A Webinar - Of Sorts!

Today's blog is a twisted version of a webinar since it relates to my current project work. Simply put I am going to show you a web, (a spider web that is), that I made for my yet to be revealed automata . It seems like another thing you might find inside a wall which is where this project will reside. To start, I surfed the web seeing what other folks in the world might be doing to build spider webs. Of course I found quite a diversity. Some were big enough to cover an entire house at Halloween, right down to some other very fragile ones you might see in a small dream catcher.  Many are simply woven using rope, yarn, string, fishing line,, or fine wire. My requirements were for a web of about five inches in diameter, so I needed something fairly fine, but yet I wanted something fairly robust and rigid, keeping in character with the construction style of my project.

After some serious pontification I opted to build my web using small diameter rigid brass rods soldered together in the traditional spider web look.

I picked a few strategic spots where I could attach the main arms of the web that would not interfere with any moving mechanism parts and would not  obscure any other key components. The photo on the right shows a paper copy of my web design taped to a piece of plywood to provide a flat rigid working surface. You can see the principal arms of the web have 1 mm diameter lengths of brass taped in place ready for the application  of flux and solder to maintain shape while the circular pattern pieces are added later. The lines crossing the ends of the arms are where the web will be fastened to places in the automata structure.
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Here is the web after soldering in all the smaller circular pieces which are .5mm bras rod pieces. I have removed it from removed from the plan to get a better picture. I started from the outside soldering each piece between the main strings individually. It's tedious work, and certainly not my best soldering job, I'm a little rusty! Near the centre I actually used longer pieces of rod and shaped them with pliers to match the pattern and then slipped them under the main strings and soldered them in place. I wish I had thought of this sooner! Doing this again I would have started from the outside doing this all the way to the middle.

I gave it a quick spray of grey primer and them brushed on some metallic acrylic paint  so it would have a bit of a sparkle and help differentiate it from the darker background.

​I took this photo during the fitting process showing that I installed a small strip of wood, unpainted at this point, (left side) to hold three of the main spokes of the web. (unpainted in the photo) Those on the right side will be attached to bolt heads in the grey column on the right.  

​Having test fitted everything I decided the spider was just a little too dark and I undertook  to give him a repaint in more of a hairy motif and change his eyes to look downward more. He moves up and down as the automata is operating. Hmmmm? That could be another clue as to what the project is about. The finishing touch will be a small fly caught in the web. Oh the cruelty of nature!