Pewter head badge

[Danssoslow]

So my wife and I were discussing putting a custom head badge on her Trailmate Desoto, and she brought up how nice it would be to have something to do with dragonflies.

I found a neat little pewter dragonfly lapel pin on etsy, had a talk with the maker, and purchased a dragonfly without the pin on the back.

Not wanting to risk scratching the new paint on her trike, I used the old Huffy mountain bike our oldest boy used to ride to form the lapel around the down tube, which happens to be the same diameter as the head tube on the Desoto.
I taped the head and tail down to the Huffy, eyeballing the wings as straight horizontally as I could; hit the dragonfly with some heat from her hair dryer for about 30 seconds; and used my palms to wrap the wings around the down tube. The tips required some extra massaging, but it all worked out pretty well.

The back of the lapel has plenty of hollow area, so I filled it with silicone and mounted the dragonfly. Cleaned up the squeeze with some q-tips. Hopefully this holds it well. If it fails, I'll drill some holes in the wings and mount it with some tiny screws.

I have no idea why my pics keep showing up sideways. Sorry about that.

 

[Fv2]

My wife would love that.

 

[Danssoslow]

Creative Pewter Designs is the name of the company on Etsy that made the dragonfly. Great guy to deal with. The pin was less than $15 shipped.

 

[Duchess]

Nice emblem! There are these beautiful iridescent damselflies with black wings that hitch a ride on my kayaks a lot. They're basically the same thing as dragonflies with a less cool name and they rest with their wings up instead of down.

If the silicone fails, you might want to try double sided foam tape, which is what they often stick emblems and some trim pieces on cars with. I've used it plenty of times and it works well. Since it is foam, it will raise the emblem from the surface about 1/16" or you could just use it on the part that has the indent.

 

[Danssoslow]

Thanks! I will definitely keep the double sided tape in mind. I really want to avoid drilling into it.

As a coinsidence, the silicone I used was bought to apply the emblem on the front of my 300. Of course, that emblem has the advantage of sitting into a fitted pocket.
After letting it set for a couple hours with blue tape to keep it from slowly falling down, it appears pretty solid. Wish me luck!

 

[Muttley]

Just get a tube of 3M emblem adhesive from your local VatoZone, a nuclear warhead is about the only thing that will defeat that stuff.