How to Make Miniature Traffic Cones -

How to Make Miniature Traffic Cones 03/03/2011

I needed to make traffic cones for my performance entries. My first thought was to hit hobby and party stores thinking there might be pre-made cones as party favors for boys birthday parties or cast scale ones for the various RC or model car/train hobbys. There was absolutely no success, although the locally owned hobby store was particularly excited at trying to find one. Unfortunately everything they had was SM scale and I had to order those!

So, it was time to make something from scratch. Enter these homecoming mum megaphone trinkets. They are around the right size and shape, and you can get three of them for a dollar at Hobby Lobby. The kind pictured are not the exact type I got. I purchased a black set so I wouldn't have to worry about the interior (nothing like looking down and seeing a blue or green eh?) I think if you can find a red or orange that would also be a good base to start with as well.

Next I had to clip off the tops with the nippers shown. The handles on the side you can also nip off, although they snapped off by hand cleanly enough. The tops were then smoothed with sandpaper, as well as the seams and where the handle came off. It doesn't have to be super perfect, as primer and the multiple layers of auto paint will fill in quite a bit. Also, traffic cones are never perfect in real life. They get beat up quite a bit. Might as well take advantage of that!

The base was created from craft foam, which I cut into a square with rounded corners. It's important to look at references of a real traffic cone, as it is easy to make the base too big in proportion to the cone. The cuticle scissors were used to create a neat rounded corner. After that was done, I sanded the edges of the foam base to make it look smooth and to get the corners to match.

Glueing was done with Crazy Glue gel, which is absolute crap by the way for doing the soda glue fixes on models. But it's great for obstacles and tack. I put the glue on the edges of the cone and wiped away the excess around the edges with a torn piece of paper. Be very careful with your placement, because it bonds on contact immediately! There is no wiggle room. When in place, you're ready to paint. I used Dupli-Color's "Chevy Orange" which I purchased at an auto parts store. I used about five layers on these, because I was in a hurry and didn't primer. Actually lost time, so live and learn. But voila! Cones!

Comments

Lynn W

03/03/2011 07:32

I never would have thought to use the megaphones.

Randa Garrett link

03/03/2011 19:10

You must live in the South. I went to High School near Dallas so I know all about Homecoming Mums. I now live in Kansas City and they look at me like I'm nuts when I talk about Homecoming Mums. I saved the one I had from my senior year and will show it to people up here and they are like "Why?" Thanks for posting this. I was just trying to think up a way to make some cones for my Western Riding classes.

Shelly

03/04/2011 07:39

Randas comment really made me laugh...I moved to the south in 1990 and I could NOT for the life of me figure otu why people were walking around at school with flowers stuck to their fronts like that......never saw it in CA.

For my cones, I used cake decorating tips. Found some with the appropriate sized opening, painted orange and mounted on wood squares with the corners rounded too! I like your idea too Alicia.