Experiment in terror #9,783! (grin)

    Like many figure makers, I experiment all the time, as that's the only way you find out if something will work and more importantly if its practical as a regular figure building process. With this past experiment, done a number of years ago, I not only was working on refining my installation of metal winker shells, but also an untried method of doing blinkers (both eyelids closing at same time).

I used brass rods, tubes, brass bar stock as the building blocks of this mechanism, for strength and accuracy of movement. I wanted this to be really precise, with no wiggle room. I also put in some 'soft stops' both for the up travel and down travel of the blinkers, and the down stop was adjustable with a set screw.

All in all it was a very fun experiment and it worked flawlessly. Practical? Well, not so much. It was a lot of work for the desired result. I have several other ways of doing blinkers that are much simpler and a lot easier to build. But it is fun sometimes looking back at some of the past experiments and seeing where the brain of a figure maker will go on occasion! 

I did not get a movie clip of the working mechanism, but I got some sequential photos which I put together in a very short clip so you can get somewhat of a feel for how it worked. . . .