Gravity Falls WHAT Weather Vane!

Hello! I just started on gravity falls, as many of my other shows are on hiatus. :(. ANYWHO, I decided to make something interesting from the show. I really liked the whole intro, so I decided to make the WHAT weather vane.

This instructable will show how I did it! yay!

I was going off an image I got from the intro. I decided to start with the "?". To do this, I drew it on a wide board and cut it out with a band saw. I also sanded and smoothed with the belt sander.

For this, I used a circular drill bit to cut out of the same plank. fairly simple.

I drilled 2 holes, one in the bottom of the ? and one all the way through the dot. This can be seen better in the "gluing" step. for the pole, I had no pole small enough, so I pounded it flat, folded it, and made it round again. Seemed to work fine

To make the bars I used some thinish steel rod. As seen in the pictures, I bent them at a 90 degrees and overlapped them. The idea here is to have a loose fitting joint, then put a bolt under it. I did not want to weld, so I brazed them together and it worked great. In order to get it to spin level, You have to lock the "square" in the middle in a vice and bend the bars level with each other. The letters were pretty easy, just time consuming. I drew them out on a board then cut them with a band saw. to make the hole in the "A" I just drilled through. Be careful if the wood grain is horizontal though, it is easy to crack.

To attach the letters to the bars, I drilled a hole partially through all the letters the same diameter as the bars. I epoxyed those on there. Next, slide the dot on the bar and the question mark on top of it. I epoxeyed both on.

I probably should have gotten the right size pole to fit in the boards, so I wouldn't have had to smash it, but other than that the project went rather well.