Let me show off a bit

[Eichhörnchen]

An astonishingly beautiful thing, Sky... we don't have these ingenious pyramides in England (would it be classed as "automata"?) What a treasure!

I read your poignant post to Moira and she admits to feeling rather tearful

We do entirely share your sentiments about the Festive Season: the inestimable value and importance of family, hearth and home... and of course 'Xmas Whac-A-Squirrel'

[Catfish]

I had no idea you were into such things.. reading your post i see that indeed you are not, usually. A shame.
Beautiful looking, and good craftmanship.
I like it

[Skybird]

Thanks for the flowers, both of you.

At that age we all have many different interests, and most of them sooner or later fade again in the early adult years. I had so many interests in younger years. At school microscopy and astronomy and volleyball. In private: tabletop cosims (very much loooked down upon in Germany), photography, blade forging (theoretically only ), outdoor stuff, rapier fencing. But time got in the way, the day and week had only so many hours, I was heavily engaged with chess and correspondence chess and martial arts, and so some things fell out of the timetable all by themselves. Wood working was one of these, even more so since beside doing such filigrane, small scale crafting like the walls for the pyramid, more robost, house-related handcrafting is not really a love for mine. I do it pragmatically only: if it needs to get fixed, I fix it, somehow, improvised, and if it works, fine, it must not look super as long as it just works. And suually it works, and yes, but it almost never looks super. Small wood crafting is what I can do best.

I would not have the room and space for a work bench today.

[Onkel Neal]

Wow, very cool! You should make a "making of" video, that must have taken a lot of time and work.

[Skybird]

No video cameras back in those days! It took me over a year, because there were breaks and interuptions. If I estimate the total working time, then I would estimate it were the later afernoons and early evenings of 3-4 months. Many pieces were made twice when i ruined them during processing, which happened especially in the beginning. You learn by doing. You are not born as a skilled worker. My grandfather only answered questions, and only helped where I indeed was helpless. Getting those figurines, for exmaple.

Here are two old photos of the first pyramid I made, a small one, the ground plate is around 30x20. Very first try, and thus very simple structure.




image


And here is a photo of the upper floor of the big pyrmaid in the vidoe, where the movie shows just darkness. this reminded me of that long time ago, 15 y<ears or longer, I seem to have tlaked about this pyrmaid before already, and maybe have posted photos of it back then. I am not certain. I realised it just because I looked up these old photos. That upper floor figure is the hidden gem amonst the figuriones used.Very fragike carving. Czech-made, I seem to recall, but I am not certain.


pic url maker

[Skybird]

My second pyramide I have no picture off, it got smashed during storage long time ago. It was of medium size of the three, and had this principle blueprint (just a googled photo for illustration, not my work):





Two sickels, their upper endings meeting kind of heart-shaped and holding the rotating central rotor shaft in the mdidle. Had the size of a cut-open, halved Halloween-gourd.


I hated to saws the rotor blades. They are made of balsa, and boy did that stuff splinter easily along the cutting edge. Maybe the sawblades were not ideal, but those I had were what I had.