, costs about $100-140 and is well worth it. I’ve burned up seven ordinary $25 glue guns in the past two years. This orange beast can effortlessly put out several pounds of glue a minute. It requires specific shaped glue sticks available in 11-pound boxes. You can find great deals on the web.Fin design
To begin the fins, I made really tight sketches of their shape and pattern, taking them from my original “Coral Mermaid.”
I traced the patterns onto acetate. This time I used pink to construct a grid on the other side of the acetate in a one-foot pattern. This trick prevents distortion in the overhead projector.
More photos (and fishing rods!) after the jump.
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- I traced the patterns onto acetate. This time I used pink to construct a grid on the other side of the acetate in a one-foot pattern. This trick prevents distortion in the overhead projector.
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- The patterns transfered to vellum
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- For fin struts under two feet long, I used 9-gauge wire. All the struts are numbered on the vellum and on colored tape. For the dorsal fin, I used purple duct tape. There will be 50-plus struts, and it is easy to get them confused.
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- For struts over two feet long, I combined the 9-gauge wire with carbon fishing rods. Fishing rods are perfect for this. They taper to an elegant point; they are impossibly flexible and do not break; they counteract the wire’s tendency to bend abruptly. The wire gives strength and, most importantly, the ability to pose each strut individually. I taped them together with gray duct tape every six inches.
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- I bundled the struts with plastic cling wrap for later use by the costumers who are building the silk membranes for me
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- The tedious task of constructing all the struts for the side fins. Each of these required carbon fishing rods. Jeez, what a lot of sticks to keep organized.
At the base of each of the side struts, there is a smaller rod that slides into the strut’s base. (Also carefully labeled and numbered in green.) These smaller rods will become a permanent part of the moving mechanism installed in the fish’s body. Because the struts taper, it was incredibly time-consuming to get the rods to taper exactly to fit inside.
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