.“Airborne” Chickens Roost in Glider Nose
Something their designers never anticipated was that the noses of wartime gliders make excellent chicken houses. English users have found they are dry, draftproof and that the original windows provide sufficient light. Costing only a fraction as much as conventional chicken houses, they are eight by nine feet across the base and approximately seven feet high at the center.
Wow, Disney actually prepared the images for them? Nowadays if you made one of these and put it up in your lawn you’d probably have Mickey’s lawyers on your ass for misappropriating their copyrights.
.Build P.M.’s Revolving Christmas Card
Three Disney characters rotate ’round and ’round to take turns wishing all your friends and neighbors a very Merry Christmas
By HARRY WICKS Workshop Editor
Last spring the staff at PM decided that tot Christmas 1969 we wanted yet another unusual yuletide decoration that readers could build. All agreed that whatever the finished product, it had to reflect the good cheer of the season. So we commissioned designer Gary Gerber to come up with something new. He did. Then ace workshopper John Capotosto went to work and put the project into the realm of a do-it-yourselfer: He figured out how to build it. finally, to give the display the happy mood of the season, the Walt Disney Studio created three of their characters especially for PM. The handsome result of all this effort is our way of saying Merry Christmas to our readers. —The Editors
CREATING on outdoor Christmas display that is unlike any that has been done before is a tall order. But the top-talent team that accepted this challenge from PM’s editors delivered. The result is a finished product that’s sure to draw raves from all who see it, and one that just might knock off first prize for best outdoor decoration in your neighborhood.
Standing about 4 ft. high, the display is motorized and features Mickey Mouse and two “stars” in a recently released Disney movie.
.Emergency Coal Mines
Use Old Automobiles to Furnish Power
Out of work and unwilling to remain idle, men in Pennsylvania have formed small groups and are working coal mines on their own, selling the output in neighboring towns. To supply the necessary power, they have rigged up old automobiles. The one at the right, geared to a shaker, is used to sort coal.
.Firefly Chemistry
HOME-LABORATORY STUNTS WITH LUMINOUS SUBSTANCES
By Raymond B. WailesAMONG the most mysterious and beautiful of chemical experimerits are those producing substances that glow in the dark. With the aid of your home laboratory, you can make any number of common household products self-luminous. Coffee, tea, pepper, chili powder, mustard, cocoa, ginger, and many other groceries will produce a really visible light in a dark room, after you have treated them with the proper chemicals. You may even be able to make a flower from your garden emit enough illumination to allow you to read a few letters of print, and you will find that oil of bergamot, an ingredient of inexpensive perfumes, gives an especially strong glow.
All that you will need to produce these strange effects is a little grain or J denatured alcohol, a common alkali such as lye, hydrogen peroxide from the drug store, and one of the newer, “made with electricity” bleaching liquids and laundry whiteners. There are several of these liquids, widely advertised and obtainable at any grocery store. They are solutions of sodium hypochlorite, and you will find that this statement appears on the labels of the bottles.
Suppose you start in by purchasing about an ounce of oil of bergamot at the drug store. Add half a teaspoonful of it to an ounce of grain alcohol, rubbing alcohol, or radiator alcohol. Also dissolve in the liquid several pieces of solid sodium hydroxide (ordinary household lye will do), or potassium hydroxide. Now add about half a teaspoonful or so of drug-store hydrogen peroxide, and a like amount of the sodium hypochlorite solution. Darken the room, or take the mixture into a dark closet.
This guy really should be inducted into the Maker hall of fame. If that doesn’t exist, they should create one. Just for him.
.Makes Own False Teeth of Stainless Steel
From stainless steel, a Wilmington, Calif., carpenter has made himself a complete set of unbreakable artificial teeth. Buying a block of the alloy, he shaped each tooth individually with the aid of a hack saw and file. Then he vulcanized them into a homemade mounting of rubber, obtaining the material from a dental-supply house and making his own mouth impressions with paraffin. For molding purposes he employed plaster of Paris in electric outlet boxes.
.Motorcycle Engine Powers High-Speed ICE ZIPPER
by L. B. ROBBINS
There are few thrills equal to that of speeding over the frozen surface of a long lake in an air-driven ice sled. Utilizing an ordinary two-cylinder motorcycle engine you can easily construct this 50-mile-an-hour Ice Zipper and get the most exhilarating sensation known outside of actual flying.
HERE you are—you air-minded gang! A real speed wagon for use on a long, hard frozen lake. With one of these Ice Zippers you can get all the thrills of flying over the ice while hanging close to ground level. All you need is a high speed motorcycle engine, an air propeller and the mechanical ability to assemble the chassis and put the outfit in tune. With a motor capable of developing 1000 R.P.M., forty to fifty miles speed can be easily realized, and when you see the ice slipping under you at that rate you will know you are going some.
.Magic With Magnets
by Prof. Victor Lewitus
NEARLY everyone has either seen or heard about magnets, but very few people realize just how indispensable magnets of one form or another have become.
The Chinese people appear to have been the first to make use of the natural magnetic minerals which they found in certain regions, in great abundance. They discovered that the “lodestone,” as it was called, was capable of attracting some things and not others.
.Working Steam Roller Model Pulls Two Persons On Cart
STANDING only ten and three-quarter inches high with an overall length of 20 inches, a working scale-model of a steam roller constructed by C. Hollandtrick, of Lincolnshire, England, is claimed to be powerful enough to haul a small trolley seating two persons. The model weighs 26 pounds and was constructed at a cost less than five dollars. A coal fire being impractical on such a small model, the water is heated by means
of a paraffin burner to create a steam pressure of approximately 40-45 pounds per square inch in the broiler.
.Novel Cigarette Automat
YOU probably never saw a real live bird that looked like this one, but then you never saw a real live bird do what this one does. When you want a cigarette he bobs down and comes up with one in his beak, just like that. Unlike most trick cigarette boxes, this one won’t be discarded very soon because you and your friends will never get tired of having cigarettes handed to you in this novel manner.
.Make Trailer From Defunct Auto
OLD automobile bodies that have been consigned to the junkyard can still do a lot of good in the world, for they can be pressed into service as very substantial trailers.
The chief operation you will have to perform on the auto is the cutting ofF of the front at about the point of the dashboard. This disposes of the motor and its weight. You can easily contrive your own coupling. In the photo above the side members of the chassis are bent in, to form a V, at the point of which is attached the coupler.
Of course, weight should be reduced to a minimum. Strip the machine down to its essentials, and you’ll have accommodations for extra passengers and luggage when you go camping.
