Squirrelly Whirligig

I have always liked whirligigs. It started with my grandmother who had several plastic windmill style ones as well as a few birds with spinning wings. At one point in university I made a goose whirligig with spinning wings but my goal has always been to make one with a bit more going on. I like the ones where when the propeller turns it makes a creature on top do something interesting. The classic is the logger chopping down a tree but another common one is some sort of teeter totter action which is what I went with here.

I have always been scared of the creation of the propeller but in hindsight it's really not that complicated. I have a book on whirligig to help me out and the hub just starts as a perfect square with some diagonal slots cut in it and a hole in the middle. It was a bit tricky getting the slots right in the middle of each side and I also had to make sure the width fit the plywood I had which was a bit under 1/4 inch. Once you've cut the slots and drilled the a disc the sander takes care of shaping the circle. The propellers are all just a simple propeller shape and I taped them together so I could sand them all to size at the same time.

The final complex bit was the mechanism that does the turning. I had some 1/8 inch brass rod as well as a tap and die set so creating the rod that I could attach everything to was fairly simple. The element I didn't know was how long it had to be. It took a bit of trial and error to create the rod, install it and then bend it to shape. Since I put the hole through solid wood I had to bend it in the whirligig which was a bit awkward. The rocker arm should have been 1/16 brass but I only had a coat hanger so I'll have to do that a bit better later. That length was hard to guess at as well. As with any project if I had to make it again, many steps would be much easier.

The motion of the propeller transfers to a see saw for a couple of 'squirrels'. Because I had to make everything balance nicely I ended up with the rocker arm a bit forward back than I wanted. This meant there is a bit less teeter to the totter. Ideally next time I would move that back about an inch and then the motion of the spinning would transfer closer to the middle on the teeter resulting in more totter. (If any of that makes sense.) My son designed and painted the squirrels. They are Homer Simpson if he was a squirrel. I think they look great but obviously you could replace them with any character you want. I'm thinking my next one will be something Halloween themed, maybe with spooky lights.