Wooden Automata

I was inspired by an artist on Instagram named Amedeo Capelli who creates automatas to do this project.

Before beginning, I wanted to practice creating one, so I sketched out what I would need to make it work and then make a model out of wooden skewers and a box to get a feel for the design and how everything would interact. This project has to be the most ambitious thing I have made, due to the fact that it has gears and is designed to move.

My first step was piecing together the box. I measured the cardboard box I had used as a mockup for my dimensions and cut a large piece of wood to scale. Instead of drilling holes, I used a nailgun and woodglue to piece it together. In the top, I drilled a hole and set a small copper tube in, so that the 1/8th size dollrod would have room to move up and down. Inside of the box, using a gear I made out of a bigger wooden dollrod, I glued it to the bottom of the smaller one. I glued itself to the copper tube and I had to reglue it and be careful to make sure it did not attach itself. Once that was done, I moved on to the handle.

For the handle mechanism, I drilled holes in both sides of the box at the same spot. Using the same 1/8th dollrod, I put another wooden gear, this time in an oval shape on the rod, along with a piece of cork. Once inserted, on the end I put a longer piece of wood to act as a crank and then I screwed a handle in, securing it with woodglue.

Instead of creating a wooden figure to go on top, while the box and crank were drying, I created a needle felted frog to be placed on top. His limbs would be looser, allowing him to wiggle more as the mechanism went up and down.

Working with Wood

 

Before beginning the woodworking process, I sat down to sketch some abstract shapes. I did not have a direction in mind when sketching, however all of the sketches ended up very geometric rather than rounded, as well as having some sort of square or diamond in them. It reminded me of snake patterns as I drew and perhaps I had a snake pattern on my hands, which would impact how I decorated my final product.

I made a mockup of the final design I chose out of balsa wood planks. It was at this point I had to decide my scale. I wanted to challenge myself, as this was the first project of the class and my first time making a wooden sculpture, so I chose to make it to scale. I measured how many inches the balsa wood pieces came out to and translated that into feet, which would transfer over to what size wood I cut.

I began with cutting the "legs" and "antennas" (as I began to call them) and sanding those down. I wanted them smooth to avoid splinters and imperfections as I worked on it. I attempted to use a sanding machine, but it wasn't getting it as smooth as I wanted, so I hand sanded all 6 pieces with p60 grit, then p120, and finally p320. At this point there was a bump in the project, as our space to work caught on fire and the project was a little delayed. My other projects took precedent over this one and eventually, when I came back to this one, I had more knowledge of what to do with some objects, which helped me in the long run.

After my break from this project, I joined the pieces together. The diamond shape pieces were around 3 feet long, while the legs and antenna were around 2 feet each, making this piece bigger than I anticipated. As I had it placed on the ground to put together, I realized this looked more like a frog swimming in water or splayed out. I decided for decoration I wanted to coat it with a layer of dark blue paint to resemble a poison dart frog, as they are super tiny and this project was super huge.

I took the final images outside in the grass, to really capture the frog essence. But, I want viewers to form their own opinions about this piece and what they think it is, which is why I chose to leave it upright. I can be placed upright and on the ground. For scale, I used myself to show how big it is. I am around 5'7, showing that this piece is quite big.