tacos aren’t just for Tuesday anymore. Complete your taco fiesta with a taco ice luge 🙂 By the way, this is the “BEFORE” ice luge image. Kickball team captain Franco was nice enough to oblige. Keep reading to get to the “AFTER” version 😜
my taco ice luge design
I’ve never seen a taco ice luge before. Not until I made one anyway. I play in a kickball league and one of our team names was Taco Ball. See, now the picture above makes a lot more sense, right?
All of the kickball leagues in New Orleans are party-friendly. Occasionally, the partying is actually integrated into the game playing itself. I’ve played in games where you had to be holding a drink. (Which does NOT have to be alcoholic; there’s no forced drinking.) It’s pretty easy to kick a kickball while you’re holding a drink. It can be extremely difficult to catch a kickball while holding one. Either way, you probably spilled some though 😫
adapting my taco ice luge for Cinco de Mayo
Yes, this was really difficult. Finally, after agonizing over it for probably a second and half, I decided the best way to handle it was to replace the “Yo Quiero Taco Ball” wording with “Happy Cinco de Mayo!” I do believe it’s significantly more likely that I will need a taco ice luge for a future Cinco de Mayo event than that I’ll ever be on another kickball team named “Taco Ball.” Along those lines, I also changed the base’s ball shape to what you see here. You may have a different solution; up to you.
coloring the taco shell/tortilla
One of my favorite parts of my taco ice luge is how realistic-looking I was able to make the shell/tortilla. I suppose it’s probably a tortilla rather than a shell since there are burn marks on it, but I quibble. To achieve this, I just added a bit of darker sand in random spots before I added the bulk of the main tortilla color.
I use color sand for most of the ice sculpture coloring that I do. You can do color with a paint/gelatin combo that I’ve tried before. However, while there are benefits to that method, it’s trickier technically. I have enough to worry about, so I’m going with sand.
where's the cheese and sour cream?
I’ve been trying to eat less cheese lately. It’s not usually great for me and then there’s that whole animal-products-are-contributing-to-climate-change thing. (Although it is good to see that cheese isn’t one of the worst offenders in the article’s breakdown.) Btw, I don’t eat meat, except by accident. I do eat fish and dairy on occasion, so I’m a pescetarian. (Webster and the rest have apparently not completely settled on the right way to spell that word, so don’t hassle me about that!)
And sour cream is very similar to cheese, from a food ethics point of view.
That’s a very roundabout way to say that I decided to skip the cheese and sour cream this time for my taco luge. Also, this design already has 4+ colors. (There are multiple colors in the taco shell/tortilla.) Adding more colors just adds more complexity to my life. But if you want cheese and sour cream, have at it!
P.S. I consider the brown ingredient in the taco to be beans, not ground beef. Or it’s Beyond Meat or something. That way, I can maintain my no meat policy while doing a shot from the taco ice luge. 😜
what should be poured down a taco ice luge?
Tequila.
That’s the simple answer. Another option I came up with was Fireball. Fireball doesn’t have much to do with tacos, at all, but it is spicy.
To go with the tequila, though, you’ll want limes and salt. Or they will, if you don’t get to be in on the fun. It’s all about the experience, and experiencing tequila without limes and salt can be a little rough. And if you experience too much tequila, it gets worse from there.
How does it go? One tequila, Two tequila, Three tequila, Floor. Pretty accurate, especially if you’re doing shots without eating actual tacos to have something in your stomach. Strangely enough, after 3 tequila shots, you’ll want to remember your German: Uber.
to CNC or not to CNC
Obviously, I did my taco ice luge in the pic with my CNC machine. And the design is geared for that. You COULD do this by hand, but it’s quite a bit harder. Multiple layers of color are tricky when carving by hand. But I’ve done ones just as difficult before, so it’s very doable. Just not much fun. But let’s take a look at how it’s done.
what you’re looking at above is my starting point for the CNC design of my taco ice luge. The luge is created from two 3″ thick ice slabs. The first slab has the taco engraving and the Cinco de Mayo message in the base. The second slab has the back plate for the base and the luge track portion of the taco. The line running through the taco shape is simply a .5″ wide and .6″ deep track that holds the plastic luge tube when the ice luge is assembled.
the taco that you see in the template up above is backwards, as is the lettering. That’s because the color is added from the back and then frozen in place with snow and water. Just above you can see the the various engraving depths for the colors/taco ingredients. By the way, writing this post is seriously making me hungry!
this exploded view is just to help you understand what exactly is being engraved here. The depths are from the back of the ice in this image, so the taco shell ends up in front, followed by the beans, then the tomatoes, and finally, the lettuce.
here you can see what the taco ice luge design looks like in VCarve Pro, which is what I use to create the instructions for my CNC machine. Multi-color designs like this can get a bit complex. The “h”, “Q”, “3”, and “8” in the toolpath list indicate the bit diameter that will be used for the engraving: 1/2″, 1/4″, 3/16″, or 1/8″.
assembling the taco ice luge
I was going to give up and call this done, but I decided I needed to add a little info on how to assemble your taco ice luge. Let’s say you’ve got all the pieces engraved and you’ve also frozen all the colors into the taco and snowfilled the lettering. So now you’re ready to start freezing pieces of ice together.
You’d probably start with the base. Even though the pieces should be pretty flat, you’ll still want to use aluminum to get a good clean weld. And you generally want to put the Cinco de Mayo piece on TOP of the aluminum instead of vice versa, so that more water doesn’t flow into the snowfill engraving and grey the snow. Same will go for the taco later; you don’t want to damage the colorfilled taco with warm water flowing off of the aluminum plate.
After you freeze the Cinco de Mayo base pieces together, you should attach them to a regular flat base. (Which I didn’t show in the design template.) For this, I like something that’s about 17″x 11″x 4″. It needs to keep your taco ice luge nice and stable.
Once the base is assembled, you’ll freeze the taco luge portion together, adding your plastic tube for the luge. Be careful here; this is a little tricky getting it aligned right before it freezes together on you.
Finally, you’ll attach the taco portion to the base. For this sort of weld, I like to prop the base up so that it’s both sitting stable and the weld area is pretty level. That makes it MUCH easier to attach the top taco portion. Then, simply let it freeze for a little bit; you should be able to tell visually if it’s frozen nicely. When that’s finished, your taco ice luge is pretty much all done!
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oh right, I promised you an “AFTER” taco ice luge picture. Thanks Franco! Glad everyone had fun with the luge! 🤣
for more info and some guidelines
If you have any questions about the taco ice luge, email me or comment below. If you would like to use this ice sculpture design or any other design on this site, please check the design usage guidelines. The design collection page lists designs on the site.
You might also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets facebook page and you can comment there as well as below. Thanks!
