What could be more fitting for a little girl than a Utility Vehicle? They are rugged, compact and easy to drive. How about this one for a model?





It is a Kawasaki Mule.

This machine has cute but useful written all over it. So it's back to the drawing board and sketching and scaling as before with the Clawmaster. So what is a good name for this sporty little miniature. This is something that longs for adventure. It needs a name that sounds like a vehicle for adventure and conquest. " Trail King."

I like second chances, a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over. In modern times most young people don't even know what a slate is. It has nothing to do with promptness. Computerization has changed our lives in terms of time and space possibly more than anything heretofore seen by mankind. Don't get me wrong, sliced bread was indeed a major breakthrough but I doubt it has had the long range positive effects on mankind that moving electrons around has had. It is positives and negatives or at least that is what I am told. Does anyone know what a digitizer is? It is another relic of the past. It is sort of like the television sets of my childhood that were built as a piece of furniture, a heavy piece of furniture made to blend in with the rest of the furniture in you living room. A digitizer is sort of like an electronic sketching pad. They can be large or small. Fortunately I have been able to transform into the computer age albeit grudgingly at times.


Unfortunately I am left with a huge piece of equipment that hardly anyone uses anymore. This digitizer board has got many things but mostly it has got to go. Look how much space it takes up in my office. It is very sturdy and I have tried in vain to think of something to use it for. I know that the world does not use these things anymore because I have tried to give it away on Ebay twice and no one will even bid 99 cents. Does this mean that the past is worthless? Well it is not a matter of the past. Right now is what matters. So onward through the fog.

Well it appears that wife and grandmother Brenda does not think that this would be the right cart for little girls. It seems to be too big and dangerous. That just goes to show that it is a good idea to build a model first. Sometimes things don't end up looking the way we thought it would. Maybe I was thinking more in terms of what I would like for myself instead of what would be more manageable for the girls. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I suppose that is probably true as long as it is a picture of a thousand words. I think that a word paints a thousand pictures. It seems that the value of a painting increases with age. Would it increase the value of the painting just by painting pictures of old things? I am not sure that I have an understanding and appreciation for art like some people do. There was a painting that was quite odd to me. The painting depicts a man painting a picture of a picture of a vase of flowers. I think that I will paint a picture of a picture of a man painting a picture of a picture of a vase of flowers. Keep that up and the flowers will become microscopic. This is the very essence of de ja vu like mirrors that face one another. How many times do they keep reflecting back and forth? I once injured my kneck trying to turn around fast enough to see the back of my head while looking directly into the opposite mirror. What does this have to do with modeling and design? "Point of view" my friend. Point of view. Is point of view a complete sentence? I don't know. Sometimes we must be satisfied with partial solutions. But I am going to forget all of this and start on a new idea.

I am using heat shrink film to cover the model although painting can look just as good if not better. Miss Paige said she wanted a pink Go Cart so I bought the closest thing to pink that I could find in shrink film. I found it in the discount rack. I wonder why?

Applying skin to model

I cut 1/8" thick rubber discs and glued them together for the wheels.

The finished "Clawmaster"

Now the fun part begins. I love working with Balsa wood. It is great for building boats, planes and just about anything. My funnest balsa wood project was building a glider with a 6 ft. wing span. It was constructed from a pre punched kit and actually flew pretty well. Repairs are easily made to the occasional crash when using balsa wood. It is surprisingly strong for such a soft wood. Of course the design has a lot to do with the strength of any fabricated product. I am not an engineer but I do understand the value of well designed components.

Here are the cut outs ready to be glued together. The body assymbly.

The next step in producing a model is to convert the cad drawings to a DXF file that can be read by the CNC cutting machine. The converted drawings can now be fed into the cutter computer controller and placed in the proper location on the cutting bed. Most of this model will be made from balsa wood.

This shows the parts as they are positioned on the screen that will direct the cutting knife.

This is a shot of the CNC cutting machine. It can cut rubber and soft materials up to 1/2" thick. It has a 5 foot x 10 foot cutting bed.