Fast Hacks #27 - Soda Can Pinwheel

this week I'll show you how to turn an old soda can into a beautiful pinwheel like this one alright that's enough of that let's get started you're going to need a clean empty soda can a couple of small pins these are what you'd use to pin up clothing when sewing some small round beads they need to have a hole going through the middle and a small piece of scrap wood for the body we're going to start by cutting off the top of the can I just used a regular pair of scissors for this but you can just use a knife or whatever else you can find that'll work be careful not to poke yourself then cut a straight line down to the bottom next you need to cut off the bottom of the can this will leave you with a rectangular sheet of aluminum now we're going to cut off that first jagged edge this should leave a nice straight rectangular piece we're going to cut two square pieces of aluminum out of this both about the same size we use the first piece as a pattern now we're going to cut each of the squares in half into triangle shapes then we're going to want to round the corners this way we don't accidentally stab ourselves it also looks a little bit nicer the next step is to poke two holes through each piece of aluminum will start in one corner make sure the pin goes all the way through then move along the short edge and put another hole in this corner do the same for all four pieces of aluminum make sure the holes are in identical places next we're going to poke a hole in the top of our stick this is where the pinwheel will go when we're done well put the pinwheel here when it's time to mount it now lay out your aluminum pieces like this start by putting one piece of aluminum on the pin and the second third and fourth this part gets a little tricky because it's sort of spring-loaded start with the bottom piece of aluminum curl it up and put the pin through the hole again you're going to have to be careful to hold it all in place while you do the next one then do number three and finally number four then put one of your smooth plastic beads over the pin this will act as a bearing and then press the pin wheel into the mounting hole we made earlier be careful not to bend the pin you can see that it looks a little bit lopsided so this angle should be about 90 degrees but it's not so what we're going to do is cut a little slit right here so we cut that slit then we can slide one blade into the other blade and now it lines up just right so go ahead and do that on all the other blades wherever necessary and now it looks great and it spins pretty well too I brought it outside and even a slight breeze got it spinning really well how about two pinwheels and one on a sunny day I like to take mine for a nice afternoon Drive hooray for recycling I hope you enjoyed this project if you did please like or subscribe to let me know you

Channel: Rick Osgood

Views: 53,003

Keywords: Beverage Can (Invention), soda can, beer can, pop can, Soda, Beer, pinwheel, pin wheel, pin, wheel, make, hack, build, diy, fast hacks, Do It Yourself (Website Category)

Id: VAPGCQ4X6KY

Length: 4min 14sec (254 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 08 2014