Ok, maybe a little.
Here is a new cache critter, once again made of PVC pipe. The photos are of the second one we made, in the 4 inch diameter PVC; we had previously made a prototype out of 1 ½ inch tube.
I had seen similar birds for sale on the internet and one site even had patterns for sale but of course not the pattern I wanted. I could tell from the pics, the techniques would be relatively simple but would need a good pattern to follow. With my limited drawing abilities (stick figures) I turned to autocad, which also allowed me to scale the patterns to match the different diameter tubes available. The 1 ½ size would be my prototype since I had that size tube laying around at home and I designed it to fit on 11 x 17 paper. After I was happy with the design onscreen, I printed a smaller version and cut it from paper to test how it would look formed. A tweak or two, and my pattern would be ready to use. The 4 inch size drawing would be printed in sections on 8x11.5 paper; I could then put the pieces together for a full size pattern, tape to the PVC and trace in pencil.

The thicker, schedule 40 PVC is a good choice for this project in diameters 3 inches and over. It will give your bird much more strength and since we will be forming simple bends and not ‘sculpting and stretching’ as we did on the cobra, the extra thickness won’t work against us.

Here is the pattern I used, you may download and print if you like.   8x10pelican.pdf

   We would be cutting this in the ‘round’ and not flattening it first, so we need a jigsaw with fine, narrow, curve cutting blades. Because of the stroke length on my saw, I had to grind off a portion of the blade so that it wouldn’t hit or cut the opposite wall on the 1 ½ pipe, this won’t be a problem with the 4 in pipe. Rotate the pipe as you follow the lines of the pattern, trying to keep your cut at right angles to the material, go slow and take your time on this step. Clean up and smooth your cut edges with a file, sandpaper or rotary tool.

Now before you begin to form the bird, you’ll need to decide if it will be freestanding on its own feet or if it will be mounted to a base, as that will affect the possible poses you can do. This is where a paper model can be handy as you can get an idea of the angle you would like the body to be at and how to pose the neck and head.

Using the heat gun, carefully begin to heat the PVC, constantly moving so as not to burn it. It will take a bit of time to soften the PVC enough for bending due to the thickness of the material and staying in one spot too long can easily burn or discolor it. Wearing heavy leather gloves to protect your hands from the heat, start forming the legs. Bend roughly 90 degrees where it meets the body and where it meets the feet, this should give you enough room to work on flattening the feet into a good stable base and these angles can be adjusted later. Remember to use ice cubes or cold water to cool and set your bends.

 The head and bill get formed in opposite directions, the head forms up and the bill forms down.  It may help to use a straight edge of some type to keep your bends even along the long length of the bill. The ‘hinge’ between the head and bill should be soft enough to bend also, but if not heat it a bit and form to as natural a look as possible.

 What you do next with the neck can set the whole character of your bird; you can have a sleepy bird with its neck pulled in tight to the body or outstretched about to take off in flight or almost any mood you can imagine. You could turn the head to the side a bit or leave it straight on. Now that your bird has character, you can go back and adjust the body to be breast up or down and to a limited extent, adjust the balance of a free standing bird by centering the weight over the feet.

Taking your cues from the personality you’ve already given your little fellow, you can paint the eyes and other details as realistic or as comical as you like, then give several coats of a clear sealer to protect the paint. So now I’ll introduce you to…

“drumroll”

……….Pellie!

We decided Pellie might get lonely, so we introduced him to Penny, he really turned her head!!

Depending on the size you chose to make, the actual cache container can be a large bottle Velcro’d in the body area or possibly a bison tube tucked up in the pouch. You could even bolt it to an ammo can. In this case, I wanted a container large enough to hold a notepad type log so finders could leave comments.
This is the last of this series of creative cache critter crafting,……maybe, at least for awhile.  I hope you’ve enjoyed them and that they may have sparked some ideas for making your own fun caches.

By catsnfish

A couple of empty-nesters who caught the caching bug not realizing it was incurable. So if we’re found in the woods waltzing with Garmins, lifting lampskirts while tying our shoe or looking for “gum” underneath benches, be sure to stay away... it’s contagious and the only temporary relief can be found in finding bison’s, ammo’s, nano’s, or passing coins and spreading travel bugs!

Publisher's Note: Catsnfish write the periodic column The Adventures of Catsnfish. Subscribe (free) to The Online Geocacher to get an email alert when a new article is published.