Whirligig #25
Whirligig #25, 18″ x 18″ x 20″, mahogany, aircraft plywood, metal fittings
An unsuccessful effort. #25 is too heavy visually and physically. The supporting rod needs to be larger than 7/32″ diameter. [When will the United States ever switch to the metric system. Some of you will remember a few years back when the U.S. crashed a multimillion dollar lander into Mars' surface. That happened because the folks at Boeing (?) furnished NASA all its calculations to be programmed into flight computers in English units and NASA failed to recalculate for metric units.] The blade shapes don’t go with the other shapes in the piece. It was impossible to balance the moving parts - propeller and wood shapes inside. [Actually propeller is not the right word. That word suggests the blade unit makes things go, which is not the case. It should be called a propellee, because the wind makes it go.] The result was a hobby horse movement that got out of control in the lightest breeze. Whirligig # 26 will be much better.
