Miniature Hand Paddle Fan's Tutorial

By Jay Steele

I figure that since summer is coming, our little friends might need a little hand fan to keep them cool.  So I made up an assortment of fans for them -- these include a hand-hand fan, a  fanhand-fan, a superman hand fan, and several others that are easy to make and kind of fun to play with.

The printout is designed to be printed on both sides of the paper in order to get the "advertisement" on the back - and I've found that using matte finished photo paper give you the best quality print out.  So have fun and let me see your results.

Don't forget that most of the thumbnails below can be clicked for a larger picture!

	Tools Needed Other than the print out, you'll need a craft knife, glue, small clamp, strip cutter would be nice, and 1/32" wood.
	I found that a hard finished extra white paper give you the best print out - I'm using 61 lb matte finish photo paper for my fans.  Select the fans you want to build and cut them out - trim them closely and make sure you keep your knife in a vertical position to prevent fuzzy edges.
	Next using the strip cutter measure the width of the fan handle you want to use and cut the wood.
	When using a strip cutter, even on thin wood it is best to make shallow cuts from both sides to prevent the blade from spreading and making the wood you want wider than needed.
	If you want to use the paddle with the round top, I've made the pattern wider than needed so that when cut out you can put the wood beneath it and draw the pattern onto the wood the right size.  This handle works best if you use two of them.  I'll explain that below.
	Once you've drawn the pattern on the wood, use your knife and carve out the two handles for your fan.
	A roughly shaped paddle handle.
	You'll need to file a notch in the upper 2/3 of the rounded area on the handles - the enlarged picture shows it better than the thumbnail to the right.  This notched area is used to hold the fan.
	Hold the two halves of the handle together and make sure the notch is deep enough to hold the fan.  Once the notch is correct glue the two halves together making sure you don't get glue in the notched area. After the glue has dried finish smoothing out the handle and finish if you want.
	Next add a small amount of glue into the slot on the handle and attach the fan and let dry.
	This is the back of the fan.
	The way you attach the other handles is to simply glue them to the back side of the fan.  The patterns are simple and your design will work as well as mine.
	If you look at the length of the handles on the picture to the left (enlarge for better view) you'll see that the handles are a bit long for the fan.  This isn't a problem as they are easy to cut to length at this point.
	These are the completed fans - you'll note that some handles are thinner and shorter than the patterns -- that's the nice thing about these - they are easy to adjust.