20 mule team wagon

[preprius]

Hi all,

Just sharing my first attempt at lettering fret work.  I wanted a 20 mule team concept for my outdoor garden train.  I wanted to generally keep the old wagon concept.  I made a wood shell that slips over a flat car.   So that made it wider than track, but still kinda resembles the old wagon.  

The wood is 6 inches front to back. 

This is a proof of concept. That is working out errors of the design and is it worth doing the 2nd one. 

wagon shell wood: red oak 1/4"

wheels: dark walnut 

printed logo from borax laundry soap was used as cutting pattern.  Black paper as backing for lettering. 

Those donkey no mule ears and legs were a bit trickey.  The logo showed tails for each mule. I left those off.  2/0 spiral blade for both lettering and 20 mules with wagons.

pegas #3 blade for wheels.  stacked cut 1/2" walnut.  Total stack is 1inch.

Edited November 28, 2021 by preprius
thicknesses were wrong. Donkeys are not mules.

[jbrowning]

Nice job.

Jim

[OCtoolguy]

That's going to be really neat Mark. I love the G scale trains. When we had our Hallmark shop in Colorado Springs, we used to put up a train in our front window every years. The customers loved it. We had a tiny teddy bear riding in one of the open cars and one day we noticed the bear was gone and there was a baby bottle riding in the car instead. We had to hunt down the little culprit and do a swap. But, it was all a fun thing. I had a Z gauge setup in our jewelry case too. Needless to say, our Hallmark store was not the conventional one that Hallmark wanted but we never buckled under to them. We did it our way as the song goes.

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by OCtoolguy

[Dak0ta52]

Very nice, Mark.

[wombatie]

You did a terrific job especially with the smallest mules.

Marg

[stoney]

That's thinking outside the box!! LOL   Sorry I couldn't resist.  Great idea will look good.   Thanks for showing us. 

[Jim McDonald]

Great work. Now to use some of the styrofoam filler to simulate the borax load. 

[daveww1]

awesome job

[preprius]

2 hours ago, Jim McDonald said:

Great work. Now to use some of the styrofoam filler to simulate the borax load. 

I did try that for my mining cars, gold ore.   The afternoon breeze blew them all over the place.  I just swapped some of my rocks with the neighbors white quartz rocks and painted them with viens silver and gold. 

[old sarge]

Really nice looking work.  Thanks for sharing. The Old Ranger would be proud.