chopped into ~17" strips.
Dragonfly-to-be 1
Dragonfly-to-be 2
Glued them together with wood glue and pipe clamps and let sit overnight.
Yes, yes, I know, I'm using the clamps wrong. This is the first time I used them (got them from my dad when he downsized to an apartment). Next time, I'll put two on the bottom and one over the top so the pieces don't bow or stick to the floor.
Step 3. Finish the wings
We now have 8 wooden rectangles, but we need to make them wing shaped. You could eyeball it if you want, but I decided to make templates from the dragonfly picture I found earlier and some cardborard.
I scaled the picture up on my computer and printed out the wings.
Cut it out on some cardboard.
Cardboard wings!
Trace out on your boards (flip the template over for the right side)
Cut along the line (we used a jigsaw, but you can use whatever)
Cutting lines in helps the blade not bind
Rough cut done!
Quick sanding of the edges and you're almost done!
Step 3. Attach the wings and eyes.
We used two methods to build the final dragonflies.
1) Attach the wings behind the body, which means you need to leave some extra wood on the wings.
2) Have a gap between the wings and body
Remember those scrap pieces from the beginning? A little glue, and we've got eyes!
Step 4. Finishing
For Dragonfly-to-be 1 we used some pretty mahogany and poplar, so we decided to finish with a simple coat of mineral oil.
Amazing difference a little oil makes.
Don't forget the body.
Dragonfly-to-be 2 had some nice rough marks, so we just glued it to the body with no finish.
Step 5. Placement
The final dragonfly weighs in at 4.5 pounds, so we went with 3M strips to stick them to the wall.
Pick a place to put them. Mocha dog gives her input
Finished product!
So there you go! Two chair leg dragonflies for under $20 total and 3 hours of work.
(Family for scale)
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