When Dave Ford would head to the dump and start sorting through trash to pick out aluminum cans, many people would give him weird looks. He was worried people thought he was a bum stealing them to make a quick buck. That’s why he would always bring one of his projects with him to explain himself.
Ford uses the cans he dumpster dived to make model airplanes.
He began this endeavor about three years ago after his uncle brought a few of his own can airplanes to family gatherings. Ford was interested in learning how to build them, so he got one from his uncle and tore it apart to figure out how to put it together.
He started experimenting and building his first few planes. He didn’t sell a lot of his early planes because he felt they were not professional enough. He didn’t start actually selling any of his planes that he made until almost a year of building them and perfecting the design went by. Those planes now line his house and garage ceiling, showing a clear progression of his handiwork.
“Some of these were before I got patterns. These were some that I just like measured off…some of these were just the front prop only. And so, this was my learning curve,” Ford said. “I just kept making them and making them, and it just got better and better.”
His hard work began paying off once he got to the craft fairs. He has been to craft fairs all over the area—in the Panhandle, Colorado and Wyoming. He was recently at the Oregon Trail Days Craft Fair in Gering this year for his second time.
Everywhere he’s gone he received great feedback on his planes. He said he was nervous about the public’s reaction to them at his first few craft fairs, but he has only received positivity.
“‘Oh wow.’ ‘Look at those.’ ‘Aren’t those so cool?’” he said are some of the responses he has received. “As a person that builds these, I think I get more good out of just hearing the response from people.”
Ford’s wife Wendy became a kind of salesperson for his planes, selling them to her coworkers and even traveling with him to craft fairs to help out. When they first began selling his airplanes, the money would go to help out Wendy’s mother after she had to quit working because of the toll her cancer was taking on her.
Soon this hobby turned into his full-time job, creating the business he now calls Cans 2 Planes. As a retired water superintendent for the city of Kimball, he needed something that would keep him working with his hands. It takes 30 cans and 15-20 hours of work to complete one plane.
“It just depends on how everything goes…You’re working with something that’s round and turning it into something that’s flat,” he said.
He starts by cutting off the ends of the cans with an air-controlled cutter. Then he takes 27 of the cans, cuts them down the middle and flattens the pieces to make them like sheet metal. Then he uses patterns to build the wings and the tail. He uses wire as a frame and then builds around the frame with his aluminum can sheets. He uses hot glue and silicone to put the different pieces together.
From there, he attaches the two wings with a third piece that gives them their full length, which he believes to be the hardest part. He then puts together the rest of the base, again using the aluminum can sheets, wire and silicon or hot glue. He builds and adds the struts and finishes with the wheels, which are made from the tops and bottoms of the cans. Any wire that is slightly exposed in his design he uses copper wire to prevent rusting.
Because it takes so many cans to make one plane, Ford had to get a little creative at first in gathering his materials. He resorted to dumpster diving and even buying full cases of different beer or pop and dumping them. Now, as the word about his business grows, people have begun sending him their own cans from home.
“I met some people in Pine Bluffs at (Oregon) Trail Days, and they own a recycle center in Cheyenne,” Dave said. “I made a deal with them that if I made them three free planes, that I can come to their recycle center, and I can get any cans that I want.”
“My coworkers, they save them,” Wendy added. “We have a can at work that is not for the recycling center, so people with throw their cans in there…and then I bring those home.”
Of course, he isn’t able to use every piece of each can for the plane, so the scrap pieces he doesn’t use get recycled. His last recycling delivery was over 100 pounds of aluminum can clippings.
“It’s all being recycled, just different ways,” Wendy said.
Ford said even the money, in a way, is recycled because now, since his mother-in-law passed away, the money is used to continue funding his passion project. For him, it’s not about making money. He said he just enjoys doing it and seeing others’ reactions to it.
“I get more enjoyment out of visiting with the people, hearing them say, ‘oh man, that’s cool!’” he said. “I get so much out of that.”
Ford’s planes cost $40. He also has started creating what he calls “junk art,” in which he welds different metal junk materials together to make something. He currently makes motorcycles and hot dog cookers alongside his aluminum can planes. He has considered doing other vehicles with aluminum cans but hasn’t had the time yet to develop a design.
“I do get other ideas from the public, which is cool, but I just really don’t have the time,” he said. “I’m hoping that somewhere down the road I get a little more time that I can spend on that. And that’ll probably happen this winter.”
Until then, he’ll stick with turning Cans 2 Planes.
*Originally published in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald on Sep. 26, 2020.
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