OK, so I took a brief hiatus from posting the progress of the steampunk airship I’m working on to post a couple other items of interest. Now I’m back on the schedule and today’s installment is putting the fin struts on the airship body. These are the structures that will support the fins and provide some profile interest to the piece. The struts are made of repurposed materials, as you knew they would be…in this case, scotch tape cores and vitamin bottle lids! I had to cut the cores to match the contour of the zeppelin body ridges, paint them, then push a drilled out and painted vitamin bottle lid into the top of them.
Repurposed pieces for fin strut
Repurposed plastic...stuff you'd usually toss!
By themselves, the pieces of reused plastic don’t look like much, but add some brass color paint and put a green patina on them and they start to look like…well, something. Then add them to the construction of the airship and they start to make a bit more sense.
Lid pressed into core
When these pieces are added to the body of the airship, you can see how they will lift the fin away from the body of the airship and give it a dynamic look.
Fin strut attached to airship body
Three of these struts attached as shown will hold each of the airship fins.
Three fin struts attached in a row
Next we start attaching the fins! Don’t touch that dial!
