No.2
The Dragonfly Fighter is an Insectoid class flying war machine that is used in the war against the Reptilian class land based war machines.
This war has been raging for as long as living memory and does not look like ending soon.
Well, until I stop building fantasy machines for it, that is.
There are about 200 pictures describing this project, so reading through it is not for the fainthearted.
Size is 500 mm wide x 460 mm long and 200 mm high.
Metals: Silver, brass, copper iron, and titanium.
Non-metals: Glass and amethyst gemstones.
885 hours build time.
722 different handmade parts.
The weight is just under 2 kilo's.
Other than the basic chassis, everything else is unscrewable.
300 liters of sweat and 18 kilograms of angst.
People ask me how much my art work costs.
The monthly minimum wage is €14.00 per hour, so you can work out the minimum price for yourself.

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First thing I figured, was to make a platform for the cockpit.
My first idea was to have a bubble canopy but I thought that was to feminine so I decided to go for the flat military look.
I make jewellery, so I like feminine shapes, but for military, not so much.

I drew out some half round flat wire about 3 mm wide that would be the frames for the windows.

This was a center roof through which I wanted a pole to come through, like those old      da vinci drawings.      Bless.

The basic wings were cut out of 0.7 mm thick copper sheet.
What I do is to print it out on paper, then glue the paper to the metal.
When it's dry, I add a bit of light machine oil to the lines.
When the oil is wiped off, enough remains soaked in the paper to lubricate the saw blade.

This was the second brass platform that the wings were going to be attached to.

The wing trim on the top is cut out of 1 mm brass sheet and then filed half round and sanded up to 1200 grit.

After the shapes were cut out, they are bent into a concave shape.

I make my own solder.  30 grams Fine Silver--  9.2 grams Copper--- 6.9 grams Zinc.
It's not jewellery solder.
It's great for brass and copper and it solders stainless steel well as well.
First I soldered two sections together.

The two halves are then soldered together.

I made smaller ones just by drawing out smaller segments.

Then I cut two sections out of 1 mm brass to form the shape of the head.

So here I am now.

I also made a tail with segments in between the egg segments.

Checking the proportions, sort of got to have a Dragonfly-ish look.

Then I made an armored battering ram under the Dragonfly fighter's head.
This is used to smash enemy fighters out of the air.
Also, any ground based Dino War machines are smacked kaput using the ram.

So here the head body spikes have been fabricated.

I made a temporary angle jobbie under the wing, so that I can play around with the wing dihedral and height.     It will be made into a different more decorative wing spar later.

Then I drill and tap some holes in the thorax where I want the legs to go.
Once I got the basic leg angle worked out, I solder the second joint on.
I'm only going to make four legs on this alien craft, because of it being an aircraft and not a full insect. ---  And even though it is semi sentient, it still remains an alien designed and manufactured aircraft of war.

So then the legs needed body, so I pierced out the shape shown and then swaged them longitudinally.

Then I do the bottom ones.

I bend 0.7 mm copper into the body spines and solder then in.
I love the colour of fresh copper.
It's the only pure red metal in the world.

So then these are the rear legs up to the first joint.

So then I started on the second part of the rear legs.

I got to here and then I was not really happy with the shape and size, so I set them aside.
I'll come back to them a bit later.

I made some new rear leg claws.
I set up the Dragonfly fighter up on soldering blocks on my workbench so that I could position everything just so.
Then I soldered my rear claw to the leg.
I use a little torch with a 6 hole oxy -propane nozzle.

Here is a rear claw just pickled.
The center part was first carved in purple wax.
Then I sand cast two center shapes in brass.
Then I made some spikes on my lathe and soldered them in.
Then I bent them upwards.
Then I made the vertical part and tapped a thread and screwed it into the sand cast part.

I started on the front legs.    I want to have a gun platform on each front leg.
A big ass gun.

I made some front claws.

They fit onto the front legs like this.

Here I am posing them, just to see at what angle they will look the nicest.
I wasn't happy with them really.

So I set them aside and started on a new set.
I figured that maybe something that looks a bit like the rear legs.

So now the copper has to be inserted.

I wax carved and sand cast some big ass claws and legs.

First solder them together.

Like this.  The front leg gun platform.

After pickling.  I use sodium bisulphate as my pickle. I buy the pool stuff that lowers the ph value of pools at the pool shop.   Very cheap and lasts for ever.

I finished the front of the head and the inside of the mandibles off.

The head swivel system.  I wanted it to be a sort of hydraulic affair with a sort of brain/guide to interface with the pilot.

So I turned a central interface station.

Then I soldered the fluid control pipes to the central pilot interface.

You can see how this thing is central to the nervous system of the machine.
The link between the body and the head, carrying out the commands of the pilot.

It plugs in sort of like the alien did in the Sigourney Weaver movie Alien.
When the alien baby jumps out of the egg and latches onto Kane's face.
I think there is a symbiotic relationship with central interface station and the rest of the machine.        A little bit like the mitochondria and the human cell.
I could be wrong, though.

At this stage, I want to work a bit on the wings and the tail.

I made some tail vanes.  They act as a rudder, in conjunction with the wings.

I needed some tail fins that fitted on the individual tail segments.
So I draw it out, then print some copies and pierce them out.
One on each side, and then I sandwich some copper between them.

Three fins for each tail segment.

I put then on with placer screws.

From big to small.
Again,like the vanes on the back of the tail, these all contribute to stability during flight.

Now comes the time when the eyes have to be designed.
This is always difficult, because they are eyes, windows to the soul, or in this case, to the pilot interface unit. First I messed around with some titanium mesh that I heat blued.
You know, like insect and compound eyes.  Meh.

I made two silver disks and domed them.

Then I sifted some blue enamel powder in them and fired them.

I quite liked the look with a onyx bead in the middle.

Covered with the titanium mesh, it didn't look nice. Too much hidden.

So then I make a titanium disk like the silver disks.  Sanded it down and polished it.
Then I take a reducing flame and slowly heat it up until it turns blue.
Then I use a 1.5 mm ball frazer and engrave the center like the picture.
I use a placer aquamarine that I cut and stick it on the inside----meh.

Pretty pointless, since the mesh hid everything.

The next one was also pretty iffy.

I'm not going to show every attempt, but eventually I arrived at this back ground, which I liked. These were blued from a cooler flame on the inside to a slightly hotter flame to the outside.   Then I took and old setting burr and made the silver part in the middle, which is the native colour of titanium.

So then I made a silver surround for the titanium and I made some silver screws that I was going to set some citrines in.

I cut and drilled some 1.5 mm glass to fit

Looked like this, but I still wasn't happy, because they were too insipid.

Eventually, I arrived here.
I melted some glass rod and the re made the gem screws and discarded the glass.

And this design was the one that I finally used.
I liked the piercing look, like when the Dragonfly fighter is looking at you, he is giving you that piercing blue eyed look a German customs official give you.
And you feel guilty, even though you carrying nothing bad.

Then I made some hydraulic power tubes that originate from the amethyst set gem nuts.

So here I am, still with the old style eye.    But I was not really happy at this stage, even though the fighter was sort of moving in fits and starts in a forward direction.

Then I added some sensor coils to the mandibles and also some reinforced hydraulic lines to compliment the gem based ones.

It was at about this stage that I was playing around with the alien in the cock pit that I got tired of the cockpit design.

I just did not think it had enough oomph.
It looked like a glass house where some doddering old fossil like me waters his lettuces on a summers afternoon.

So I took a step back and made a combat chair for the pilot.

All the components.

This is a picture of the finished chair.

Just for fun, the size comparison.

So once the chair was finished, I had a size gauge to redesign and remake the cockpit.
First I made some plates and screwed them into place with 2 mm placer screws.

I fitted all the plates first.
That way is was easier to get an overall feel for the size of the cockpit.

I wanted the cockpit to be removable so that the inside could be easily seen when the Dragon Fighter is on display.

Having made all the components removable made it easier to manipulate them, so here I am just working out where I am going to cut the front and back off.

Like this.

Then I started cutting the windows in.

I left the center circles in the frames so that I can drill a hole through the glass and frame.

Making the roof.

I just put them up with putty to see what it would look like.

The basic roof finished, but I thought is looked too busy.

And also, it was difficult to see inside, and by definition, the pilot would also not be able to see outside easily.   Friends of mine from the aviation world tell me it is better to see clearly out of the cockpit than not.

So I cleared out some of the struts for more visibility,
I did leave the bottom lips in place so that they could be the method for affixing the bullet proof glass.

Here are the first of the many windows I cut on my gem cutting machine.

Here is a picture of the glass being fitted.
This was quite tricky work, with many back and forth to the gem cutting machine to grind down the shapes until they fitted.

After all was said and done, here is a picture of all the components prior to final assembly. All the spikes are threaded with a 2 mm thread and they screw into the cockpit frame through the hole drilled through the glass.

The floor of the cabin was to plain. A high ranking alien pilot does have a plain floor in his Dragonfly fighter. It's just not done in their society and is an affront to their Queen.

So I drew a symmetrical design.  First I draw half the design in a soft pencil. Then I fold the paper in half and use a pencil end to rub down on the folded paper.
The first design then transfers to the blank side.

Then I stick some packing tape on the floor of the cockpit and stick the paper over that.
Then I use a blade and cut through the paper and tape and when I finished, I pull all the parts I don't need off.    I use diluted Nitric acid to etch the floor.

This is what it looks like when it is finished. 
Later on I make it more black with Liver of Sulfur.

I thought that the floor looked much nicer with the new design.

I added some copper strips that are held in place with brass bubble rivets.

The Alien Pilot. ---   I am devoting a special segment to the making of the alien pilot.
I started the body the same way I made the legs covers

Soldered some copper in.

I eventually filed the copper flush.

I started in the first alien head. I used a standard brass bar I buy at a brass dealer, so it is not cartridge brass but brass made for turning on a lathe.
So it is quite brittle, which makes carving it easier.

I am going for some thing like mandibles.
At this stage I was also thinking bulging insect eyes.

This is where I got to.

I carved some proto arms and legs, subject to improvement.

Did some legs too.

It was at this stage I got tired of the alien pilot's body.
This was going nowhere and it was clumsy.
When I was young, it used to freak me out that I had to start something over.
Nowadays I just start again and stfu.

So I started carving a new one out of purple wax.

Purple wax is my most favorite carving material.
In the early 80's, this colour was not available to me, so I used to buy a kilo on Kerr blue and red and mix my own.  I stick all the various appendages in and pose the new alien.

Then I sand cast his body.

First step is to carve him smoother using a 6 mm flame shaped tungsten carbide cross cut burr.   I cast him in cartridge brass, ( 70% copper, 30% zinc) and that is much more 'grabby' that turning brass.    So if a standard bur is used, it is very easy for it to grab and leave a nice ground out dent in your thumb nail.     Cross cut burrs for cartridge brass.

The body was looking a bit better.

I also made his sliding fighter controls on his left side.

I decided to add another set of arms, because alien pilots are very skilled and the Dragon Fly fighter is very difficult to fly.

I also made some control levers out of steel and also his main control stick.
He looked OK, but his head was to small.

Here is a close up of the main control stick.
This is connected to the main interface post that in turn is connected to the head.
It uses an entangled quantum interface that is difficult to explain to people not familiar with alien technology. --   Sorry about that.

Anyway, getting back to the head, I started a new one out of thicker turning brass rod.

With this brass, normal burrs are OK to use.

Only pic I have of this stage. I got hung up and forgot to take some as I went along.

So here the head is at about the same stage of completion as the body, arms and legs.

The cockpit allows him a good over all view and can also be flipped up if he is having lunch and stuff.

Okay, so now I come to the stage where I am working the various components to their finished stage. There is very little left to solder, for instance, and everything is pretty much screwed together, so no component that is completely finished is too far forward from the rest.

Behind the pilots chair I made the wing control interface, which is also slaved to the central control stick. The alien pilot's middle arms control this device.
That is why us humans could never fly this machine – too few arms.

The right center arm controls the gun platform as well.

From this angle you can see the middle arm that manipulated the landing gear and forward poison mandibles.     I was also fitting titanium inlays into his eyes.

So now it was time to make the gun platforms.
Gatling guns were my first choice because A10 Thunderbolt stuff.
I made the basic stand out of titanium.

They are being fitted to the forward facing gun platforms I made all that time ago.

The titanium prior to being heat blued.

The right side Gatling gun installed.
Note the reinforced hydraulic control tube that is directly controlled buy one of the middle arms of the alien pilot.

Here are all the components of each gun.
The back spring is also titanium.

Here are the two finished Gatling guns.

Then I made some leg covers to make the transition less abrupt.

Their primary purpose is to provide an electrical barrier to any nasties that try climb up the legs to get at the pilot and eat him.
There is some seriously bad stuff on some planets, believe me.

I made some bottom brackets for the wings.

Then I started on the wing interface units.

They join the wing power rods.

The power rods go to the anchor antennae.

Which in turn go to the search and aim antennae at the bottom of the wing.

So now it was time to cook the wings.    In the old days in South Africa I would make a giant fire and spend the afternoon cooking copper and drinking beer.    People in Europe just don't do that stuff.          So in my back yard and distilled water it is.

I heat and quench the copper until I am happy with the pattern I get.
Some times it's the first or second quench that's perfect, sometimes it's quench number ten million.

Anyway, here is a wing, ready to be stabilized with urethane.

I liked the abdominal segments but I thought the space in between the fins was a bit boring. Also, The Dragonfly Fighter, besides having Gatling guns and venom fangs amongst other various weapon systems that are classified and that I am not at liberty to discuss, needed some ground attack bugs.

So I started fabricating six of them.

I made little legs and then filed a thinner section, drilled a hole in the body and soldered them into place.

Here are the bare basic attack bugs.

Here is an attack bug, stored on the first segment.

This is the attack bug and segment completed.

And here are the three tail segments completed each with their set of attack bugs.

The tail segment components.

The Mandible components showing the poison fangs.

Here is the final version of the cockpit..

Here is the final version of the slide control of the Dragonfly fighter.
It is engraved with a powerful alien script that casts an aura of protection over the whole fighter.  If you wondering how that works, sorry again, that knowledge is only on a need to know basis.

This is the final version of the cockpit interior.

The final version of the gun control interface.

Aaaand the final version of the brave Alien Pilot.

The other side on our warrior.
Lets look at him in more detail, for he is an entity of many secrets and surprises.

A close up of his rather fearsome head. The eyes are titanium and gold and the spikes are made of steel. The rest of him is made out of pure bravery.

He has two rings on his left middle hand.
One is won through victory in one to one ground combat and the other shows that he is spoken for by an equal female warrior from an equally high ranking house.

On his other middle hand there are two more rings,
These are given to him on the birth date of his two children.

He has an arm band that denotes that he is the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel in human terms.

And finally, a bangle that contains communication devices to program the various entanglement functions of the Dragonfly Fighter. Sorry, above your pay grade knowledge.

And just because I'm a jeweller and because I can, I made him into a pendant.
Maybe one that needs to be worn with some care, spikes and all, but a pendant nevertheless. Check his copper cooling fins on his chest.
Apologies for the placer chain.

The Dragonfly Fighter complete.

The Dragonfly Fighter with the cockpit cover off.

Being photographed.

Making the Display Box.
I'm not going into detail on how I make a glass display box, because, you know, box, but here is a top view.

The cockpit has it's own section that holds it in place.

Here is a close up of cockpit corner.
It rests on a satin finished brass plate.

Overall outside view on top of a workshop cupboard.

Below is my contact email and other websites.

hansmeevis@gmail.com http://meevis.com/jewelry-catalog.htm https://www.jewelry-tutorials.com/ https://www.drill-straight-tools.com/