Meet Crawford the Automata Crayfish Character.

Crawford is the last new character to be added to my fishing automata. He is a crawfish that lurks in the water hiding under rocks beneath the dock. He reminds me of time spent in my youth bravely searching for and catching crayfish on a hot summer afternoon at the cottage. I have built him a lair of rocks to conceal his actuating linkage.

Here is the finished product. 

Crawford, my pet name for him, was made from four pieces of basswood, one for the body, one for each of the large claw arms, and one for a skid plate on his stomach. In the photo below you can see the original design sketch, the body pieces, and a jig I assembled to solder the brass legs together. With his small size the only practical answer for legs was to use wire. I did not add the longer head feelers normally found on crawfish as I felt that they would be just to fragile. So Crawford is a crawfish without feelings! :)

Here is Crawford on his back showing his legs epoxied on and his actuator rod being fitted. It is a 3/32" brass rod with a hook in the end to prevent it from pulling out the tail. The channel was filled with glue and a small skid plate was placed on the belly of the crayfish to lock things all together. I put the skid plate on so I could have a flat surface I could wax for a sliding surface.  The burn marks are from using the pyrometer to accentuate the segments of the crayfish on the topside.

Here he is prior to painting. This photo shows the wood burning details mentioned above. The graph paper he sits on is 1/4" squares.

Here is Crawford in his finished paint job.

And here is in his his liar of wooden "stones".