Concrete and The Bird

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I have spent the last couple of months trying different materials for automaton. Making everything out of wood by hand carving and hobby machinery was both very tiring and time-consuming. Also, it was not possible to make precise parts like gears out of wood; I wanted to try using metal and concrete for some parts. “Concrete and The Bird” is one of those I made in April.

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Base is made out of cement. Mix black cement, marble powder and water, pour inside the mold, wait for 24 hours. It cures totally in about 2-3 days. (fully cures in 21 days.) There are types of cement which cure in couple of hours but I could not find here. Maybe I will write another post about making concrete parts later. It seems like a good material to use for this types f automata. Finding a proper mold is kind of hard. I was going to try making the mold as well but I decided spending more time on automata. I used a box of an old toy. I put the wires inside the plastik ball and then poured the mixture later. So, wires were inside the concrete part.

Body of the bird: First I bended the wire into the body shape, covered with masking tape. I prepared a mixture of white acrylic paint, white wood glue and plaster. I then painted the masking tape with this mixture.

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Wings: I covered wires with a layer of thin gauze. Then painted with the above mentioned mixture.

After the bird was dry, I aged with brown acrylic paint.

Mechanism: When the handle is turned, the wings go up and down. Very simple and common mechanism.

Making of pics:

(click for larger pictures)

2 replies on “Concrete and The Bird”

Your work is beautiful, Yaz, and it is so interesting to see the process and techniques used. This is very helpful to me as I learn to make my own automata! Thank you!

Hi Hillary, thank you for your nice comment and sorry for the late reply. Great to hear that you found my posts helpful. Good luck with your automata!

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