southern sculpting

How to build a bicycle powered fish float from cardboard, butcher paper and contact cement.

1.a Take as much horseradish as you like and a decent vodka and prepare 2 Bloody Mary’s

1.b Give one to your wife, toast the 2008 Mardi Gras season and start sculpting.

All you gotta do is paint the cardboard with the green contact cement. Let that dry and then start shaping it on the wooden armature that you’ve attached to your three wheel bike.

You can shape it like a trout, you can make the head bobble, you can use all kinds of stuff. Just make it look like a FISH. Coat it twice more with butcher paper. Using wallpaper paste with the second coat. Then paint it.

That’s all you really need to do, it’s that easy. At least that’s the way Stacey and I have been doing for the last 16 years. At first we used newspaper, chicken wire and liquid starch, that was tough, hard to make it look the way you wanted it to. Then about 3 years ago the Master float builder Mr. S. Mussell gave us a few tips and helped us get the contact cement that is vital to the process. That’s when we started producing floats like this one.