Hello dear the inhabitants of our site, visitors to this site and readers of this article! I present to you another homemade product - a mechanical toy made of wood. The whole charm of the idea of such a toy is that you don’t need any electronic or other details. Here you need only muscular effort and the toy will begin to move. And contrary to the opinion of skeptics that allegedly in the age of high information technology it is unrealistic to interest an existing child with such a toy, I will say that the godson is played with her quite often. The novelty and difference from all that he has gives her an undeniable advantage.
The idea came about by accident. He simply turned the scrap of the staff in his hands and simply scolded her with a clerical knife. It turned out to be a vaguely bird-like figure. Then I decided to consciously make this under the tree. Once upon a time I saw on the Internet how they are made and away we go ...
It is about this homemade product that you can absolutely say that this is almost manual work, because for its manufacture, a minimum of tools was needed. And the material for its assembly was taken on the street in a pile of all wood rubbish.
Tools that will be needed for its manufacture:
-stationery knife,
- wood cutter,
- a canvas from a hacksaw for metal,
- several drills, 3 mm, 10 mm. and feather in 22mm,
a screwdriver or a drill,
-one wood screw.
At the very beginning of the work, I drew a sketch of the bird on paper. I cut it and circled it on a wooden blank, which served as a 15 cm pine plank. Then a piece of metal sawn off everything unnecessary, trying to cut it as close as possible to the outline of the drawing. After that, with a clerical knife he gave a neater appearance to the figure. Sandpaper sanded some irregularities. He painted with a pen a more acceptable beak shape. He brought out all the lines on the head with a cutter. In the same way I cut wings for a toy. But before that, on a piece of wood that will serve as the basis for the wings, I outlined the middle part of the finished workpiece.Already painted wings on it to see how it would look. Split the workpiece into several finer parts in cut wings
From the abdomen, I drew and cut a groove into which the bar will be inserted. It will serve as the supporting and motor mechanism of the entire toy. The groove in my case does not exceed the thickness of an ordinary match, which is shown in the photo. Made two paws. All finished products are carefully processed with sandpaper, from bumps and various burrs that appeared during the cutting process.
I proceed to assemble the parts of the bird into a single whole. Putting wings on the body of the figure, seeing how they will be located on it, made holes in them and in the body of the base. I decided to collect using dowels. I inserted a thin rod into the holes on the bird's body (it is through) and put wings on it. All glued with super-glue. Cut the protruding ends of the bar and polished.
The stem of the tree on which the woodpecker will be sitting has become a shank, either from a rake or from a mop. After sawing off with the same blade a piece of the size I needed, I drilled a hole with a diameter of 10 mm inside it. Then he selected a through groove in it so that only one wall was cut. The second remains intact. On the sides of the grooves, I drilled a hole of 3 mm, but already so that it passed through two sidewalls. After I make the base, to which the whole bird will be fixed. Because If the figure has to move up and down, then it must be fixed on the bar so that it accurately knocks at the trunk of the tree with the end of its beak, and rests on the tail on the return movement. To do this, I made the part of the bar that will be attached to the bird itself at an angle, making sure that its movements are more correct. On the opposite side made a hole for the stud. The stud itself will be from part of the nail.
On the stand of the whole composition I launched a small branch from the plum, which I sawed off diagonally for a larger area of contact with the surface. After cleaning it from the bark, I did not begin to subject the upper part of the saw to any treatment, that is, I did not grind it. I decided that this way it will be more like the ground on which the trunk will stand. He marked on it a place for installing the barrel and made a hole at 22.
I collect the remaining parts. I paste the bar into the body of the bird and glue the legs on it. The gap that remained after gluing the bar was very tightly scored with sawdust and dripped a couple of drops of glue. I waited a little while all this tightly grasped and walked with an emery cloth. The trunk is attached to the "ground" using a screw from the bottom. He also made a pen with which the bird will be set in motion. It is inserted into the hole, which is located in the upper part of the barrel and abuts against the part of the bar that is in the barrel. When you press the handle, it rests on the bar and pushes the woodpecker up. In the starting position, i.e. then when it rests its tail against the trunk, the bird returns itself under the influence of its weight. Of course, this did not happen at the beginning, parts of the toy were still not ground and had to be returned manually as well. But after some time of games and a certain amount of ups and downs, the details were “run in” and the toy began to work as it should!
The last step was to paint the entire structure with paints. And then I made a mistake. I planned to paint with acrylics, but I didn’t have black, and this is the main color of this toy. I solved this problem quickly, just taking the gouache of the color I needed. When the toy was completely painted so that the gouache remained on the painted surface and did not get my hands dirty, I covered everything with fixative. This is a spray for fixing gouache paints in particular. So where the acrylic lay on the gouache, the paint flowed a little and changed color. In general, the bird did not become the same color as it was originally.But for that, all the paint after drying remained in place and does not get dirty! So when painting, do not repeat my mistake, do not combine so different paints.
Here is what I ended up with:
At the time of this writing, the toy was lively and, according to the parents of the godson, is often played.
I wish you success in creativity and needlework!