One thing I’ve always wanted to do (but have never actually gotten around to doing) is to get together a good steampunk costume. Over the past couple days, I have decided that I want to get together a motorist outfit. Hat, gloves, goggles, duster, and a nice long scarf to flap in the wind as a drive down the road in my horseless carriage.

Those of you who know me would now remember that I do not own a horseless carriage… At least not one older than my 2009 Scion tC. I believe that if you are going to do something fun, you need to do it right, and so I present to you, the Educator Steam Buggy.

I understand that the entire point of steampunk is that everything is powered by steam, but being the 21st century, I think I could do it cheaper and easier (less moving parts) if I redesigned it to run on electric power. I’m still not sure on the details, but providing I can figure out where to store it and I can get some help on the suspension system from my friends in mechanical engineering, I should start work on it sometime within the next 6 weeks.

Some of you may be wondering why I built a dinosaur out of cardboard. For those of you willing to just accept it for what it is, I thank you. The rest of you will probably never see the fun in it, and I’m sorry.

The first time I saw a cardboard dinosaur, I knew I would build one on my own some day. I don’t remember the name of the guy who did it, but it was built at an event called First Night Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs some time between 1998 and 2000. I don’t have any pictures of his, but I can assure you it was more impressive than mine, towering inside one of the downtown YMCA’s gyms.

The method for building this beast is quite simple, and I may have over done it a bit with the PVC pipe and duct tape (though to get it to stand up if it’s floppy, it is necessary to use some sort of stabilizing device, like hanging it from the ceiling). Because the PVC pipe “base skeleton” was all built with trial and error, and there’s no real right way to support it, I’m not including that in the instructions.

Andrew’s Five Steps to Dinosaur Building

1. Buy a small wooden skeleton set that you would like to make life size or larger.

   

2. Go dumpster diving for large sheets of cardboard. Or if you don’t feel comfortable swimming in trash on a hot summer day, you could try asking stores that sell refrigerators and other large objects for boxes, or even looking for free boxes on the free section of craigslist.

3. Acquire an overhead projector, or build something similar. I got lucky because my mom is a teacher, and the principal said we could borrow it for the afternoon.

4. Once you’ve marked where your projector is placed to prevent movement and scale changes, attach your cardboard to the wall, project your pieces onto it, and trace their shadows with markers. Also, find some way to label your pieces, because I forgot to, and I don’t think the ribs and vertebrae made it to their proper places.

   

5. Cut them out and assemble! Note that cutting shapes out of cardboard with a box cutter isn’t fun, so if you have a skill saw or something, this is a good time to get it out (and maybe even build the dinosaur out of wood)!

   

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a giant cardboard dinosaur. It’s up to you to decide how best to put it to use. Mine made stops at a few parties as a decoration before it went to the warehouse in the office I work at. If you build your own, I’d like to hear about it. Also, I’m not responsible if you injure yourself somehow in the process of cutting cardboard or jumping into dumpsters. Thanks.