Multimedia Movie #1 Medium-close 928K, MPG Movie #2 Wide 922K, MPG Movie #3 Close-up of gears from back 925K, MPG Movie #4 Extreme close-up of gears from back 447K, MPG Need the plugin?

An obvious choice for a true automaton is a couple dancing.

The real challenge in this piece was to make the figures look like they were really dancing and not just jumping around wildly.After about three weeks of work, having finished all the carving, assembling of the stage, painting and aging everything, I was ready to tackle the mechanics of how to make them dance. The first thing was how to make them turn. After attaching the string to the apparatus the figures hang from, I added a spring to make it return. I cranked up the motor and found out the friction caused by the spring, forced the motor to stop, then I thought, "Great, I just wasted three weeks on a piece that won't operate." After much pondering, I decided to remove the spring and add a second cam and lever to return the figure. This worked great; one cam would pull the figure left and, alternately, the other cam would pull them right. From there it was fairly smooth sailing. The footwork is actually the 2nd version I came up with, and I found a small movement on the girl's arm really adds to the dancing motion.

Initially, this piece had to be fully wound, in order to overcome the static friction, but once it started, it would run for about 8 or 9 minutes. Recently I added a run/stop switch, (not shown in photo), which means you can run it for much shorter periods of time, stopping and starting whenever. I added a number to the guy's back, and named the piece Marathon because they dance seemingly forever, and towards the end they go slower and slower until they finally stop.

This was my first attempt at carving a female figure, and making the dress, and her legs operate, was quite challenging.