What Santa Does 5-Days Before His Yearly Travels

[mbauer]

Creating a diorama of what Santa does before his famous travels.

There are a couple of Big surprises in store! Here is a long write-up of what the diorama will eventually show.

The last week usually catches Santa performing quality control checks on some of the presents he will soon deliver. Needless to say, it has been a hettic year since his last overnighter.

The elves are done with their chores and the goodies are ready for delivery! They still have a few last minute items to catch up on, but the pace is quite slower than the prior 51-weeks!

Santa has his Sleigh in the tune-up shop for a last minute once over. While the local speed guru is checking it out Santa has plenty of time to enjoy his favorite week!

One huge surprise was shown in the drone photo.

Bet you all thought that the reindeer do all the flying work to get the Sleigh in the air. Actually I just found out that the Reindeer actually do fly once he gets to where his travels take him, however for the long distances between stops, he uses a retractable Saturn V F1 engine!

The Reindeer are used to guide the long distance craft through the various course changes, they also perform all takeoffs and landings.

Soon you’ll see the first ever photos of the F1 Install!

Before the photos from the build start showing up, like to mention a few things about how this all came about.

Four years ago I saw a Halls Christmas Ornament of Santa launching a model rocket. I decided to build a paper model of the ornament!

As I was picturing what it would like, in my minds eye, I started adding things, finally deciding that a Diorama was the only way to get everything together.

I started looking for misc. items to add. As such, I want to say a BIG Thank You to a couple of Free resources!

1st AirDave and his Koolwheelz models! In recent years he has provided some cool looking and easy to build Christmas presents. Using two of them for this years diorama. Next year I hope to add some of the actual Koolwheelz.

You can find all of his Koolwheelz and for sale models at this link:

WWW.cutandfold.info

Once again: THANK YOU Dave! Your models are incredibly Kool looking!

2nd Canon Creative Park Supplied the Santa, Reindeer, and Sleigh. Also downloaded a bunch of other models to build, but ran into an issue with my base foam poster board! Several items will be added next year when I modify my first try, that I’m about to show you.
Here are couple of links to get the Santa, Reindeer and Sleigh:
http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/CNT-0010097/index.html

http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/CNT-0011992/index.html

Don’t forget to change the download for the correct size of paper you will be using! Easy to do before you download.

Found the instructions to be easy to understand and follow the build. Part fit is outstanding!

I did change from the instructions on the sleigh: I glued the runners together before forming them, this is a little different than the instructions show.

Do recommend that you edge color everything. There is so much coloring to do that I cut the tips off of a few of my markers!

3rd A couple of years ago, KCStephens provided a link for a tree that will be used. This was the one item I was having trouble finding, without it, the diorama just wouldn’t be complete! Thank you Kevin!

The link took me to www.fiddlersgreen.net and it cost $2.95 for the spruce tree. Once purchased I printed it 300% normal size. As you will soon see it is Gi-normaous!

Most of the other “props” used are some of my own drawings.

Before I get to the photos, please understand that two weeks ago I underwent surgery for Nasal Polyps. This was a three hour procedure! Using a stealth guided operation that used Cat Scans to map what need done. The surgeon was not able to complete the whole surgery. Seems that I bled more than normal, loosing enough blood that he had to stop, at about the 2/3 done mark.

This gave me time to start the actual building. I was off from work 13-days, yesterday the 18th was my first day back to work. I wanted to have everything done. That just didn’t happen.

Issue after issue:
1) The baseboard foam poster sheet is entirely too small for everything, had to drop the plans to show the coal mine, for that bad’uns! You’ll also see I ran out of room for everything. Some models aren’t shown at all, some have been downsized or modified to fit what little space was available. This leaves everything looking busy, and not the right looking scale. Sorry!
2) The Canon models are way bigger than I thought they would be. To try and scale everything properly meant changing whole building to just a side panel drawing, and chopping the Tune-Up shop in 3/4 showing only ¼ of it for this year. Yes, I know it doesn’t look right, I did use the “hanger” door for the mechanic instead of the normal shade-tree…

I would not recommend downsizing the Canon models. It took 12-hours to construct the Santa and 8-hours to do the sleigh. Was able to get my fingers inside to perform all of the gluing tasks! Once again the part fit was outstanding! This is the first time I’ve tried a figurine and was very impressed with the model construction!

Ran out of time to build the Reindeer, that will have to wait until next year. Plan to modify the Reindeer to show how they actually fly. Might be a surprise to some. Will have to wait until next year to see the how part!
3) Mentioned that yesterday was my first back to work. Well I did a full 8-hour day, got home last night thinking I would be able to get everything done by today, so that I could post the completed build. Well that didn’t happen. My figuring that 4-5 hours would see it all done was way off mark. I started at 6pm last night, finally decided to take a break at 6:30 am this morning. Its now 8:46 Am (typing this much takes time too).

My secret for the all-nighter. When I get tired, my mind starts looking for shortcuts. It doesn’t go through all the steps, thinking/rethinking, it goes straight to the best answer usually. When I sit down to design, I’ve been known to start on Friday night and go to Sunday night without sleep. Very little food, but plenty of water and restroom stops.

Thinking that the lights are going to be the final item added, also know that they are going to be rather difficult to rig up. 50-ft string of small LEDs!

Ok, having said all the above; time for some photos!

Will start on the Sleigh, next posts will show the other builds. Not done yet, but have over150mb of photos!

Thank you for checking this project out!

Best regards,
Mike

Photo 1 Sleigh body construction:

Photo 2 Body with a Harbor Freight Jewelers magnifier-makes it easy to see fit and cut/fold lines!

Photo 3 Bottom Construction.

Photo 4 Bottom done.

Photo 5 install inside floor board.

Photo 6 Inside done ready for armrests.

Photo 7 Top View.

Photo 8 Armrests.

[mbauer]

Not much to say, will let photos speak for themselves:

Photo 9 Runners.


Photos 10 through 12 show different side views.

Photo 10 Left Side.

Photo 11 Right Side.

Photo 12 Rear View.

Photo 13 Front View.


Done with Sleigh. Yes I completed all the reins and tack gear to attach to the Reindeer, however not enough room to show it installed.

Photo 14 shows a hint of what will be posted in the next installment.


Yep, Santa is next!

Best regards,
Mike Bauer

[mbauer]

Forgot to mention-8-Hours to complete sleigh. Now for the next 12-hours will see the completion of Santa. First step is the Head:

Photo 15 Face/Beard attached together. Hat parts laying around, part behind Santa is the neck.


Photo 16 Nose/Mustach


Photo 17 Neck Installed-Hat will be next


Photo 18 Side View of Head


Photo 19 Hat Installed


Body construction is next!

Mike

[Knife]

Ambitious. . .

Giving up sleeping this week?

Look forward to your updates.

[Seascape]

Hi Mike.

This is going to be very interesting. Will be following and waiting for the completed diorama.

Fred

[airdave]

LOL I had this vision of Mike, leaning over his work table,
head dropping, eyes half shut, blood pouring from his nose...
with bits of Santa and his Sleigh strewn around the workmat.

I'm glad to see its all a bit nicer than that!

Mike...I am glad that my models are a part of this.
Please, continue to entertain and thrill us.
Thank you.

[mbauer]

Ok, I gave up, took a nap from 11 am till 3:10 pm.

Thank you for the comments! Have more photos to post and then I'll try to figure out how to get all the lights in place.

Another issue, is after removing the coal mine, now realize I need to do another wall of some sort. Decided to use a photo with blue sky, clouds an snow on the ground.

Diorama will have to walls with an open face. I used wood trim on the open face, which created a fairly interesting issue when trying to glue the trim to the foam edges. Wait'll you see how the night was saved.

Need to downsize some photos and then I'll post a couple of more times to get the Santa done!

Thank you everybody who is checking this thread out! Always nice to see there is an interest in one of my projects!

Most of all Thank you for your replies, it gives incentives to continue!

Best regards,
Mike

[mbauer]

Time to make the Body. Not to difficult until time to attach it to the neck. Great part fit makes this a do-able chore! Any smaller and issues can happen.

Photo 20 Body parts before assembly: Head, Upper Body, Abdomen Suit part and Belt with Loops



Photo 21 Another view of the parts with the instructions underneath. Notice the actual parts look just like the instructions?



Photo 22 Upper Body attached to the Neck & Head. This was the most difficult step (until the very last step of the Santa construction).


Not much room to reach through the body and apply pressure to the neck joint while the glue dries. Any smaller and this might not have happened just using fingers for pressure. Now I understand why to look for the tweezers that open when pressed (spring closed type). Will be looking for some!


Photo 23 Body complete! Easy, easy after the neck joint!



Next will be the arms. They look hard at first, but, once again perfect part fit makes them easy, OH, they rotate once done!

Best regards,
Mike

[mbauer]

Arms:

Made a mistake on this phase of the construction. Got lucky and was able to continue this time.

Mistake?

Used part of the Left Arm; attaching to the Right hand!

Simple & Easy to make sure this doesn’t happen on the legs. Will only form each leg and boot at a time instead of all of the parts for both.

Can’t believe I used the wrong parts, even went so far as to label each individual part per the instructions….

The hardest part? Forming the Ruffles that go between the hand and arm! Still real easy to do, just a few glue joints waiting to cure! Time consumer.


Photo 24 All of the Arm parts formed and ready to assemble.


Sorry, forgot to take pictures while attaching the parts to each other, easily distracted by my mistake! Guess forgot to use parts of the wood block on my shoulders….

Photo 25 Arms in place, they easily rotate!



Photo 26 Another side view



Legs are next!

Best regards,
Mike

[Knife]

I sure hope Earnest is on your team. He has experience in saving Christmas just in the nick of time.

"You might be a paper modeler . . . If you think the ability to build models 24 hours a day is the only legitimate use of crack cocain."