Slide of the Month: Camp Lantern

 

March 2025

Time to make: 3 hours

Finishing: 1 hour

 
Boy's Life October 1983, page 68

 
Original design:  Bill Andrews

 My old Scoutmaster taught me many things and I am forever grateful. He also was the first person I knew with a propane lantern that gave us all some much more light than out Scout flashlights. I knew once I became an adult Scouter I would also own one of these marvelous bright lights.  

I wanted to try something different with this slide reusing some materials I would have normally thrown away. So I'll list what I used and what it was used for.

Contact lens cleaner container - glass globe and base

Plastic thread  spool - top or ventilator 

Paper clip - gas pipe and mantle holder

Paper towel painted yellow - mantle

Hanger nail - regulator control

Plastic squeeze bottle filled with green paint  and allow to dry- propane bottle

Shipping label printed with Coleman logo

Slide of the Month: Smiley

  February 2025

  Time to make: .5 hours

  Finishing: 1 hour

 
  Boy's Life April 1974, page 66

 
 Original design:  William Fleming & John Taylor











It's February and typically this is the month most Scouters feel down. Tired of it being cold and dark thinking they may never see the sun again. Well buck up Spring is around the corner!

A very simple slide to make! The slide is a wooden drawer knob that can be found at most hardware stores. Paint it yellow with your favorite paint. (I used some glossy spray paint I had kicking around.) When it was dry I used a black paint pen to make the happy face but you could also use a black sharpie marker too. Might be a 70's throwback but still fun to make and wear.

Slide of the Month Extra: Philmont French Henry Ore Cart

 
January 2025

Time to make: 3 hours

Finishing: 1.5 hour


Original design:  Philmont/Bill Macfarlane








Back in May of 2022, I had done a slide for French Henry with a gold mining pan based on the Philmont patch. Well didn't Philmont come out with another patch to make me scratch my head and think "how am I going to make that one?".  I worked a lot of ideas in my head some of which included some old HO train track from when I was younger. But the whole thought of both bringing this to a 3D reality while keeping the perspective was baffling me. I drew it out on paper - no good. Tried modeling programs - no good. Finally I just took a piece of basswood and started carving.

The cart is all one carving and somehow I kept it all together without having to resort to making several pieces and gluing them together. (The only exceptions are the dirt, which is some tile floor grout I had around, the pebbles painted gold from my back yard, and the pickax I carved.) I was quite pleased with the basic ore cart and was getting ready to carve the frame the hopper would pivot on when a thought came to mind. What if I used the space between the cart ends and the hopper to hold the neckerchief?

To finish this off I painted each element (except the grout) with hobby paints, labeled the lettering with water slide paper, and gave the slide a couple coats of poly. 

Slide of the Month: Abacus

  January 2025

 Time to make: 3 hours

  Finishing: 1 hour

 
  Boy's Life August 1987, page 64

 
  Original design:  Tell & Don Gubler










It is said that the Babylonian's created the abacus as one of the earliest methods of counting and calculations before written numbers. Though I can do simple addition and subtraction, apparently multiplication, division, square and cube roots can also be done on an 

abacus. The Roman abacus could even do simple fractions (ie. 1/4, 1/2,  and 1/12). I guess I'll stick to binary because after all "there are 10 kinds of people in the world who know binary".

This slide looked so simple to make...It ended up taking a lot of painstaking work.

Made from some scrap black walnut, the first task I had was to make a simple frame. Not as easy as it seems because the angle had to be nearly perfect. Next I needed to cut slots in the top and bottom for the wood on the inside and these had to line up just right. Gluing was another challenge since I did not have clamps small enough to hole the pieces in place at a right angle. The rods were drilled in place using quilting pins and as the pin penetrated the wood, I added the beads. Once the pins had come through the far side, I clipped the pins off with wire cutters. Using a fine metal file, I filed the pins flush with the wood. Butcher's wax was used to finish the slide off.

Slide of the Month Extra: Philmont 2001 A Phil Odyssey

 

December 2024

Time to make: 3 hours

Finishing: 1 hour
Boy's Life
Original design:  Bill Macfarlane





2001 A Space Odyssey was one of the first Science Fiction movies on TV I ever saw (not that I understood it then) but the images fascinated me. Years later, on a field trip for a High School English class, I got to see it again but on the big screen and there was so much more to take in. Themes included Human evolution, creation of a weapon, the beginning of weaponize war, The Blue Danube playing as the beauty of earth passes by, space vessels, space stations and  space travel as a common occurrence Pan American, artificial intelligence in the Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer (HAL), and the mystery surrounding the black monoliths from some extraterrestrial life. The movie also left me with so many questions, so when Arthur Clarke published 2010: Odyssey Two, I picked up the book the first day it was available. Both the book and the following movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact while answering some of my questions, it generated many more. It also felt oh so real as the tensions between the US and the Soviet Union paralleled the conflict in the movie.  To me the best  part of the movie was the last message transmitted by HAL

ALL THESE WORLDS

ARE YOURS EXCEPT

EUROPA

ATTEMPT NO

LANDING THERE

USE THEM TOGETHER

USE THEM IN PEACE

Made from pallet Pine, carving the helmet didn't seem quite right to me but when I painted the helmet it all seemed to come together. Painted with hobby paints, lettered with waterslide paper and sealed with a couple coats of polly.

Slide of the Month: Old Tooth Nose

   December 2024

   Time to make: 3 hours

   Finishing: 1 hour

 
   Boy's Life December 1984, page 61

 
   Original design:  Lew Weston










It's that time of the season when everywhere you go you hear the same songs. Imagine if you will if you were working in retail and you had to hear the same Christmas album over and over again for 10 hours a day 7 days a week. Well that was my experience working for a electronics store in the mall. I got so sick of it, one day I went out and got A Chipmunk's Christmas by Alvin and the Chipmunks as a joke on our manager. Turns out the joke was on me because he liked it and we also played that album over and over and over...

Somehow the look of this surprised chipmunk makes me think of those days.

Carved from a block of maple it was a fun project to make. Painted with hobby paints and sealed with a couple coats of poly.

Slid of the Month Extra: Philmont Burro

 

November 2024

Time to make: 2 hours

Finishing: 1 hour

Original design:  Philmont/Bill Macfarlane







The treks that include burros take advantage of lighten the load carried for the crew as the burros can be packed with crew food and tents. These are pack animals (not for riding) just like the miners used in the early days of the area. As easy as this sounds, the crew members still carry everything else in there backpacks. Also as trained as the burros are, they still have a mind of their own and walk and stop when they want to. I have also heard stories of crews falling in love with their burros. It is rumored one crew had a plan to sneak out a burro and bring it back to large city they were from. I guess Amtrak wouldn't let them buy a seat for a burro.

Carved from pallet pine it was a quick slide to make. Painted with hobby paints, lettered with waterslide  paper, and finished with a couple coats of poly.