How to make a swan out of a tire: step by step instructions

Swans from car tires are an adornment of many garden and summer cottages. Simple crafts from old tires even refer to a certain direction of creativity, called thrash art (literally - "art from garbage, waste rubbish"). Resourceful gardeners and summer residents have been practicing 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 interested in how to make a swan out of a tire, 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 flock).
• Electric jigsaw or grinder (grinder).
• Electric drill.
• Pliers, nippers.
• Technical knife.
• Chalk, marker for marking.
• Metal rod.
• Paint for the future animal.

Choose tires

To get beautiful and durable swans from tires, the first thing you need to do is to choose the right material for the job. So, what is most useful to us:

• Old tires from cars. In this case, the emphasis is on their age and deterioration - tires should be erased to the limit. Such tires are also called "bald" by motorists. In a word, the more hopeless the material for the driver, the better it is for our swan from the tire (we will analyze in more detail below how to make a garden decoration).
• But imported tires, especially studded ones, will not be so good for crafts.
• The best option is rubber with kapron cord. It can simply be cut with a knife. But if the cord is metal, then without special tools (we have listed them), there is no way to do it.

You do not need to be a car owner if you are eager to learn how to make a swan out of a tire. For material, you can contact the tire workshop - they will give you their used rubber. Calculation: one swan = one tire. If you are not confident in your abilities, want experiments, then you can take more tires.

Work is best done outdoors, in the same garden. Tires need to be prepared for the process - wash and dry 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, we outline the outline of the future bird. How to make a swan from a tire at this stage:

1. Chalk the tire into two halves in length.
2. The second stage draws the neck, head and beak, focusing on the middle markup.
3. The length of the element from the base of the neck to the beak should be greater than 1/2 the circumference of the tire. For example, if the latter is 180 cm, then we need to measure at least 95 cm.
4. To make the head proportional, make it 10 cm long. The beak will then be 9 cm.

Neck, head and beak

The instruction on how to make a swan out of a tire continues with the next step - cutting out the figure. Here is what is important for us to consider:

1. We cut the tire along the contours of the head, neck and beak.
2. If we have before us an old-style tire (with kapron cord), then without a problem you can handle one technical knife. We recommend dipping its blade in soapy water from time to time in order to facilitate its work.
3. If the tire has a metal cord, you will have to turn to the grinder. Work with the grinder is best done in the fresh air. Take care of your safety - closed shoes and clothes, protective gloves are required.
4. If you use a grinder, then up to 3 grinding wheels will take one swan - rubber well increases their consumption. The method of such work is quick, but not environmentally friendly. Heated rubber will smell characteristic. Do not forget about soot and burning.
5. According to step-by-step instructions, a swan from a tire can be cut with an electric jigsaw - working with this 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 saw file. Need a drill or chisel.
6. How to work with a jigsaw? The wear of his files will increase from work at high speeds. Therefore, the latter can be optimally reduced below average, and also use a file with a back tooth. And this is the best solution. The back tooth will break the metal cord, and low speeds will not allow the rubber to heat up.
7. How to make a swan out of a tire with your own hands using a mechanical (manual) tool? You can stay on a regular file for metal. She will also cope with the iron cord, but the progress will slow down, and you will put more effort.
8. We cut and cut the neck only along the intended outline - no transverse cuts are needed here!
9. Here, beginners make a big mistake, which many times complicates their work. They begin to cut the neck completely from one side - right or left. This is not true. We act in small segments - sawed a little on the right, then the same amount on the left, etc.

Tail cutting

We continue to imagine how to make a swan from tires (step-by-step instructions):

1. The last cutting step is the tail. Its contour also needs to be previously marked with a marker or chalk. The approximate length is about 25 cm. It is cut according to a similar pattern - we saw a little along the left contour, then the same amount along the right, etc.
2. The tail is not only a purely decorative element. He will help us deal with the next step - turning the tire. Thus, its transformation from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan.

Inversion of the structure

Here we come to the most difficult and crucial moment of the story, telling how to make step by step from the tire of a swan (look for photos with tips throughout the article).

The process of inverting the figure is quite time-consuming - the tire is laid down with the cut part. Then it is pressed with the foot and pulled in such a way as to turn the side parts up. The central area of ​​the figure is pressed. And so she more or less now looks like a swan.

Final work

We complete the process of turning from an ugly duckling:

1. Lower the formed side semicircles down.
2. If you used tires with a metal cord, you will have to finish the edges with an additional grinder. However, this does not completely save the bird from the protruding reinforcement. Therefore, such a swan can be used to decorate garden or summer cottages, but not a playground. But in this case, you need to be careful - install the structure where you can not accidentally touch the protruding reinforcement.
3. 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. For this, along its entire length, every 15-20 cm, twin holes are drilled opposite each other. They are located strictly along the center line.
4. Staples made of soft, thin wire are inserted into the holes made. In turn, an already thick wire is attached to them. It is necessary to cut off her skein of at least 1.5 m. We fix the lower part from the inside of the base of the neck, and the upper one on the upper part of the head.

Design composition

That's almost it, our swan is almost ready. Left a little:

1. Bend his neck at the right angle.
2. From rubber residues, eyes can be cut out. They are screwed to the head with screws.
3. To make the feathers look like, make notches on the lower inner parts of the wings.
4. The swan princess is easy to make from our composition, having made a crown for a rubber bird from an ordinary plastic bottle.

Coloring the composition

To complete the image of the regal bird and make our creation more aesthetic, it must be painted. For rubber swans, white and black paint is mainly chosen - to match the natural color of live birds in nature. But garden sculptures covered with golden or silver materials look no worse. The main thing is that your chosen paint should be stable and designed for outdoor use.

For rubber, enamel, oil and nitro dyes are best suited. 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, deform and will retain its attractive appearance for a long time.

If this is still not enough for your aesthetic feeling, you can turn to acrylic paints. With their help, it is easy to draw a beak, eyes, a kind of plumage.

Garden sculpture location

So, our beautiful swan is completely ready. Now it's up to you to decide where it is best to place it. Let us turn to zoology. The natural habitat of swans is ponds. 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 set it “floating” along the surface of this mini-pond. By the way, if you didn’t know, then it’s realistic to build an imitation from that car tire!

Tire swans look good as decorations on a perfectly trimmed lawn. Many gardeners decorate their beds with birds. You can even paint the bird in a suitable shade to combine with the flowers that grow there.

Resourceful summer residents from the swan make an impromptu flowerbed! For this, the bird is installed on another car tire for stability, 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. And imagine how cool it would look like your swan is floating out of a cloud of flowers!

As a result, it’s a little troublesome, but very beautiful to make 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 "banks"). Pebbles fall asleep at the bottom, and then the space is filled with water. So that the water does not stagnate, it can be periodically taken for irrigation, and instead just add fresh.

Crafts from car tires

If you liked to turn used bald tires into something really beautiful, we recommend not to stop on swans. As we already said, from the tires you can build a flower bed, a mini-pond.

If you have young children, then it's nice 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 the sun, painting it yellow and drawing a face.
• From tires stacked on top of each other, you can get not only a summer snowman, but also an Olympic bear, a bunny. The main thing is to successfully paint the product.
• From the old tire, having attached pieces of old rubber to it, you can get a nice fish.

But folk craftsmen do not stop at the decor. Convenient and functional country furniture is built from the tires! These are poufs, chairs, chairs, tables and children's swings. It’s already a classic to use used tires as a fence.

So we sorted out in detail how to make a handsome swan out of car tires. Follow the instructions, experiment to decorate your site with real masterpieces!