Dancing Davros

So I decided I wanted to get my friend something a bit special this christmas as she's helped out a lot over the past year. Now she has a collection of bears so I considered getting her a fancy bear, but she's got loads of those. Then I remembered that she's also a Dr Who fan and that I had one of these Daleks in the attic.

So a quick rummage around and I also find one of these bad boys, a genuine dancing hamster

A flurry of further rummaging procured me quite a stash of junk

First things first, skin the hamster and see how it holds together.

Not a pretty sight, but at least that carapace comes off easily enough. Now in these hamsters, the speaker and the batteries are all in the yellow base and there's a cam shaft that connects the body to the base so it rocks from side to side but we couldn't have that as it would make the thing too unstable, plus I was too lazy to work out how to secure it properly.

So I yoinked the wires, fed them through a hole in the dalek skirt, reconnected them and shoved everything under the skirt, classy.
Quickly stuffing the skin back on I notice a problem, even with it's belly taped the hamster head a lot of padding and is much too big for the base.

More foraging produces a small bear which I quickly slice down and tape in place, retaining the original hamster hands as the bear didn't have any, it's arms just abruptly stopped. Note the paint job, had to be done before the fur went on.

Then I was wondering how to attach the jacket, I tried using an old vinyl calculator case and supergluing it but that ended horribly, so I went and bought something I've been meaning to get for years, a GLUE GUN! Gods gift to lazy arts and crafts.

Through a combination of glue gun, insulation tape and black plastic bag I make little Dav a jacket and also the glue gun comes in handy for holding him in place on his chair.

The back plate is made from silver card, a beer can and a pci slot cover. The under carriage is made from parts of old scalextric cars and unscrews to change the batteries.

The chinese have an expression, "If you keep a thing for seven years, you will find a use for it"
If you look at davros' head, you'll see he has a bracket holding it in place, I made mine from the legs of one of these fellas.

All that was left was to attach the bumper and paint his balls, I used silver nail poilsh as anything else would have involved me going into town to the model shop and probably would have needed two coats.

And there you have it, Davros, creator of the evil Daleks, in bear form. Oh actually, there is one more thing, check out the video to see him in action.