Very often used car tires are covered with rubbish in the garage or garden. Do not throw away worn-out tires, as they can be used to make useful things. With a little time and effort, any man can decorate his garden plot, for example, with a beautiful swan.
Preparation for work
First of all, you need to take a tire suitable for work. It should be as worn out as possible, bald and preferably have a longitudinal pattern. All this will facilitate the process of cutting the tire. In addition, it is better to take a tire with a nylon cord, and not with a metal one (with such a tire it will not only be difficult to work, but you can also get injured both during the cutting process and on the finished product). The selected tire should be washed and dried, as it is much more pleasant to work with a clean tire.
In the process of cutting a tire, the following tools are useful: chalk, drill, knife, pliers, jigsaw. Additionally, you will need a wire of thick diameter and thin for staples, paint.
Swan making
To begin with, chalk marks the beak, head and neck of the swan (approximately half the circumference of the tire). Approximately 9 centimeters are laid on the beak, on the head 10. The swan's neck should smoothly expand towards the body. The marking of the bird's tail is already partially present (this is what remains after cutting the beak).
When all the markings are applied to the tire, you can start cutting. This is the most difficult stage of the work, during which you need to be very careful so as not to get injured. It is necessary to work with gloves and special glasses. If the tire is very old and thin, then you can cut the swan with a knife, if it is thick, it is best to use a jigsaw.
Cutting both sides is carried out in parallel by 5 centimeters, otherwise it will be very difficult to cut the rubber, since it will bend very much.
After cutting, the resulting wings are turned inside out to give them a larger span. There is another option - not to turn the wings inside out, in this version they will simply be more lowered to the ground. Next, the neck is fixed. The neck and head are strengthened and bent with a plastic rod. To secure the rod, you need to drill paired holes with a drill and use a thin wire to make staples along the entire length of the neck. After staining, the staples will be almost invisible.
In general, the figure is ready, it remains only to check that there are no torn edges, protruding wires. To make the swan more beautiful, you need to paint the frame with white or black paint, the beak is red, and the eyes can be made from self-tapping screws.
You can install the swan on a stump, on the ground, for stability, by pouring stones in the middle of the figure, as well as on another tire (if you paint it blue, you get an imitation of a lake).
