Hello Internet. I'm Matt Haas this is Awesome Wood Things. I made one of Nintendo's most beloved characters into a whirligig. This is Mario from Donkey. He swings the mallet… check it out. As the wind picks up, the mallet goes up and down and he's ready to smash fireballs and goombas or whatever else comes his way. I used an awful lot of techniques and equipment to make this. I think you'll really like it stick around I'll show you how. I use spray adhesive to attach this outline to a sheet of black acrylic. I used Adobe Illustrator to create this line art that's a fantastic program for all kinds of shop projects. If you're interested, I have a live hangout on this channel on Mondays where I teach you how to use this program. Come check it out it's absolutely free. I try and cut just away from the black line. At this stage it doesn't have to be perfect. A one-inch belt sander is used to bring the image right up to the black line.
I try and eat away all of the white paper. It does a really good job and you just have to go easy with it and let the tool do the work. It makes it perfect. I use the artwork I created in Adobe Illustrator to create these vinyl stickers … and here I had to remove the M logo because that needs to be layered you can see it's on that white piece and now that I got on face and I can already tell… man… this is turning out awesome! I just love it. I'm testing the solution I came up with to make these arms movable. That's just a wire coat hanger. A drill is used to put a hole in all pieces. A small washer keeps the arms up off of the character figure so it doesn't crash or bind up. It's just enough spacing and there it's working nice I like it. Give him a little test walk… haha. Two part epoxy is used to connect the wire shaft to the arms.
A piece of tape is used to make sure everything doesn't stick together and the arms can move freely. Here's the Goomba smashing test Yes! It's working! Hey, don't beat up on my friend Pat! Now it's time to build the whirligig! This is a wire that went to a yard sign. I just bent it and cut it. Here I'm ripping a dado to accept the center rod. This little piece will allow the hammer to go up and down. Here's the propeller and again I have a pretty rough shape but a sanding tool brings it perfect. and I forgot to mark the center point so I had to use this old legacy method to find the center of a circle there it is! This is how I attach the haft to the propeller.
I had to persuade it just a bit. A tapering jig is used for the propellers and the scroll saw finishes off the shape. and you can see I didn't do a good job on the scroll saw but it doesn't matter because the shaping tool brings it perfect. I'm kind of embarrassed because these slots should have been done before I permanently fastened the rod to the propeller. Attaching the propeller blades is admittedly not very elegant. I used a shim and lots of glue and tape but black paint everywhere sort of hides the nasties and I attached a top part to the main base that way the rod won't fly out. and then I attached Mario and I'm done! I think it came out great much better than expected! Also, the artwork for Mario is available on awesome wood things comm for free go get it. Make your own project…
have at it. Thanks Internet!.