Three Chicks as Beginning

These mini-bottleneck gourds have the fabric paint on them and googly eyes added. The beaded chain will be the jiggly legs that will give the appearance of the feet dancing about as the chicks go through their movements. The orange wattle, beak, and feet will need to be added next to complete the 'chickiness' of the automaton, but what to use? Felt? Card stock seemed flimsy when I tried that earlier. I have some colored file folders that may be sturdy enough to withstand twirling and bobbing.

Adding Fabric Paint to Chicks

Getting texture on the chicks will be done with fabric paint. By making drag-and-pull strokes of paint with the tip of the paint bottle, the chicks will have delicate feathers and eyes. The local store has the Scribbler brand. Notice the narrow-pointed tip that can deposit a simple, raised line of paint onto the surface of the gourd.

The beak, feet, and wattle will be made from orange colored card stock and glued into place.

Just Do It

It is time to just do something. There is plenty of advice and tutorials online and in print form, but eventually the time comes to make decisions and try it first-hand.

For this first automaton, I am going with the three painted chicks all at one time where one spins and drops, one will be pecking the ground - up, down, up, down - like an oil derrick, and the third one jiggles like an excited puppy.

Spinning

The spinning chick will need its supporting rod (inserted into the belly of the body) connected to a flat, horizontal disk that rotates as a vertical round underneath catches it so it turns.   This can be done with toothed gears, or perhaps a rubberband on the edge of the vertical disk that makes enough friction against the horizontal disk to move it. That is still to be put through some experiments before deciding what to do.

Up and Down, Up and Down

The oil derrick gif illustrates how the pecking chick will work. Using an egg gear with an offset center. Each time the gear is turned, there is a long and short side of the gear which makes the connecting rod lengthen or shorten its journey up and down.

Jumpy

The jumpy, jiggly chick is also connected to a rod at its belly, but the rod will be bouncing along a sawtooth gear so that when the rod drops sharply over the edge of a tooth, the chick will fall. This should give the appearance of the chick jumping up and down.

Making Moving Parts on the Chicks

As an added visual, adding moving parts to the individual chickens that jiggle and wiggle as the automaton moves would be a bonus. The wings could be hinged so when the chick 'drops' with the rotation of a egg cam that has been notched, they will flip up with the sudden movement. Rob Ives demonstrates the mechanisms on his website, robives.com Cam Design. Be sure to check out the moving illustrations toward the bottom of the page. He visually explains the motions initiated by the different designs of cams.

The chicken moves up on the rod
then drops once the cam rotates. 

Making the Gourd Chicks

Initially, I put the gourds on their side on a crease in a section of newspaper. That kept them from rolling around as I sprayed the paint.


Once the gourds were sprayed on one side and had dried enough to touch, a rod was put into the holes as a handle to hold as I sprayed the other side of each one. The rods were put into a stand with newspaper to keep them separated so they would not touch. Then, they sat overnight to fully dry.

While scrounging around the tech lab for tape to wrap around the newspaper that separates the rods, I came across a wood scrap that will become the base for this automaton. I have other scraps at home, so we're movin' and groovin' on this first project!

Which Parts to Make?

Pintrest has it all!

A chicken has lots of parts, and for this first automaton I want to use only as many parts as will make the gourds look like a chicken: a fat-ish body, a small head, a beak, feet, and side/butt feathers...I do not want to get too specific because in the words of that famous architect, Luis Sullivan, less is more.

Background knowledge for the readers in blogland: Gourds can accept all manner of art media, from paint to Sharpees to decoupage. I will use Krylon spray paint because it has good coverage without having to do multiple coats. Pieces of orange and red felt make the comb and the wattle. Simple jump rings and gourd scraps make the legs and feet.

Reaming the gourd holes

The first step is mounting the gourds on a stable post so they can be manipulated somehow. To to that I am using a t-handle reamer. It's a tool that has blades on around a tapering cylinder so when it is put into a small hole it can be turned back and forth to enlarge the hole.

First I made a starter hole for the reamer, then reamed it to the diameter of the dowel I will be inserting as the post the chicken will stand upon. It is apparent how far the reamer did its job by looking at how much residue was left on the tip after I was done.

I put the hole in different places on the three gourds I chose so the chickens can be oriented into different positions.

A place to start...

The hardest part of any project is taking action to make the first step. I have decided to make chicks out of miniature bottleneck gourds. Bottleneck gourds are the familiar gourd with the hourglass figure. Mine are about 3 inches tall and fairly uniform in color. The pinched in part of the gourd is going to be the neck of the chicken. I chose this view to help s how how a gourd turned on its side can seem to be a baby chick if it had eyes and a beak.

I can use my t-handle reamer to make the hole in the bottom of the gourd so a dowel can be inserted and glued into place. That will be the beginning of the spring-loaded push-me automaton described in the post titled Backing Up to Simple.