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So Adrienne had thrown a whole bunch of bowls, pots and vases and over the weekend she asked me if I wanted to paint one before she did her next firing. I pulled out some books on Mexican textiles and Japanese prints and this is what I came up with. It was fun to zone out for an hour or two and paint little squiggly lines.
I never do stuff like that…
Tonight was my first night back in the studio in months. I have no big project in the works and no master plan. I just wanted to go back there and mess around for an hour or two and see what happens. My wife is a brilliant potter so she encouraged me to take some clay and offered to fire whatever I made with her next batch.
I figured I’d start with some presidents because that’s always fun and who better than Teddy Roosevelt…
That moved pretty fast so I went on to George Washington next…
Then I figured a goofy little body would be fun so I started in on that…
And at the end of the night I decided to make a Yoda just because he’s funny looking…
That was a fun evening. Maybe I’ll make more of these?
Been a long time since I posted. I have been working on stuff but this time of year is so busy I never get around to posting. I will try to update all the backlog stuff after the holidays.
I’ve been wanting to carve wooden people for a long time. I was particularly inspired after visiting the African section in the Met during our NY trip this past May. My wife – being the thoughtful, intuitive person she is – got me a killer set of wood carving tools for Father’s Day which have been sitting on my shelf ever since. So last Monday I set the goal of going into my studio and turning out a finished product in one night. My only objective was *not* to get swept away in some grand vision or overly complicated learning process. I was just gonna carve me some wood and have some fun. It turns out I like shutting off my brain and just whittling!
I started with a sketch I had made a few months ago that was inspired by the welcome sign in Mr. Cecil’s Ribs on Pico Blvd. (I love that place) and here’s the whole process…
I knew coming off of the bear that I would want to make another little mechanical animal on a bike. Originally I was gonna go with a Hippo on a Bike at the request of my son (and because big animals on little vehicles are funny) but then I thought I might go a little simpler with a single wheel. And what better animal to ride a unicycle than one with such long legs?
Of course once I started planning I couldn’t just stick with a single, simple spinning wheel. A unicycle requires balance which means teetering back and forth to remain standing. I found this awesome mechanism in a book my wife gave me and wanted to give it a shot…
The nice thing about completing the bear was that it’s helped me start to get a better feel for the materials. I quickly drilled a hole through the Unicycle frame so that the axel for the wheel could slide through. (That’ll be my fulcrum.) Then I soldered the axel to the wheel and temporarily to the motor. Next, I rigged up a temporary base out of a cardboard box so I could test lengths and positions…
The last piece of the night was assembling this gearbox I bought to slow down these little motors. This one will live in the bottom of the base and be used to turn the crank that will tilt our froggy friend back and forth. I think this will be a fun one…
So the bear is officially DONE.
I actually finished him about 2 weeks ago and just have not had the chance to post. There are still little things that I’d like to do but I have completed the mission and it’s time to take what I’ve learned and move on. Here are the finished results and the best part is, I’ve already begun the next one. More to follow soon. Yeah!!!
It was a SUPER productive weekend. I finalized the position of the motors, secured all of the electrical connections, installed the on/off switch, and stabilized the front tire. I also managed to get to the hobby shop to buy more wood for the trim and an end cap for the foot that kept flying off the pedal. At this point all the hard work is done and now it’s just a question of finishing the box and makin’ it look all cool and stuff.
Here’s a handful of pics from the weekend but I actually got more done then I could photograph. This post doesn’t do justice to the progress I made but c’est la vie…
You’d never be able to tell from the pictures but last night I basically took apart the entire sculpture and rebuilt it! Not only did I need to slow down the motors but 1) the bear wouldn’t pedal because of the rods in his legs and 2) the entire thing would have fallen apart if someone so much as sneezed.
The first thing I did was to yank apart the rod holding the beak & bike in place. After that, I opened up his leg to remove the bolts holding the metal plates in. Once those were out I sewed him back up. Next, I unscrewed the motors in the base and realigned / repositioned them. After reconnecting the main rod holding the bear, I cut some beams to better support the bike and remove the wobble. Again, not much to *look* at but massive leaps forward.
On the motor side, I finally got the right speed! This past Saturday I loaded up my project and drove out to the Radio Shack in Malibu to talk with Giovanni. He’s the MAN! We tested some additional motors and a whole series of resistors. At the end of the day we found a string of 1 Ohm resistors worked best. (We started at 100 Ohms and worked our way down) We lost the idea of the speed dial (the potentiometer) and I just bought a straight on/off switch. Last night I finally got to give it a whirl and now that it works my next session will hopefully be hooking it all up for real…
I still can’t wait to FINISH this thing so I can move onto a new one and start from scratch with everything I’ve learned. Getting closer!
Last night was fun. Started off real quick by finishing up the pedals and feet. Since my pedals are all cockeyed the feet were shooting off every time it did a full rotation. I fixed that by soldering on these little buttons…
After that I spent the night working on the box. I knew I wanted it to feel like an old school, wooden circus car and I figured the best way to do that was with ‘planks’ of wood. When I sketched it out last week I knew I would layer a window over some popsicle sticks and here are a bunch of semi-chronological pics from the night…
And here’s a little video that Adrienne shot on her phone when she stopped in. YOu can see the longer I work on this the jankier the movements get and the wobblier the bike becomes. Oh well! I actually can’t wait to finish this and move onto a brand new one…
So I went back into the studio last night all excited to build my voltage dimmer and finally put all the complicated science stuff behind me but… I had the wrong parts. I am powering my motors with a single 1.5 Volt AA battery and the thing moves like a rocket ship. I searched all over the interweb looking for small electronic dimmers and bought two units I thought would work. Turns out they each need a minimum of 12 Volts to run. That’s *8 times* my current voltage and might rip a hole through the space time continuum if I pump that much juice through my crappy little motor! Here’s a shot of the crazy ass circuit board I had to solder together…
After failing to get the dimmer working I decided to go back and sew on the little guy’s second boot. A slightly simpler and relatively unimpressive task which I knew I could bang out…
And earlier in the week I start planning how I will decorate the platform when the complicated stuff is behind me. This is just a first pass and still has a ways to go…
Oh well. Here’s to next Monday night!
PS – In case anyone actually reads these posts all the way to the bottom, even the failures are fun. It’s just a bear on a motorized bicycle. It’s not like I’m splitting the atom or something.
Last night was another night of chipping away at this thing. My dimmers arrived and I was so excited to apply one but I had no idea what I was doing. When I tried to solder together 2 AAs and a 9 Volt battery they started sizzling and emitting this goopy, metallic substance so I stopped until I have time to read the directions. Here’s some of the scientific craziness that I need to learn..
I decided to move back to the box. First thing I did was measure, cut and insert a rim to the inside lip. This will give something for the floor boards to rest on…
Then I started measuring out the planks. At first I thought I would do this in 3 pieces but after I plopped these two down I realized that I could trim it back to 2 by just carving notches in the wider piece for the rubberbands to run through…
Next I shifted my attention to the pedals and legs. I bought these little couplings last time I was at the hobby store because one of the pedals was too short so I soldered them on first…
After that I had to make a creative design about what kind of footwear this bear would choose. Originally I thought it would be funny if this fancy bear was just wearing plain old sweat socks. Ya know, the kind with the red stripes at the top? But my wife thought he was WAY too classy for that and I happened to agree. Wherever I landed I knew he needed small feet because tiny feet on something so bulky and lumbering is just funny. After digging around my fabric piles I felt gold boots were fitting…
Once the boots were sewn on I attached a metal bar to the heel that would slide over the coupling so the feet could rotate as the pedals turn.
My last step for the night was to attach the hat (painted earlier in the evening) and the ears. I only got one boot done but the other can wait until next time…
And here he is in turnaround…
