Ryan,
Jeremy and Kimberly won a pair of space ship cases on eBay, but neither of them had the
platforms inside them. So...it was up to their dad to get it right. First of all, I looked
at the pictures of the space ship cases I've seen, and realized that they had to be made
of a rather fragile plastic like the nosecone which was more so than the space station
consoles. So, I looked inside, did some measuring and determined the dimensions for the
platforms inside.
Using some half-inch plywood, I fashioned two sets of platforms for the vases. You'll note that there's a flat edge along the platform on the left. This is for the door hatch to close properly. On the other platform, I created a notch. This notch was to allow the insertion of a plastic ladder I gleaned from one of the kids' firetrucks. This would allow Major Matt Mason to access the upper platform.
The
platforms would fit very nicely in the plastic supports from the original plastic
platforms, but because of their weight, it was obvious that I'd need to create some sort
of support struts to hold the platforms in place.
Using
3/4" dowels trimmed to a proper length which would both fit in the plastic clasps as
well as provide some headroom for the Major, I created a two tiered unit. I used wood
screws and putty and sanded them repeatedly so as to make sure they'd at least resemble
plastic.
Not
sure if space would be a consideration (as well as stability), I built one unit with a
three column support and one unit with a four column support. In terms of stability, I
couldn't tell any real difference. The kids had no problem in stating they liked the
symmetry of four columns.
The next thing to do was to get a decent color sample from one of the blue plastic clasps. Fortunately, the folks at Lowes were very helpful, and we painted the units a nice custom shade of blue in oil-based paint, again to simulate plastic.
Placing the
units into the space ship cases wasn't a problem at all. The cases are simply vinyl, and
working the units in wasn't a problem at all. I used a series of small wood screws to
permanently attach the units to the space ship cases. You'll notice there is a slight
design flaw in my approach, On the lower sections of the vinyl, there were notches that
provided room for what appears to be exhaust nozzles or engines on the lower plastic
components which were long since gone. As a result, the space ship cases are not
air-tight.
The
next step was to reattach the vinyl door. Again, wood seemed to be the best solution. I
attached a small wooden door with small hinges on the base of the platform unit. Then we
cut a slit into the vinyl/plastic door, and slid it onto the wooden door.
Again,
using small wood screws, we attached the vinyl door securely to the wooden one beneath,
and voila, we'd restored a space ship case to life. We later attached three wooden
decorative pieces (painted silver) to represent the engines, and I put a small aluminum
band around the lower base so that the Major's equipment wouldn't just come tumbling out
while in route from the Earth to the Moon.
The kids are still enjoying both space ship cases. Kimberly named them the Conestogas after the old covered wagons that were used to pioneer the Old American West. I couldn't think of a more appropriate name as they pretend these were the capsules that Major Matt Mason first used went he went to colonize the moon.
page created September 30th 2003