To help people who can't understand the Dutch language, we give
here a brief overview of what this page is about in English. As
soon as we get more time we will also open a complete page in
English.
CV de Sloffers is a club of people who build a wagon for the
parade at carnival every year. We also celebrate carnival during
the five days, of course. use the links on our site, to get an
impression how things work, and to see the pictures.
Our club is eleven years old this year. For people who celebrate
carnival as a special anniversary, everything with a number of
eleven or a number that can be divided by eleven has a special
character. So, usually, firms or people who want to sponsor our
club give an amount of money that is divisible by eleven or has
only ones in the number.
To give an impression of what is involved in building a wagon for
the parade: We can build a wagon with maximum dimensions of 12
meters length, four meters width and eight meters height. The
restrictions to these dimensions are given by the municipality.
Our club is resident in Breda in the southern part of the
Netherlands where one of the biggest parades of the Netherlands
will be rolling trough the city, at the carnivals Monday.
To build such a wagon we use a chassis, engine, and transmission
of a truck. On this chassis we weld a steel frame. Several parts
are also built on welded steel frames and are later placed on the
wagon. These steel frames are covered with gauze. Then each frame
is molded with clay, to create it's finished form. After that the
whole figure will be covered with a thin layer of
glass-reinforced polyester. When this polyester has stiffened up,
it is taken off the figures, and then puttogether again. The clay
is removed from the frames, and the polyester models are replaced
back on the steel frames. When everything is mounted, then we
paint the wagon. This is a very short description of how we build
the wagon, but it gives some idea how it is done.
With thanks to Chris Owens for his help.
This page
will be updated soon.