Riding Skull

I’ve been looking for inspiration on Pinterest trying to find cool projects to make and this one really made made my heart beat.

• Skull (I got it at Dollar store)
• Skeleton hands
• Old bike handle
• Piping 20mm diameter ( I bought what I was able to purchase where I live.
• Piping isolation
• Glue gun
• Fabric
• Pin welder machine
• Scissors
• 3D-printed joints

The first thing that I bought was the pipping. I live in a small town in Sweden so access to the regular supplies that you see in most Instructables, is limited for me.

The common PVC pipping is not that popular over here, what I found was chromed pipes at the hardware sore and the only pipes with joints are used for drainage so I had to think over. The drainage pipes were to wide and the final weight of the construction would be too heavy for the spring.

I considered using wooden sticks but I happened to walk near the electrical section and found 20mm pipping.

I wasn't sure at that moment that it would hold the hold thing, but I had to try.

The inner diameter of the pipping is 17.5mm so I made the cylinders 17.48mm, it was a perfect fit.

I initially modelled the joints using Tinkercad but when I needed a modification I used Fusion 360.

While designing the joints I decided to make them solid and put it on the inside of the pipes. No flow would occur and it makes them more resistant to the stress that they will need to withstand while holding the whole structure together.

I glued the 3D-printed part to the base of the skull using my glue gun.

Be careful with cause the PLA deforms with the heat, as well as the skull can be deformed.

The lenght of the shoulders were based on the distance between the handles of the bicycle.

I went back and forward with the body structure cause the first time it was positioned in the wrong way so I thought that it wouldn't match with the width of the bicycle handle.

I used pipe isolation to bulk it up a little bit.

I used the pipe isolation to create the base before placing the fabric.

I placed the fabric and hold it in place using the glue gun.

I already knew what kind of handle that I wanted and my first thought was to ask on Facebook, but I decided to go to the marketplace and there I found it. The perfect one.

I drove almost an hour and got lost trying to get there, but in the end it was worth it. The guy just gave it to me for free.

I work at a manufacturing company and that gives me access to a lot of great of materials that are usually thrown away. The cylinder that was used to extend the bike handle comes from an old installation. The metal plates that connects the cylinder to the spring was recycled at work as well.

I put everything together using a pin welding machine. I'm not that good at welding so my main goal is to put it together.

I got the car spring from a car mechanic that I know. I thought that I would need a bed spring, but after watching some videos I understood that I would need something stronger. At first I thought that it wouldn't bend, but it did.

I changed different things until I was happy.

Putting things together helped me to observe the bending and the position of the body. After observing this, I decided to go to the original pipe set up when I realized that I could just rotate the joint.

When more weight was added, the whole thing was tilted on the wrong direction.

I placed a garbage bag to hide the base and the spring.

The body was laying too way back so I decided to print another pair of 45 degrees joints to elevate the position of the body.

The last thing I did was to glue on the hands using the glue gun.

The 45 degrees joints are on place so the body now has exactly the position that I was aiming for.