the Scarlet Letters

...COOL...can't wait to see that thing put to use :)...my next goal for the jenny project is to re-vamp the little girl puppet (she REALLY needs a name) so i'll be exploring tie-downs and ball-n-socket joints for the first time...cant wait to compare notes!...

Thanks, Uba! One of the big benefits with this design is that I seem to be getting acceptable results without having to buy a big drill press yet (although having one sure would be nice).

A Dremel, a power drill, a hammer, a tap, some small files, a vise, a butane micro torch, a cinder block... That's pretty much all you need.

...And the metal is readily available with just a stop at Ace Hardware and a bead shop. The other two designs I mention either require ordering materials online or searching lighting stores.

Hey! That's looking awesome! The only bad thing I suppose is that you got limited movement. What made you get away from wire puppets? I got no idea what I'll be using on my next project, but wire is SO easy to use! and I only got one problem with it: the rebound (I think I heard it's called memory effect). See ya'

Ale Stop Motion

Why am I getting away from wire puppets? Several reasons:

1: Metal-jointed armatures don't break. (Although they can get loose, which is another form of trouble.)

2: When you're making a wire armature, in order to avoid putting too much stress on one point you have to make joints wider than they would be on an actual skeleton. I want elbows and knees that pivot at a single point. ("Limited movement" can be a good thing!)

3: With metal-jointed armatures you don't have to fight the springiness of the wire. When you pose a limb, it stays posed.

4: I'm attracted to the precision required for making a metal-jointed armature. It's so easy to make a lop-sided wire armature...

5: It feels like a step in the direction of professionalism. Most pro-level puppets seem to have ball and socket armatures -- I want to have that skill at my disposal.

...Which is not to say that I'm giving up on wire armatures! I expect I'll use wire armatures for puppets that aren't going to get a lot of screen time... And there will probably be parts of metal-jointed armatures that still use wire -- possibly where the foot bends so a puppet can stand on its toes, for instance.

(And y'know, before there's talk about swearing off wire, it might be nice to get a metal-jointed puppet actually up and running!)

That looks really good! Does it move smoothly through its entire range, with no rough spots and no sudden "moves too easily" areas? What worries me about using hollow brass beads is that the heat might distort them pretty easily, and also that being hollow, there's no straight-sided "tunnel" through the center of it to hold the rod perfectly straight... when you're soldering, it seems like it can go a little lopsided. But i hope it works well! Keep in mind you ought to move up to steel and/or aluminum at some point.

Ok you convinced me :P But yeah, you're right, we should wait till you see how your armature works before smashing wire puppets... Plus, there's gotta be something good about them, 'cause Marc Spess is using them, and I consider him a Pro guy Bye!

Ale Stop Motion

Surprisingly, the joint does seem to move smoothly throughout its entire range. Visually you can see a faint seam where the two halves of the bead were put together during its making; but I haven't been able to feel it while turning the joint -- and I've been fiddling with it non-stop for days.

The bead doesn't seem to be developing any scratches or grooves in its surface, either, which was another concern... I guess because it's brass on brass, neither the plate nor the bead is harder than the other, which helps.

The heat doesn't appear to distort the bead. Solder melts around 400 degrees, and brass melts up around 1750 -- so as long as I don't fry the bead, it seems to be OK. The one tricky bit is that because the solder is inside the bead, you can't actually see it melt. Before I figured out that I could put it inside, I was trying to put solder on the end of the joint; it didn't work -- but I learned that a butane torch melts the solder waaaay faster than a soldering iron.

The bead is hollow, but it has the usual holes on either side -- and these serve as really helpful pilot holes when I expand them with the drill. The rod is held in place at each end of the sphere, so it's actually locked in place very well -- it can't wiggle from side to side, and it's oriented the same way that the original holes were.

I expected that the place where the rod ends would impede motion -- but the edges of the sandwich plates actually stop the rod before the end of the rod can cause trouble. ...When I was putting the ball on the rod, I had a trick where the rod stands vertically, with the ball slid down to the bottom -- so the rod doesn't stick out at all... it's almost as if it's just a flat spot on the far side of the ball.

I'm pretty intent on trying a steel / aluminum armature eventually. Right now I seem to be experimenting with intermediate-level materials (brass armature, cold foam) -- I need a midway point before leaping to pro-level stuff.

I don't want to share this with SMA until it's been play tested on a real armature... But I'm hopeful that it will provide folks with another good alternative for metal-jointed armatures -- an "open hole double ball" design where you don't have to special-order the metal stock, and you don't have to own a table-hogging drill press. (I've been following that thread where I-forget-now-who has been building an armature out of "helping hands" bits; I don't understand how this can possibly work -- the joints on mine are terrible!)