Santa Sleigh

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
Sleigh assembly complete. The whole family came over for my birthday yesterday afternoon and I put them to work. The sub-frame I designed was essential for stability. Without it, the entire thing was dangerous. Now it's as solid as a rock. Hopefully we won't have to pull it apart again. Four people managed to lift it fully assembled. The second photo (my youngest and his girlfriend) is to give a sense of scale.

Now I can start work on the dashboard.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
I just spent two full days in the sleigh. Managed to achieve far more than I expected. Installed additional bracing under and behind the seat, built the dashboard and even managed to undercoat the whole interior. Photos of the assembled dashboard attached. Obviously I haven't mounted any of the switches or anything yet. Still waiting on them to arrive from China.
 

fasteddy

I have C.L.A.P
Global moderator
Joined
Apr 26, 2010
Messages
6,648
Location
Albion Park NSW
Looks like your building a real sleigh ready for the snow, shame there is no snow and its summer in Australia. But it is starting to look really professional
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
Except that the skids are only 12mm wide. I doubt it would work very well as a real sleigh.
 

Bird

LOR user
Joined
Nov 8, 2011
Messages
1,746
Location
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
It's looking really nice. Top notch job.
Well made, dash is enormous.
Kids are going to love it, and I think adults will be amazed.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
My aim is for at least one parent to go on with their kids and use their imaginations to 'drive' the sleigh. We did consider replacing the world map with a 7" Android tablet running Google Maps, but decided it would be better to just rely on imagination. There is an educational element to it as well with numbers to count, words to read etc.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
Bugger! I got several e-mails last night telling me that my eBay purchases had been delayed due to "tighter airport security measures in the Asia Pacific region". Whatever that means. That's pretty much all of the buttons and switches for the dashboard. They're apparently re-sending them (at their expense), but it's going to make things pretty tight in terms of the timeframe to get it all built.

On the plus side, I managed to get almost all of the undercoating finished last night. The red outside coat is being done on Sunday, 27th. The panel beater advised that the paint has been delivered.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
Well, that was a bit of a disaster. The spray painter turned up on Sunday as planned and decided to do the painting in the garage. We covered everything in drop sheets, black plastic, old towels etc to protect it from overspray. Not having any sort of experience with this, we had no idea how much overspray there would be. The end result, as you can see from the pic, is that the floor of the garage is now red.

After several hours of scrubbing with a pressure washer, stiff broom and heaps of detergent, we managed to improve it a bit, buit looks like I'm going to have to hire a sanding machine to return the floor to normal.

The sleigh looks good with three coats of high gloss red, but if I'd know the consequences, I would have painted it by hand.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
I can assure you that everything else will be hand painted. I'd be up for divorce if I even mentioned spraying anything ever again.
 

MarcD

Full time elf
Joined
Sep 7, 2012
Messages
338
Location
Heathwood Qld
My 60 individual red, green and white LED's arrived today. They actually sent me 21 of each colur. All tested okay. Took 35 days to arrive from Singapore. Still waiting on most of the buttons which are coming from one supplier in China, one set of five buttons from Hong Kong and a set of 10 gold knobs from China. Everything was ordered on September 24.
 
Top