The Steam-Powered Dog-Steered Gyrocentrifice

The Steam Powered, Dog Steered Pancake-Delivering Gyrocentrifice was inspired by some plasticised tablecloth fabric Peter Von had seen at Spotlight (pale blue with white tulips). It got him thinking how marvellous it would look covering the blades of a helicopter. Of course, nothing as modern as a petrol-driven airship design would do. It would have to be steam powered and totally non-aerodynamic, with lots of detail (as usual) to puzzle the eye and confuse the mind. Nothing from the Victorian era Peter Von seems to be perpetually lost in was ever streamlined, so a basic frame of linked circles in polished aluminium was the starting point. He settled on ex-scaffold tube that, although dinted, he managed with wet and dry paper to clean it up to the point where it could be rolled after it was polished professionally.

Trying to find an aluminium welder willing to tackle such a large 65mm diameter tube proved challenging. Tyne Bell Engineering readily agreed but got into strife almost straightaway with severe warping, a common problem with welding aluminium. They solved this dramatically by holding one part down with a work bench loaded with heavy scrap, then driving a big fork lift back and forwards over the completed circles until the twists flattened out. Not to be recommended! It only worked without denting the tube because Peter Von bought scaffold tube that is drawn to stricter guidelines. Phew!

Incredibly the completed chassis only weighed 13 kilo, a real plus when the finished job has to hang from the ceiling over the customers!

Next job was to find a sculptor experienced and inexpensive enough to competently make a replica of the Big Cooking Dog from the graphic as the pilot. Since it had to be also lightweight and about German Shepherd size, foam rubber seemed to be the answer. Peter Von’s old friend Laila was too busy lecturing and recommended Hayley, a final-year arts student, who quickly and confidently modelled up the ‘woofer’ you see piloting its very own Gyrocentrifice. Peter Von made the leather-look upholstered red chair it sits in from foam, dress fabric, aluminium sheet and good luck. Even he was impressed with the final result.

Peter Von:

Sadly my days of salvage yard forays had suddenly drawn to a close after state government regulations were brought in governing access to material “deemed dangerous in public access areas”, such as scrap yards. This meant I had to be more creative in my constant search for the ideal found object. It was to be my biggest challenge. I was yet again back in the family room, sneaking the aluminium chassis back in while the Missus was at work, confident that she wouldn’t mind the inconvenience of not being able to get to the cellar, which was effectively her larder, for the big chassis in the way. Surely I couldn’t be expected to work out in the heat or the rain or whatever?

I’d already done a full working drawing of my proposed Steam Powered Gyrocentrifice before the scrap yard ban, hoping to find parts approximate to what I’d drawn. The challenge was on and the stops were pulled out!

Starting from the front as you view the completed device today, the clear acrylic dome covering the stack of pancakes I had bought earlier on the off chance. It was such a great shape having been a sort of cover over a public telephone in a shopping centre. Although it was virtually unbreakable and incredibly expensive to produce for its original intention, it bore the scars of its past life, phone numbers and expletives scored into the surface by the dozen, dating back 20 years or more. “No worries”, I thought, when I came across it at Trash and Treasure, “I’ll just polish the marks out.”

Giving up after a fruitless hour, I took it to my friend John from Adelaide Plastics, believing he’d know what to do. “Can’t be done, old son. It’s made from carbon fibre and, if I put it on the buff, it will wander all over the place and do nothing but root it up, mate.”

Great news! “Actually there is a way”, he volunteered. “If you’ve got nothing better to do for the next few days, you could sand the scratches out. But do me a favour: leave the scratch saying ‘Darren’s a poof’’ I love it! Then polish it by hand with different grades of paper until you’re just down to Brasso. No heat, mind you. That’s the secret.” So that’s exactly what I – or rather we – did, as the Missus helped, feeling sorry for that old fool out there in his big glasses fogged up by frustration. We didn’t get all the marks out (and left “Darren’s a poof” simply because it was scored so deep; we had no choice).

The dome had a section cut out of it originally, which was ideal as the windscreen to the pancake stack. As the delivery vehicle travelled about the skies above Melbourne, in the old days bringing pancakes to the Ladies in the Tossing Race, its blue rotors gently announce its arrival, should the customer look up.

Looking from the front again, the red gas tank and the ring with burners to keep the pancakes hot were constructed from a pair of plastic hanging baskets, with plastic pipe ring and handmade copper and brass burners. The giant fry pan full of foam pancakes were the top of a giant plastic plant pot given a false bottom and a handle. Rather obvious, the fancy brass uprights were new from the Brass Bed Shop, holding the windscreen. The gorgeous headlights were a combination of small hanging baskets (for plants) with stainless steel salad bowls as reflectors. They were trimmed with brass and held on brass tube supports with fittings from a lighting shop and yellow acrylic ‘glass’.

Moving along, the supports for the marvellous old Veteran-era steering wheel were from a truck of about 1910, once part of the wings of a light aircraft with a dome nut-adorned brass hub from some mystery machine. The steering wheel itself I bought cheap, conveniently burnt in one section that I cut out, aircraft style – hence the gap. The dog, in rubber foam as explained earlier, had a central core of rubber garden hose that realistically flexed when the dogs paws, bolted to the steering wheel, were turned as if being steered. The beautifully made chef’s cap in stiffened cotton was the careful creation of the main teacher of millinery at Trade School. The red wing chair base was nothing more than old tops or lids of cooking pots polished and clear coated and the instruments brass work from some old alarm clocks on brass tube ‘pods’. I trimmed the brass chair with brass bed knobs and shiny aluminium twisted rope, actually heavy electrical cable stripped of its outer plastic casing.

Obviously, that’s a brass bath heater from the 1920s behind the red chair, a sort of chimney to the giant steam ‘boiler’ resplendent in red and trimmed with blue, with its fancy little fire door. The ‘boiler’ presented itself as one of the most difficult things to make on the whole project. I needed it to be extra light as the weight seemed to be climbing with every decorative bit I added, since I couldn’t find anything light and large. I solved it by buying a blow-up rubber gym ball and built a classic papier mâché shape over it. Eventually it worked, but it took too much PVU glue and paper before it became rigid enough. I had to be extra careful not to lose the pure ball shape; it was a messy job that took way too long. The base of the boiler is actually a mix of two large plastic plant pots with cut-outs.

The brass bath heater became an ideal way to hide the two electric motors – one for the rotors, the other for the wood trimmed pistons –and the yellow fancy wheels which, when activated, looked so realistic, in an absurd way. Once again, Kingsley White came to my rescue by mechanising everything. I had great fun using cables to get the big tail to link and move convincingly with the steering wheel. Each time the motor turned the old steering wheel just enough to give perfect imitation of steering, the dog’s whole body flexed due to the rubber inner core.

Eventually, with time running out and still the Tossing Ladies in their helicopters and gyrocopters moving mural to be done to match the Gyrocentrifice, I turned my attention to the rotors.

They needed to be unnaturally fat and shapely – nothing like the thin modern efficient rotor – to balance the considerable mass of the Gyrocentrifice. I simply constructed a smart framework of rigid MDF, light and strong, over which a wizard of a seamstress, Jenny Nurnam, expertly and laboriously stretched and hand-stitched the table cloth fabric. She created very satisfactory hollows and hills that looked even better when rotating on the hour – slowly you understand, nothing too risky.

Now, as everybody knows, all steam-powered Gyrocentrifices have not only skids to land on, but special spring-mounted skids able to take shocks of rough-weather landings. Hence the elegant ones you see before you today, with blue shock-absorbing rubber sandwiched between two layers of MDF (my favourite building material). You may ask how such a rigid material could be coaxed into such sinuous curves. Well, as Clint Eastwood is fond of saying, “Not a lot of people know that”, and no wonder.

In truth, to get the shapes I merely cut them to the correct length and dropped them into his big fishpond for about 12 hours until I could twist them into any shape I liked! I then had to strap them to hold shape until they dried. Perfect!

We were getting close now and raring to finish; not much more than the boiler tubes to do, dramatically bold from front to rear, gorgeous in candy apple blue and silver, and resplendent in rivets. Plastic sewer pipe was the usual answer, paint finish by Sign Language, with a $1.50 plastic flower pot at the end. Starting very effectively from a fibreglass casting, I made of a big cauldron lid to keep the weight down (now becoming close to the max for the restaurant roof), embellished with silver painted wooden letters from Spotlight, spelling out “PANCAKE TOSSING RACE STEAM POWERED GYROCENTRIFICE” in 19th-century style.

Time to call in the troops. Ian Dixon, the ultra-fit surfer-turned electrician, turned up to connect up everything ‘sparky’. He rapidly wished he hadn’t, given the almost impossible task of electrifying motors through a maze of pierced pipes, cobbled connections, inadequate apertures, hopeless holes and perilous penetrations. Day turned into night as Ian weaved his magic, literally rewriting the electrician’s bible, whilst Jenny Nurham, the serial stitcher, tackled the blue tablecloth fabric of the moveable tail plane, hand sewing herself into history.

Finally, after the all night vigil from hell, the Gyrocentrifice stood all agleam and aglow in the morning sun, complete except for the rotors, too large to fit in the truck in one piece. Ian Dixon made the second mistake of his life in staying to see the Gyrocentrifice leave.

All was jolly until the truckies tried to lift it onto the small hand truck. It was simply too awkward to lift! No one could get a proper grip. Eventually, desperation took over and it happened, but, as is the way with these things, the worst was yet to come. It was too tall to fit under the arch over the front gate by three inches. Simple: we tilted to one side, with a lot of “Look out it’s going over!” and “Sorry mate, not going anywhere” sort of jokes.

There was only one thing for it and that was to take out the small trolley and carry it under the arch and out by brute force only. “No way”, I can still hear myself saying. “All that polished metal: if we even touch the ground …!” Well truckies are not known to just stand around and so that’s exactly what they did, fingers scraping on the ground as she went under and out with only one casualty.

As the Gyrocentrifice had to hang from a central point, Kingsley White had calculated and provided a specially engineered cable, which was to attach to a hanging point in the roof. This cable had a yellow compliance certificate fixed in place on the very top point of the Gyrocentrifice when she went under the arch. The fit was so tight that this piece of stiff yellow card tore off! Now, without it at the other end, after all the months of work, isn’t going anywhere. It simply couldn’t be put up. Do you think we could find it? We searched the street, the garden, even bribing some kids to look with promises of modest riches. To no avail, the certificate had simply disappeared – and with it any hope of it all happening over there.

At this point, after working all night, Ian Dixon the electrician went home. Although the Steam Powered Pancake Tossing Race Gyrocentrifice was disappearing down the road in a big truck bound for Melbourne, I knew the loss of the compliance tag would create a big problem for the boys over there.

As it turned out I needn’t have worried, but that’s another story.