Statue of Liberty Torch, Using Cardboard

The Fourth of July is almost upon us. Proudly carry the flame of liberty with a Statue of Liberty torch! With a bit of cardboard crafting skill, it's straightforward to make. This design, while of course a simplified rendition of the real thing, is proportioned accurate to scale. Plus, it makes use of the cardboard corrugations showing through the edges in an artistic way.

Materials:

• Corrugated cardboard
• Double-thick corrugated cardboard presentation board (optional)
• Decorative oxidized-copper-green or similar color paper (optional)
• Large yellow-orange cleaning sponge (much bigger than a dish scrubber)
• Craft glue: Elmer's, Aleene's, etc.
• Duct tape
• Printer paper

Tools:

• Utility knife: the kind with a snap-off 18mm (3/4")-wide blade, with extra blades
• Cutting mat (or a couple layers of scrap cardboard)
• Metal ruler
• Carpenter square (optional)
• Wide putty knife (optional, for applying decorative paper)
• Wide-tip green marker (optional, for coloring instead of using decorative paper)
• Pencil
• Printer
• Scissors (optional)
• Thin rubber bands

Be sure to print at 100% scale. Do not let it "scale to fit." The PDF is sized for 8 1/2 x 11" paper.

The rings are meant to be double-thick cardboard (third page of the PDF). If you're instead using regular cardboard for everything, you'll want to make two sets of rings and double them up. Either way, the rest of the parts are regular cardboard.

Apply glue to the back of the decorative paper, spread it thin with the putty knife, and swiftly stick it on the cardboard, rolling out any bubbles. For the cardboard that you'll make the flutes from, you'll want to cover both sides. For the rings, you may want to cover just one side. You might need to weigh it down with something flat as it dries, to keep it from curling.

Transfer the patterns to the cardboard by cutting out the printed patterns and tracing them or by measuring them and then drawing them on the cardboard. As mentioned, it's one set of rings if using double-thick cardboard for them, or a double set if using regular cardboard, and the rest of the parts are regular cardboard. Take note of the corrugations direction, as indicated on the pattern. Also draw the pattern guidelines onto the interior surface of the handle cone and the underside of the flame shield ring.

When cutting cardboard, first be sure that the knife tip is sharp. As soon as the knife starts to drag or tear while cutting, it's time to snap off the blade segment and use the next one. Life is too short to struggle with dull blades!

For the straight cuts, you can use a metal ruler to guide the knife, whereas for the curved cuts, you'll have to freehand it. For the flutes, it might be easier to make the curved cuts first and then the straight cuts.

It's good practice to use three to four passes to make a full cut:

• The first pass just goes into the top surface, maybe not even going through it, to establish a path for the blade without using a lot of force.
• The second pass goes into the corrugations.
• The third pass goes into the bottom surface, possibly going through or possibly requiring a fourth pass to finish.

Try to keep the cut edges vertical, and go slow around the curves. Double-thick cardboard takes more passes, of course.

Be safe! "Don't cut toward yourself:" Keep repositioning the piece as you cut around it so that if the knife were to slip, it would go away from your body. Of course keep fingers away from the path of the blade.

(About the picture, rolling the tubes comes in the next steps.)

Buckle the interior surface into the corrugations, so that it's easy to curl. It should look like the first picture. Don't crush the corrugations all the way. (That would defeat the purpose of using cardboard.) Curl it to a tighter curvature than it'll take when it's a tube. Curl the joiner strip too.

Try out making a full tube with it, with the edges making a butt joint to each other. Slip the flame shield and flame tube base rings around the tube and see how it'll fit. You'll probably need to cut back the interior surface of one of the abutting edges a little so that the exterior surfaces meet without a gap. Then, with the rings holding the tubular shape, apply glue to the joiner strip and put it on the inside of the joint.

This one is a little more involved. Note that the cardboard corrugations run in the circumferential direction, for "hoop strength."

Angling the knife, cut V-notches into the interior surface and corrugations. Err a little on the short side so as to not cut into the exterior surface. Make the V's wider than you think you'll need to (a bit wider than shown in the photo). On the edges that'll meet up for the butt joint, don't forget to cut back the interior surface. V-notch the joiner strip too. Then pre-curl the cone and joiner strip (or really, pre-fold them), a touch tighter than they'll be when it's done.

This time, glue the joiner strip halfway onto the interior of one of the joint edges, with one end close to the small radius of the cone (the arrow in the third picture points to where the joiner strip will end up). Put glue on the other half of the joiner strip and roll the cone. Slip on the handle cone base and handle cone top rings to hold the shape, and wrap rubber bands around the middle to help.

If you made double sets of regular thickness cardboard rings, glue the pairs together to make thick rings. You may want to align the cardboard corrugations or clock them 90° to each other, depending upon the look you're going for.

If you're coloring the torch using a marker, now is the time to do it, before assembly and glue get in the way.

On the flame holder tube, take the flame holder base ring off and set it aside for now. Look at where the flame shield ring will go, 1 1/2" below the straight top of the flame holder tube. Apply a light bead of glue there, and slide the ring from the top down into position. Check carefully that it's square, either by eyeballing it or by using a square cardboard corner all around (or by using an actual square).

Take each of the flutes, apply a bead of glue to the two longest straight edges, and attach it to the flame holder tube and the underside of the flame shield ring, following the pattern guidelines. You might want to go in order of opposite sides, then at 90°, then the 45°'s, then the last ones in between, to assure even spacing. (The extra flutes in the picture were for a second torch I was making.) When that's done, you can finally glue the flame holder base ring in place.

On the handle cone, glue the top ring into place, checking that it's flush with the top edge all around. Glue the base ring on approximately where shown.

Then bend the flame holder wedges inward, test fit it in the handle cone, and glue them together securely. Visually check that everything is square as seen from all directions.

Wait, we're not done? Actually, this is the most creative part. First, look online for different views of the Statue of Liberty torch flame to get an idea of what shape it'll end up being. Picture how you might lop off large chunks of the sponge for the overall shape and then cut away smaller wedges etc. You don't have to follow every curve of the real thing exactly—as with the rest of the torch, it's about the overall impression. You might even be able to make it look more "flame-like" than the real thing.

You can get two flames out of the sponge if you'd like, if you cut it on the diagonal as shown. Also, as shown with the blue lines, you'll want to make a rough cylinder shape at the flame's base to act as a squeeze fit into the flame holder tube.

To cut the sponge, with a full set of blade segments in the knife, extend the blade all the way out. Use a gentle sawing motion. Be really careful with safety! Hold the sponge so that your fingers aren't in the direction of travel. Alternatively, you might have luck with a different kind of knife like a breadknife. It's critical that the knife is really sharp, so that it doesn't grab.

Good luck with shaping!

Test fit the flame in the flame holder tube, so that you know where you'll want it to go to sit snugly and at the right angle. Then take it out, apply glue generously per around the top of the flame holder tube, per the arrow in the first picture, and assemble the flame back in. Position it, and then let it dry for several hours, maybe overnight.

Tear off a length of 1/2" wide duct tape. Stick the end onto the joint, half on the tube and half on the sponge. Pull it tight as you go around, so that it helps support the flame, but in a flexible way.

Ta da, you have a lovely Statue of Liberty torch!

You could add a trellis railing to the top, really livens it up.

You could really get into it and add a lighting system for nighttime! I used a flashlight inside the handle, with mylar reflector cones. You could one-up that and put little LEDs on stanchions, like the floodlights on the real thing.

And then of course it makes a great entrée into making a full Statue of Liberty costume, tablet, crown, and all.