venus fly trap

[jane clifton]

Okay, so I'm trying to make one of these and am having a problem making the hairs on the trap thin enough. Any ideas?
Thanks
Jane

[beachglass]

hmm well im no expert, but it seems it would be too hard to weld something so thin on accurately. maybe you could try putting a tiny dot, then heating the dot and pulling the majority off with tweezers or a rod into a fine hair

[menty666]

I would think even if you did you'd have trouble not messing up the hairs next to it.

Maybe set a bunch of small dots on a waste rod heat them all at once then pull them into thin "hair". Then you might be able to tack them on and burn off the waste rod side. That way you sort of create a haircomb like structure where you burn (or cut) off the handle, leaving the tines attached to your carnivorous little friend.

[preglassok]

are you talking about the teeth looking parts on the mouth of the flytrap? or tiny little hairs? If it's tiny little hairs you talking about you might just see what it looks like without them...It might look good. Not to mention if you end up making these tiny hairs, they'd probably have some real "easy to break"(too fragile) issues. But good luck though, sounds like a cool idea.

[Gibsons Glassworks]

u could glue on some horsehair afterwords or something

[redbeard]

gibson ur fukd up

[newmexicomagma]

gibsons idea sounds great i think. lets us know what you decide.

[Uscalus Storm]

If ur talking about the teeth you could put 10 or so dots on the mouth lips...heat ur body a bit so u can close it. Close it til the dots are in the middle of both lips and stretch the mouth. Maybe thats a bit more difficult...just an idea.

[jane clifton]

Just to be clear, i'm talking about the hair (teeth) that are on the edges of the trap that interlock when closed. The closest I've come to getting it is using the dot method, but still can't really get enough of them to make the effect.
and I don't believe I will be glueing them........lol

Thanks all, keep the ideas coming!!!


Jane

[lucidvisions]

The dot method as described seems pretty hard to me, just my opinion. I would definately practice on some scrap with the same color you want to use in the final piece. Just use a standard rod and heat up until soupy hot, no need to gather it, just get however much of the rod hot that can make your "teeth". When it's soupy hot, heat your connection point and tag and pull pretty quickyly but in control. Pull in the direction of the finalized shape you desire for the tooth, cause it will be hard to reshape after it's pulled. It's kind of like pulling a stringer in a sense. Repeat from left to right or vise versa, being careful not to heat up the previous teeth. If your having trouble with the previous teeth being warped or falling over as you add more teeth, you might want to bridge as you go and remove the bridge after you've completed all the teeth. Making the teeth would be hard to do if you trying to do the top mouth and bottom mouth sections already sealed together. Very close and tight areas to work in would make this hard to pull off. In my opinion I'd do the top and bottom sections seperately, add the teeth to both section and then seal the pieces together.

Hope my rambling helps a bit.

Josh

[menty666]

actually the horsehair idea isn't that bad. I know Pipyr uses it (or something similar?) in some of her stuff and it's pretty nice.