Everything and the Kitchen Sink

I dug out the old kitchen sink from my original set, looks in good shape! ...well apart from a couple of small cracks in the sink, sink and work top are thanks to my old friend Michael Allsop Smith 

Kitchen base units work top & sink

Kitchen sink and taps

......also been a little busy doing some more pottery must get these up for sale soon!

Biscuit fired mugs (various styles)

Biscuit fired mechanical mug (close-up)

Mechanical mugs glaze style 1

Mechanical mugs glaze style 2

Standard mug blue and green glaze

Hands & Rivets

I have put together a series of photo's showing the stages of the hands construction

Ruff cut foam hands with Ali wire armature + K & S sleeve

Hands with armatures and foam snipped to shape

Paper templte for fabric + finished hands

Sprayed black arm + lentils glued on robot bodies for rivet effect.

Arms a new direction!

After the slight problems I had with the arms I desided to try another idea.

First I cut oblongs pieces of foam then sliced them down the middle, then I cut a recess along the centre line to accept two dowel arm stiffeners that I had previously cut which were all glue in place with fabric glue, I further sniped the foam to make a more round uniform shape.

Then I machine sewed a tube of stretchy fabric together,
next job I squeezed the foam into the fabric tube shape then hand sewed the ends up.
To finish of the arm shapes I rapped wire around a broom handle before twisting the ends together (4 wire rings per arm) these rings I slid over the fabric and sponge arms.

 And to finish off the arms I made an internal Aluminium wire armature with Brass K & S socket ends. 
 (see picture below)

It's about time I did another update!!

Since the end of the summer I have been busy with jobs on my home, I am know getting back on track with the business at hand…..finishing my Robots.

The next step was to make the arms, these I decided to make out of silicon, so first off I set about making the arms out of a waxed based clay, after a couple of attempts to sculpt the arms I realised I wasn’t going to achieve the uniformity I was after,

So with my thinking head on I struck upon the idea of turning the arm shape out of wood on my lathe, after gaining some success with this approach I then sanded and spray finished the turned shape before attaching a sculpted hand ready for molding (see images below).

Turned arm shape

Arm ready to be moulded

Casting mould sides  (Sorry no pictures for this next stage) 

the next step I set the arm half way in the mould on a bed of ceramic buff grey clay and smoothed this around the arm to the half way mark that I had previously made on the arm shape then I made 2 round keying shapes in opposing corners next I poured the plaster.

Next day I removed the base panel and removed the damp grey clay, after cleaning up the mould side I waxed it before pouring the second sided with plaster, after another 24 hrs or so I removed the out side panels then slowly prized apart the mould sides.......PROBLEMS!  the plaster mould hade not released it self from the arm shape, on close inspection small fibres had been standing up inside the grooves of the arm and had keyed in these finer grooved details, also moisture had got in to the wood bloating the shape making it slight deformed.

Back to the drawing board!

 

 Delivery from Ebay

I had been following several  variable transformers on ebay and had won one of the auctions......Large parcel arrives in the post.

This I hope will guard me against any bad flicker from the film lighting.

Variac Transformer

 

 More updates coming soon

 

Robot construction Update

Problematic legs

First I cut some 1 3/4" tubes (12 X) from a length of plumbers waste pipe, once cut the raw edges had to be sanded, I then covered each section with aluminium ducting tape (this part was ok)

Next I wanted to make foam spacer joining pieces to go between the tube sections so I cut all the disc's from a 10mmm foam exercise mat (all 40 of them) this I intended to cover with black tape but it had the desired effect of either distorting the disc shapes, not sitting flat or coming unstuck

(this stage didn't go well and was scraped).

Rethink

I decided to make a mould and cast the joints from black silicon (this is working very well) 

the first step was making the joint out of sculpy, once baked and cool I made a central line through where the joint will be then I made a two part mould from fine casting plaster,

moulding with the silicon has proved straight forward

see image below.

Robot body

I have had to bolt the hips to the legs (for constructional reasons) and the hip section to the body to make the waist swivel.
shoulder caps have been made from ping pong balls
and dome head from empty pop bottle (doing my bit for recycling)
see image below.

Twins....................Robot X2

I have been busy making a start by building my robot puppets.

I started by making strong ball & socket armatures for the core of the legs and then constructed the bodys from styrofoam sheets and mdf, the puppets feel relatively light up till now so thats a good thing.

                                            Robot body parts

                                                  Hips & Legs

More updates coming soon.

Old set parts down from the loft

Over last weekend I pulled some of the original set pieces down from the loft, all in all they had fared well over the years.
The table needs one of the legs gluing back also the small kettle handle needs a bit of remedial work doing (more gluing).
I placed a full size cutout of the main character in amongst the set pieces to try for size (looks good to me).

I will still need to do a bit of finalising to the decorating here and there.

Table, chair and props

Bedside cabinet

Bed with pillow and armatured duvet

Gas Cooker with eye level grill