Open wide, say AHH...You may need some fillings...

Vacu formed the tongue, made the handle ou of chemiwood on the Lathe-the wood spins while a blade controlled and angled by yourself cuts away at it.

Above shows the very simple mechanism for opening the mouth. The handle turns the piece of wood up out of the tongue through a slit, lifiting the top jaw up.

Now glued the polyfoam teeth on with a glue gun, began working into with pollyfilla-a wonderful thing. sanding and painting left and gluing on the eyes.

The light is at the end of the tunnel.

my toy looks like an elderly person with no teeth

it has a hinge and it stands

Very satisfied with todays work, cut metal legs out, sanded the feet more with a 'polishing shoes' action. Poked the hacksaw around a bit and drilled some more holes. I am making this up as I go along.

Could you pass me another clamp?

More sawing, drilling, sanding, hot glue gunning, pva gluing, thinking and problem solving. Slowly making progress. Very pleased with the gums made out of flexible wood on the bobbin sander. Attatching pieces of wood together with pva wood glue holding in place with clamps.

Bite me

Started making toy. Im upscaling it x6. Eyes are made up of 6 parts (see above), plastic and wooden circles, need to sand these on disk sander for perfect shape. I bought the eliptical clear plastic dome for the 4d Model shop, London, supplies here are brilliant. The eye socket is a grey piece of plastic tubing from a plumbing merchant.

The feet are MDF wood, drew on shape, drilled holes between toes, used machine saw to cut around toes, now hand sanding in progress.

The teeth!...have taken me all day. 28 teeth. Making them out of polyfoam, shaping them with rasp and sand paper. Will then use polyfilla, pva and paint for the smooth finish on them.

The tongue I have sculpt in the same way above, this is just a mould though, I will use this shape to vacu form plastic over so there will be room under the tongue for the moving part.

Needs to be made up by next friday, wooden body, metal legs, chemiwood handle, mechanism, hinge, gums, ankles and more sanding to do. Everything must be sanded and sanded again.

I roughly quote Nick Barnes (Blind Summit) "Puppet making is 20% fun and 80% sanding".

This is too true, but I couldnt be enjoying it more.

The toy I have chosen to replicate

These wind-up chattering teeth I found are about 5cm tall, (x6), I will be replicating them to about 30cm tall, about 28cm wide. Looking into materials straight away... probably wood (MDF) for the body and feet, metal legs, plastic eyes, foam tongue, teeth?-moulding and casting or super sculpey or styrofoam?? Lots to think about! Unfortunately I don't have the time to make it clockwork but I may be able to have a hinge on the mouth still.

Our box (my group) is going to be in the form of a desk/kitchen drawer because all out toys are like the random crap that would be at the back of the draw somewhere.

First I must measure every part of the toy and upscale it by 6, I need some digital verniers to measure with (from Maplins) and some technical drawings.

New Project, Replicate a Toy.

Drawings here are of toys I did at the V&A Museum of Childhood, Hackney. Looking at small toys. Need to choose one to replicate but make larger (x6). 5 weeks to make this. Want to look at clockwork toys. Working in groups of 6 people, we all make a toy each and together make a huge toy box, come up with a theme, a film title and a poster. This should be a fantastic project.

Wood workshop induction

Callipers:

Box:

To introduce the Tech Arts class to woodwork we made 2 items, callipers and box. (Callipers are used for transferring measurements from objects to your piece of work accurately.)

The callipers are made of beech wood, shaped with machine sanders and handheld sandpaper and painted with linseed oil. The close up image shows the hinge where we used a hack saw and chisel to remove a section so the two parts slot together perfectly.

The box just involved a lot of hammering, drilling and sanding. The box was made in an afternoon and the callipers in one day. Suprising what you can do.

Eager to use wood in my next project.