Thank god for orbital sanders...

I hate finishing, but power tools make it so much more feasible to achieve a smooth finish...



This sander has been out of service for at least 10 years, but I finally managed to fix it, so the rubber head didn't keep flying off - HALLELULAH!

Automaton head

The eye-sockets for these deodorant-ball eyeballs are cut from the containers, and have been glued in place into the MDF head using hot glue. The glue has been finished with MDF dust before cooling completely, to blend the glue into the rest of the board used to make the head

Automaton head showing open halves
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Because they are translucent, they glow weel with backlighting.

Automaton head backlit
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

From the font under normal light, they look like this

Automaton head frontlit
Originally uploaded by rosemarybeetle

Old head

Found this in the loft - an amusing day's chiselling once upon a time

Freaky wild creatures by Theo Jansen

These are just beautiful.
Wind-powered, and pretty marvelous

Venyosa walk 2 from Strandbeest on Vimeo.

Rhinoceros from Strandbeest on Vimeo.

More or less finished automata head

This shows the head with both halves together
The head actually comes apart like an easter egg

This starts like this...

Then occurs some most enjoyable hacking and shaping with various power and hand tools:


Power planer

Hand saw

But best of all the solid tungsten carbide rotary rasps in a router with its cage taken off, and replaced with a drill handle. This is not good for the lungs or the tips of fingers if one is not careful

Recreating the automata head from MDF templates

Having cut out the layers of the head, the middles were cut out so tha when they were stuck back together, they would have a convenient void inside for putting things in



Next these were glued back together. This was done in two parts. The front (face) section was recreated from the foremost 4 layers, and the rest of the head (back) from the rest of the layers:



This shows the stepped effect of the recreated head. This could be improved by using much thinner layers, for example ceiling tiles.

Cutting out slices of head

Taken apart the carved head feels like some 19th century medical experiment.

The slices were fitted onto some MDF and marked out
The transferred patterns were then cut from MDF

The outline only slices next to the original carved slices

Taking apart the laminated head...

Having carved the head, it's quite interesting to see the layers, as they come apart, especially the fact that almost all the real attention-grabbing detail is in the first 2 layers...

Here you can really see it...

Carving a prototype head in polystyrene

Starting to get there. From poly sheet to cuboid laminated block to carved head...