I’m declaring war on Pinterest. I’m only doing this because Pinterest (using my wife as its vessel) declared war on me a long time ago. You see, every time my wife shows me something she found on Pinterest (or any other social media platform for that matter), I take it as personal attack. I feel like she’s saying “Look what THIS PERSON did. Why didn’t YOU think of this??” She doesn’t actually say/think this, but it doesn’t make the attack any less real (or does it).
So a few weeks ago my wife leaned over and said “HEY LOOK AT THIS THING YOU CAN’T BUILD!” (no she didn’t). It was a Disney toy monorail playset suspended in an artificial Christmas tree. Feeling personally challenged, I decided to attempt the build. I (about midway through) decided to chronicle the process in picture form because A) maybe someone else would want to do this and B) I paid upfront for 3 years of this blog space and I need content so here you go.
Something to remember real quick before we get started: I consider most projects I attempt for the first time to be just a proof of concept. What I mean by this is that I try to construct them quickly (so as to not greatly impact what little free time I have) and inexpensively (because I’m not rich). I start with inexpensive materials that I feel will work for what I’m trying to do. Sure you could start with Oak or stainless steel or platinum or whatever, but why? I do quick, rough cuts with minimal finish to maximize my time. I typically dispose of or give away the proof of concept with the intention of building a finished product with everything I have learned at a later time.
So lets put a monorail in a tree.
Materials I used:
- 48″x48″x1/4″ underlayment from Home Depot (like 12 bucks)
- 1″x2″ x 8′ common board from Home Depot (like 3 bucks)
- Wood glue (like 4 bucks)
- Green Spray Paint (around 4 bucks)
- Fake snow wrapping (2 bags at about 6 bucks each)
So materials wise were just under 40 bucks. The example my wife showed me used a repurposed HO train kit designed to put a train in a tree similar to this. My way appears to be less expensive but you could make the argument that re-purposing the train kit is easier and thus a better value if you can pick up a used set. I guess here is where you have some thinking to do.
Tools I used:
- Pencil
- 1 screw
- screwdriver
- string
- 2 washers
- Jigsaw
- Hammer
- Chisel
- POWERED Staple Gun
- Drill
- holesaw or flat bit for drilling larger diameter holes in wood
You could potentially drop the jigsaw (if you don’t have one) and use a razor blade/shop knife with a simple materials change but I’ll touch more on that later.
Total job time (not including the dry time) was about 60 minutes.
The Build
Step 1) We need to draw some BIG circles. Find the center of your underlayment/support material and run a line the length and width intersecting at the center. Using the screwdriver, place the screw in the center. Take your assembled track (mine was 48″ in diameter) and lay it on your support material; centering it. Tie one end of the string to one washer and drop it over the screw. Take your string out past the track and affix the second washer. Remover your track and, using the pencil slid through the washer, trace your outer circumference of your support. Once you’ve finished that, shorten the guide string about 4″ or so and trace your inner circumference.
Step 2) Now that we have our track base traced, we need to trace the struts/supports. I used struts that were pretty much 4″ across, so find the lines you traced to identify your center and mark 2″ to the right and left of each of these lines. When you’re finished all your tracing, it should look something like this:
Step 3) Now that everything is marked out, its time to cut. You want to cut out/off everything marked in red.
Leaving you with:
Step 4) Now we need our cross braces. To get these you’re going to take that 8′ of 1″ x 2″ board and cut it in half. You’re then going to find the center of both and, using the chisel and hammer, cut out slots so you can fit them together like Lincoln Logs. It should look something like this:
Step 5) Lets glue everything up now. Lay down some beads of glue, fit your struts together and affix them to your support base. Clamp/lay heavy stuff of the whole thing and wait for it to dry. It’ll look like this:
Step 6) Now that everything has dried, find the center of this contraption and put a hole in it. Before doing this, you’ll want to find out the diameter of your Christmas tree support pole. Don’t eyeball it. Why shouldn’t you eyeball it? You may end up selecting a bit that’s just a tad too big because why would the manufacturer go with a 1 1/4″ support pole? You’d obviously just use 1 1/2″ because that’s a pretty typical support pole size (or at least it was in my mind). I was wrong.
Step 7) Provided you got the diameter of the hole right the first time, we can move ahead to painting the interior struts green to blend in.
Step 8) Now lets get the fake snow tacked on. This serves 2 purposes: 1) It looks pretty and 2) it helps to secure that lighter than literally the air monorail track to the support structure without having to permanently affix it with glue or something. I recommend using a POWERED staple gun because I love POWERED things. Sure you can use a regular staple gun I guess but you’re having less fun.
Step 9) Once the snow is tacked on, layout your track. Using a knife or razor blade, cut slits under the center of each monorail track support beam. Tuck the foot of the beam inside the snow.
Step 10) You’re done my dude/dudette! Drop this puppy on the tree, put your tree back together and proceed to wow children and adults alike. Nice job.
A couple observations for next time/your first time:
- On the advice of my father I opted to save ONE WHOLE DOLLAR by going with a less expensive 1″x2″x8′ stripping. This was a bad idea. The stripping was pretty green (wet) and warped a bit causing the support structure to be just a little wavy/uneven. You can’t really tell once its on the tree and wrapped, but being that it isn’t PERFECTLY level its secretly eating me alive inside. This doesn’t affect the overall performance of the monorail however.
- Instead of using wooden underlayment, you could probably get away with using a lighter, thinner cardboard composite peg board and cutting it out with a knife. As I said, the monorail track itself weighs virtually nothing and I feel like you’re never going to have enough load in one spot to cause an issue. If you’re looking for a forever piece though, it may not hold up as well in addition to potentially making the snow harder to affix.