Swans made from car tires are an adornment of many garden and summer cottages. Simple crafts from old tires even belong to a certain direction of creativity called trash art (literally - "art from garbage, unnecessary trash"). Resourceful gardeners and summer residents have been making such birds since Soviet times, so we can say about the existence of work techniques that will help in the end to get a beautiful and high-quality craft. If you are wondering how to make a tire swan, please follow us!
What will we need?
Well, let's get down to business. How to make a swan from a tire with your own hands? First of all, we will prepare everything you need for creativity:
- An old tire (or a few old tires if you want to decorate the garden with a whole pack).
- Electric jigsaw or grinder (angle grinder).
- Electric drill.
- Pliers, wire cutters.
- Technical knife.
- Chalk, marker for marking.
- Metal rod.
- Paint for the future animal.
Choosing tires
To get beautiful and durable swans from tires, the first thing you need to take care of is choosing the right material for the job. So, what will be most useful to us:
- Old car tires. At the same time, the emphasis is on their age and deterioration - tires must be worn to the limit. Motorists also call such tires "bald". In a word, the more hopeless the material for the driver, the better it is for our tire swan (how to make a garden decoration, we will analyze in detail later).
- But imported tires, especially studded ones, will not be so good for crafts.
- The most excellent option is rubber with nylon cord. It can be easily cut with a knife. But if the cord is metal, then you can’t do without special tools (we listed them).
You don't have to be a car owner if you want to learn how to make a swan out of a tire. For material, you can contact the tire shop - they will give you their used tires. Calculation: one swan=one tire. If you are not confident in your abilities, you want to experiment, then you can take more tires.
Work is best done outdoors, in the same garden. Tires need to be prepared for the process - washed and dried thoroughly.
And now let's move on to step-by-step instructions on how to make a swan out of a tire.
Drawing
First of all, let's outline the outline of the future bird. How to make a tire swan at this stage:
- Separate the length of the tire into two halves with chalk.
- The second step is to draw the neck, head and beak, focusing on the middle markup.
- The length of the element from the base of the neck to the beak must be greater than 1/2 of the tire circumference. For example, if the latter is 180 cm, then we need to measure at least 95 cm.
- To make the head proportional, we make its length 10 cm. The beak will then be 9 cm.
Cutting out the neck, head and beak
Instructions on how to make a swan from a tire continue with the next step - cutting out the figure. Here is what we need to consider here:
- Cut the tire along the contours of the head, neck and beak.
- If we have an old-style tire (with a nylon cord), then we can handle it with one technical knife without any problems. We recommend dipping its blade in soapy water from time to time to make your job easier.
- If there is a metal cord on the tire, you will have to turn to a grinder. Work with a grinder is best done outdoors. Take care of your safety - closed shoes and clothes, protective gloves are required.
- If you use a grinder, then one swan will take up to 3 grinding wheels - rubber well increases their consumption. The method of such work is fast, but not environmentally friendly. Warm rubber will smell characteristically. Do not forget about soot and burning.
- A swan can be cut out of a tire according to step-by-step instructions with a jigsaw - with thiswork with a tool will be much more pleasant than with a grinder. But in this case, you need to make a hole in the tire - for the sawing plant. Need a drill or chisel.
- How to work with a jigsaw? The wear of his files will increase from work at high speeds. Therefore, it is optimal to reduce the latter below average values, and also use a file with a reverse tooth. And this is the best solution. The reverse tooth will break the metal cord, and low speed will not allow the rubber to heat up.
- How to make a swan out of a tire with your own hands using a mechanical (hand) tool? You can stop at a regular metal file. She will also cope with the iron cord, but the progress of the work will slow down, and you will put more effort.
- We cut and saw the neck only along the outlined contour - no cross cuts are needed here!
- Here, beginners make a big mistake, which makes their work many times more difficult. They begin to cut the neck completely on one side - right or left. This is not true. We act in small segments - we drank a little on the right, then the same amount on the left, etc.
Tail clipping
We continue to imagine how to make a swan out of tires (step by step instructions):
- The last step of cutting is the ponytail. Its outline must also be pre-marked with a marker or chalk. The approximate length is about 25 cm. It is cut out in a similar way - we saw a little along the left contour, then the same amount along the right, etc.
- The tail is not only a purely decorative element. He will help us deal withthe next step is to turn the tire out. Thus, her transformation from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.
Reversing the construction
Here we come to the most difficult and crucial moment of the story, telling how to make a swan step by step from a tire (look for photos with tips throughout the article).
The process of turning the figure inside out is quite laborious - the tire is laid with the cut part down. Then it is pressed down with a foot and pulled in such a way as to turn the side parts up. The central region of the figure is pressed down. That's how she more or less now becomes like a swan.
Final works
Completing the transformation from the ugly duckling:
- Lower the formed side semicircles down.
- If you used tires with a metal cord, you will have to process the edges with an additional grinder. However, this will not completely rid the bird of protruding reinforcement. Therefore, such a swan can be used to decorate garden or summer cottages, but not a playground. But even in this case, you need to be careful - install the structure where you cannot accidentally touch the protruding reinforcement.
- We continue to analyze how to make swans from tires (the photo will help you navigate the sequence of work). The next step is to strengthen our bird's neck. To do this, along its entire length, paired holes are drilled opposite each other every 15-20 cm. locatedthey are strictly on the center line.
- Staples made of soft thin wire are inserted into the holes made. In turn, a thick wire is attached to them. It is necessary to cut off its coil of at least 1.5 m. We fix the lower part on the inside of the base of the neck, the upper part on the top of the head.
Composition design
That's almost all, our swan is almost ready. Not much left:
- Bend his neck at the right angle.
- Eyes can be cut out of the remnants of rubber. They are screwed to the head with screws.
- To make it look like feathers, make notches on the lower inner parts of the wings.
- It is easy to make a swan princess from our composition by making a crown for a rubber bird from an ordinary plastic bottle.
Coloring composition
To complete the image of the royal bird and make our creation more aesthetic, it needs to be painted. For rubber swans, white and black paint is mainly chosen - to match the natural color of living birds in nature. But garden sculptures covered with golden or silver materials look no worse. Most importantly, the paint you choose should be sustainable and designed for outdoor use.
Enamel, oil and nitro dyes are best suited for rubber. We will apply any paint only on a dry and clean surface! If you follow this rule, then the color will easily and evenly decorate our swan. The paint will not crack, deformand retain its attractive appearance for a long time.
If this is not enough for your aesthetic sense, you can turn to acrylic paints. With their help, it is easy to draw a beak, eyes, a kind of plumage.
Location of garden sculpture
So, our handsome swan is completely ready. Now it's up to the small thing - to decide where best to place it. Let's turn to zoology. The natural habitat of swans is water bodies. Therefore, our composition will look wonderful next to an artificial pond, a fountain on your site. It is also possible, having thought over a suitable stand, to install it "floating" on the surface of this mini-reservoir. By the way, if you didn’t know, then it’s really possible to build an imitation of it from that car tire!
Tire swans look good as decorations on a well-trimmed lawn. Many gardeners decorate their flower beds with birds. You can even paint the bird the right shade to match the flowers that grow there.
Resourceful summer residents make an impromptu flowerbed out of the swan itself! To do this, for stability, the bird is installed on another car tire, which can also be painted in a harmonious color. Suitable soil is poured inside it, seeds or seedlings are planted. The composition can be watered, fed, because rubber is quite resistant to such influences. Imagine how great it will look like your swan is floating out of a cloud of flowers!
A bit of a hassle, but a very beautiful resultmake a special pond for homemade birds. To do this, a small pit is prepared, whose bottom is covered with dense polyethylene (it is important to securely fix it with stones on the "shores"). Pebbles are poured to the bottom, and only then the space is filled with water. So that the water does not stagnate, it can be periodically taken for irrigation, and in return, simply add fresh water.
Crafts from car tires
If you like turning used "bald" tires into something really beautiful, then we recommend that you do not stop at swans. As we have said, tires can be used to build a flower bed, a mini-pond.
If you have small children, it's a good idea to make a play corner for them on the site, decorating it with compositions from the same tires and improvised materials:
- From one tire and plastic bottles stuck into it, we make a sun by painting it yellow and drawing a face.
- From the tires pointed at each other, not only a summer snowman can turn out, but also an Olympic bear, a bunny. The main thing is to successfully paint the product.
- You can get a cute fish from an old tire by attaching pieces of old rubber to it.
But folk craftsmen don't stop at decor. Comfortable and functional country furniture is being built from tires! These are padded stools, chairs, armchairs, tables and children's swings. It's already a classic to use waste tires as a fence.
So we have analyzed in detail how to make a handsome swan fromautomobile tyres. Follow the instructions, experiment to decorate your site with real masterpieces!
