Spouting Whale

My almost six-year-old granddaughter made a special wish for her sixth birthday: A 'spurting whale'. A web search found some commercial plastic products that can spurt indeed, but are designed for the wrong target audience – that is, babies in the bathtub. This was totally out of the question, because she! is! not! a! baby! anymore! (to be read loudly and with strong emphasis :-). Therefor, some more thinking was required.

Did you know, by the way, that the whale's spout doesn't really consist of water, as you know it from waterspout fountains? What is called the whale's ‘spout’ (in German: Der Blas) is warm, heavily compressed air, saturated with humidity. It quickly cools down in the usually cold surroundings of the whales’ habitat. When this air expands it immediately gets colder still, and the humidity it contains condenses and becomes visible as a fog - the spout. It is similar to the fog you produce when breathing out in cold weather, or what you can see inside the neck of a cold beer bottle right after having popped its crown cap.

Materials

1. Nasal spray bottle with screw-on cap (for instance this one: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0DLNWCPLW?language=en_GB)
2. A piece of scrap wood – about 40 cm x 20 cm, thickness 20 mm or more
3. White wood glue
4. Some small nails
5. Some other glue, such as two-component epoxy resin, contact adhesive, or, why not, your notorious hot-glue gun

Tools

1. Band saw and/or jigsaw and/or scroll saw
2. Disc-type or belt sander
3. Sandpaper
4. V-shaped carving knife, or, preferably, a small rotary power tool (e.g. Dremel) with a spherical milling tool of about 4 to 5 mm diameter
5. Wooden beater (when using the carving knife; if none available, a small hammer might be used as a workaround)
6. Power drill with 5 and 10 mm diameter wood drill bits
7. Printer for DIN A3-size paper (you might also print the plan on two pieces of A4-size and sticking them together)

First idea: Abusing the squirting mechanism of a water pistol. But a water pistol spurts much too heavily and so can be only used outdoors.

Second, better idea: There are small nasal spray bottles that might be used, because they produce a fine spray that doesn’t cause flash floods in the house. But the ones you buy containing nasal spray are very difficult to be opened for a refill, if at all.

Third, final idea: An Amazon search resulted in similar, transparent spray bottles with screw-on caps that cost three times nothing (see the link in the ‘Supplies’ paragraph).

Normally, when using such a spray bottle, you hold the bottle and press its cap downwards. Next idea: It works the other way round as well, when the cap is fixed and the bottle is pressed upwards.

Some measurements of this bottle resulted in a drawing for a test jig, see pictures above. A piece of scrap wood was used for a quick-and-dirty proof of concept – and as the video clip below shows, it works ok, and without any heavy flooding, at that.

I don’t have seven left thumbs on each hand, but I’m not an artist either. So I did a web search for a nice clipart picture of a blue whale, instead of drawing an awkward one by myself. The one I liked best is shown in the first picture above. It needs a certain height for the spray bottle's cutout while retaining some mechanical stability, and so would have gotten quite long when remaining in proportion. Therefor, after importing the downloaded drawing in my vector graphics application, I shrunk its length to about 75%, making it a bit fatter - see the second picture and the PDF plan below. If you should wish to use this plan, print it on a DIN A3 sheet, or in two parts on DIN A4 sheets), selecting 'Page scaling: None' (or similar), depending on your PDF viewer.

After printing, I transferred the whale's outline as well as its eye, mouth, and furrow lines to my piece of scrap wood. The flippers and the fluke will be added later. A flipper’s outline can be taken from the plan, and the fluke must be created freestyle because it will be horizontal as opposed to the one in the pattern.

There isn’t much to be said about these processes. The outlines of the four pieces (body, flippers, fluke) can be sawed by hand or with a small band saw. The cutout for the spray bottle is sawed with a jigsaw or scroll saw after having drilled a hole for threading the sawblade through.

For the whale’s mouth and furrow lines I used a V-shaped carving knife, lightly tapping it with a wooden beater. But alas, I am neither carpenter nor cabinet maker, but simply dabbling in the workshop (and enjoying it anyway). So, while carving across the wood grain, the pine wood I used unfortunately tore out looking quite ugly – you can see that near the whale’s eye in the picture in step 4. I assume that carefully engraving these lines with a small rotary power tool and a spherical milling bit might give you a nicer result.

Don’t forget to give the whale’s body a smooth finish with some sandpaper. If you like (I usually don't), you could paint the whale, taking care of using products free from harmful substances.

The flippers will stabilize the body so that it can stay upright. To do so their upper ends must be slanted, see the pictures. I used a belt sander to do that.

The hole for the bottle’s cap is drilled with a 10 mm wood drill bit, and the eye may be drilled, too, using a 5 mm bit.

And now would be a good moment to test whether the bottle’s cap fits into the hole inside the cutout.

When the flippers are positioned the right way they prevent the whale from tipping over sideways or on its tail. Due to the fact that both flippers are slanted, they are a bit difficult to be glued to the whale’s body. I used two nails for each flipper and tapped one of them in before applying the wood glue. You might as well pre-drill a small hole through flipper and body for this purpose. Apply the glue after removing the flipper again, so the nail knows where to go thanks to its hole. Tap the first nail in again, followed by the second one. The fluke is fixed in a similar way to the tail end.

Don’t forget that the white wood glue needs some pressure for a reliable bond; this pressure is provided by tapping in the nails tightly. Some glue oozing out after nailing confirms that it has reached the location where it is needed. Simply wipe the excess off with a damp cloth as long as it is still wet.

The spray bottle’s cap needs some fixing within its hole, too. To do so, several kinds of glue can be thought of. For the first ‘proof of concept’ test I even used the same white wood glue, but fixing it with some epoxy resin or contact adhesive will be more durable – you might try your hot-glue gun as well.

I'm sorry to report that, after unpacking, my whale was a lesser success than expected, for two reasons: She didn’t remember that she had wished it (it was about eight weeks ago), and her hands still are a bit small for the whale’s size. It wasn’t possible to make it smaller due to the spray bottle's size, and I admit that my construction was less ergonomical than could be desired.

However, the spray bottle dropped out soon anyway, because I obviously had used some glue that didn't sufficiently bond with its cap. But then we all had a lot of fun using the bottle solo for spraying in the faces of all the party guests :-)