What goes better with a water lily than a pair of eyelids? These are also part of the latest automata. At this point I am charging ahead of an exact design by prototyping how I would make wooden working eyelids work with turning eyeballs. At this point things seems to be working out. (Saying something like this is usually as kiss of death!)
The eyelids are shown below. To me they resemble hazelnut shells. They were made by hollowing out a sphere with a Dremel tool to allow a smaller diameter ball to fit as a eyeball. The Canadian quarter is to show scale. The eyelids are 3/4" in diameter.
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While an abscessed tooth has kept me from the shop for a few days it may have inspired a new automata scenario for me! "The extraction" maybe be conceptualizing in the back of my mind! Putting pen to paper.
Yesterday I traveled along with Members of my carving club travelled to Belleville Ontario to the attend the Quinte Carving Competition. I did not enter Rat Co. in the competition so that I could display and operate it at the club table (something you can not do with entered pieces). These competitions are not really meant for automata but for more traditional carving pieces. The Quinte competition is a showplace for decoy carving and features a category for floating decoys.
Talking to folks about Rat Co. and automata was a lot of fun, with many fascinated y an art form they rarely see. The Rat Co. employees are now complete and are ready to be installed in the finished piece. The CEO is the one seated in the foreground. Each one clutches a Canadian "Loonie", a one dollar coin in their hand, except our friend on the right who holds two. In the next few days I will post photos of them in position.
The Rat Co. employee population took a big step forward today with continued recruiting (carving) of several new characters. Here they are seen as a collection of components in progress grouped with the original Rat Co. CFO. The pyrography is omitted on the body shapes where the arms will be attached and will be completed later. Arms and tails are custom fit as the character is fitted into the automata so their positions look realistic for their environment.
I little time this morning, morning news on in the background, and the Rat Co. vault gets paint!
The vault is 3-1/2" wide, 5-1/2" tall and 3-1/2" deep. A few productive days in the shop have yielded a coin chute and vault for the latest automata project "Rat Co.". Obviously Rat Co. needs a safe place to keep it's money collected from the streets, so they have a company vault to store their booty. Here is the vault before painting, with a potential lettering design penciled on. The vault has a plexiglass panel on the rear to observe the size of the "take". Inside you can see an oversized door latch. It is a magnetic latch that requires a rare earth magnet to open the door. By placing a magnetic on the front of the door near the latch, it pulls open the stop and allows you to open the door. These latches are normally used on larger cabinets. One use is to keep children from accessing kitchen cupboards where cleaners are stored. I thought it was a cute gimmick for the "Rat Co." company safe so I squeezed it in. Here's the vault being test fitted in its future position in the automata project . You can also see the coin chute that delivers coins into the slot cut in the top of the vault. Here is a view of the top of the coin chute where Norton pulls in coins and drops them into the chute. The top plate has been removed to take this photo.
I always tell clients and visitors that automata are not children's toys. Nonetheless some seem to find their way into the hands of an unsupervised child. (Remember when you used to crank things as fast as you could? I do!) Anyway, as I finish up my current work I am planning the reconstruction of a piece that has received some overenthusiastic operation. I have learned from this though. Looking back at this early piece I believe the design of my pinwheels and gears might have been a little lacking. Also, the action when the character in this piece lifts his arms and radio puts a fair load on the mechanism. The resultant damage is as shown below. Not only are the pins mangled, but the anti-reverse ratchet has been broken as users tried excess force to free thinks up. The teeth on the ratchet and the end of the pawl have been chipped away. You can also see where the pins rubbed heavily on the star wheel as they bent.
The fix? Cut the case open and put in a new drive train using hand cut gears along with a beefed up anti-reverse mechanism. I'll have to chalk it up to lessons learned... Even though I am any from the shop, I dragged my carving knife and Dremel along and managed to work in a little time and "branded" the handle for the current automata project. The name of the piece "Rat Co." is cut into the crank. Originally I considered a Canadian Loonie for the handle but it just seemed to large, so I decided to go with a nickel. A nickel also fits well with the theme in a different way since the beaver on the Canadian nickel is a member of the rodent family.
On the weekend the crank will be united with the automata project and I'll focus on finalizing the coin chute. Although still unfinished the villainous rat finally reveals himself. Drop a coin on the street and Norton, who behaves like a modern day Fagan, scoops it up and drags into the sewer. He is an agent of Rat Co. an underground operation that collects funding for the development of underground infrastructure. More infrastructure means more homes for rats! I'm taking a few days off, away from the shop. At this point his arm, the manhole and street pavement shown in the video requires painting. and several small rats are in production to join the CFO. I have yet to finalize the coin chute and safe.
For some unknown reason this particular piece has been a series of unexpected challenges. I have even needed to resize the manhole cover to ensure smooth operation. It must be the long winter here in Southern Ontario. Another 15 centimetres of snow this weekend! Al |
Why Automata?Automata is a creative blend of my life interests , engineering, art and woodworking. Archives
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