Mouseboat

[Gareth JonesParticipant @garethjones79649]

[Gareth JonesParticipant @garethjones79649]

My wife Elizabeth has built a couple of Springer hulls and a range of interchangeable ‘lids’ one of which is the Mouseboat and since it seems to attract a lot of interest here is how it was done.

 

The hull is a standard Springer size with a coaming on which the lid locates.

 

 

The lid is built up in 3 mm liteply and the wheel is a standard hamster wheel from a pet shop.

 

 

The wheel is attached to the lid using four tieraps. The drive pulley is made from two servo drive disks with a 3 mm ply disk sandwiched between them. The pully is stuck on the side of the wheel using araldite.

 

 

The drive motor and reduction gearbox was cannibalised from one of our son’s toys. A similar drive pulley was attached to the output shaft, again using araldite, A Tamiya connector is used to connect the motor to the speed controller. The wheel motor is just wired in parallel with the main propellor drive motor using a common speed controller.

 

 

A rubber band transmits the drive between the two pulleys through a slot in the lid.

 

The wheelhouse is made up from liteply with suitable cheese wrapper on top.

Mice were cat toys from Pets at Home, scaredy cat was from a dolls house shop.

The faster the boat goes the faster the wheel rotates. From a distance it looks quite convincing. Elizabeth was threatend with reporting to the RSPCA when sailing in Rowntrees Park in York.

 

 

Edited By Gareth Jones on 08/11/2011 12:43:10

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Thanks for posting Gareth – very ingenious!

 

Colin

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Just spotted that the mouse is suspended from the wheel axle

 

Like Colin says…..Ingenious indeed!

 

Bob

[neil hpParticipant @neilhp]

never ceases to amaze me where you guys get such inventive ideas for Springers from……I’ve seen some absolute crackers in the past few years…….and this is one of the best………superb.

[Gareth JonesParticipant @garethjones79649]

In response to Neil’s comments I perhaps need to clarify one point. It was not a guy who came up with the idea but a gal – my wife Elizabeth, who also built it. I can’t say any more as there will be an article featuring more of her wild and wacky ideas in a forthcoming edition of Model Boats magazine and I have been sworn to secrecy by the editor.

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