Tin Woodsman Clockwork Heart - The Build

In the previous post I when into detail about all of the concept work that went into the design of the Tin Woodsman heart.  In this post I am going to go over how I built it.  The whole process took a little over 5weeks.

During the first weeks of design I was out looking for and nice block of pine or cherry wood  that would be used to create the heart.  Sadly I had no luck finding one so Ply wood was used instead as it was made from layers which gave a beautiful grain effect I wanted.  The heart was made in two pieces so that the clock-work could be easily installed later.

Once I had both side sanded into a roughly shape the two pieces were taped together to finish off the sanding to get the seam perfectly smooth.

After a week of sanding I put one of the half through the vac-former as a test to see how the tin plates will turn out.  The hard part was getting the edges smooth and cutting the plastic off afterwards but the shaped worked perfectly.

 

Testing the sliver spray paint.  You can't see it in the photo but the plastic is scratched to give the effect of machine shopped tin and it comes through nicely.

I then taped the plates in place and drilled 100's of little holes in them for the studs.

Once all the plastic plates where ready it was painting time.  The scratches in the plastic came trough in the paint to gie the right weathered metal look, which I was pleased about.

I bit of charcoal dust was added to dirty the plates and then a gloss stray sealed them and also added a nice shine.

The next part was the clockwork on the inside.  I got a small moter, think it would be prefect to drive the gears but I could not get the rpm low enough to have the clockwork spinning at a reasonable rate

So the motor was taken out and the innards of a small clock where used.  The power of the this motor was hugely limited but it was still able to turn one of the cogs in a nice ticking motion.  I set up in a circuit with a switch and battery to allowed a key to turn on and off the clockwork.

 Once I knew the circuit work I set in place all of the other cogs and gave then a nice brass colouring.

 Through the use of the laser cutter I found a really easy way to make the key that will turn on the switch as well as the keyhole.

I was then time to stain the wood and attach the plates.  Then the task of gluing the 100s of studs in place began.  Both half's of the heart where glued together at this point. as everything internal had been finished.

This was something fun.  The pipes that left the heart were at first going to be made from plastic but the bend in them never turned out right so I moved onto metal.  Luckily the college has a metal workshop so I was able to heat up and bend a pipe into the shape I need.

The last piece made for the heart where exterior wires covering the front, made to look like veins powering the body.  I used the to scale mock up heart to plan out the shape.  Painting them red and blue was a tough choice but I was told that the added colour would be good for the model and after seeing the finished results it was the right call.

And here we had the finished piece.  I was really happy with hoe this turned out.  All that sanding, and drilling and trouble with the cogs all paid off in the end.