MATERIALS NEEDED
1 - 1/4 x 6 inch bolt
2 - 1/4 inch nuts
3 - 1/4 inch x 1 inch washers
2 - 1/4 inch lock washers ( 1 - star, 1 spring )
1 - 1/4 inch wing nut
2 - 3/16 inch x 1.25 inch washers
1 - 1/4 inch x 2 inch fender washer
1 - 11 inch model airplane "PUSHER" prop ( mine says 11/8 P ) The pusher
prop pushes air when rotated clockwise. This is critical. You can get these
at any good hobby shop.
1 - 8 oz can of Cold Vucanizing Fluid ( may be called chemical vulcanizing
fluid or vulcanizing cement ). You can find this at a automotive parts
place that cators to professionals. I found two different brands but one
was too thin. The brand I use was thick and said "fast dry" on the can.
I have read that you can also use rubber cement, but have not tried it.
This was the only hard thing to find. The fluid should say non-flamible
on the label.
The shaft is a 1/4 x 6 inch bolt with the bolt head cut off. drill a 1/4 inch hole through the bottom and cover of a margarine container. Take the container cover off. push the shaft through the bottom of the container. Push a rubber washer onto the shaft and into the container. Add a washer and a nut. On the other end of the shaft (bottom of container) add a washer, the propellor, star washer, washer, spring washer, and nut. Put the cover onto the top of the container, by pushing it onto the shaft. Add a rubber washer, washer and wing nut onto the shaft to hold the cover on. Take an Xacto knife and push it into the container to make a slit, about 1/8 inch long. Put the knife at each end of the slit and spin the knife to make two tiny holes. Make the holes very small to start with. See the picture for the location of the slit. I think that this spinner is terribly over-engineered. You could probably skip many of the washers.
Put the spinner into a drill, put a bit of the fluid into the container and screw the cap down. Run the drill full blast. The trick is to get the holes to be the right size for the viscosity of the fluid, and the speed of the drill. If nothing comes out, stop and enlarge the holes. If you make the holes too big you will start to get blobs on the web strings. If this happens, put a piece of electrical tape over the holes, and make a new slit/holes. The first time I ran my web spinner, I was in the back of my garage aiming the spinner out the front of the garage. I didn't think that it was working, until I looked closely. Then I saw that I was shooting a spiral of web all the way across the garage, and over my car. I must have been shooting 30 feet. This was with two propellors on the spinner. I took the second prop off. The web spinner works better when it is warm out so I put my webs up in the afternoon.
To make webs which glow under blacklight I added RIT Brightener to the fluid, it became a little too thin, and I needed to use smaller holes. Be careful what you shoot webs onto, they may not easily come off. Web fluid may stain latex.
If you don't want to build your own, you can buy a proffessional one from Terror By Design. Denny also sells professional fluid.