Sunil Hall

The evolution of my Flying Machines.

I first started thinking about a machine which raised and flexed a mechanical set of wings while watching a really great documentary called The Life of Birds.

This first piece Flying Machine No.1 is more of a proof of concept prototype than a finished piece. At the time I was still learning to solder as the sloppy joins show. The piece is made of copper wire and tubing and stands about 6 inched tall. Sorry about the poor quality, my digital camera isn’t the best…

Here it is in motion:

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Once I had figured out the mechanism of lifting the wings and spreading the feathers I was ready to build a “finished” version.

Flying Machine No.2 is a few inches taller. A chain drive separates the crank from the mechanism and slows down the action. On this piece I used a much stronger hard-soldering process and made some parts from brass and steel.

I felt that the original design needed something more so I added the “flying fish”. I liked the pun and the overall feel of the design. The fish is a 50 million year old fossil Knightea from Wyoming. Wings and fish seem to keep popping up in my work lately…

In Motion:

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

For more pictures of Flying Machine No.2 click here

I came up with several ideas while working on No.2 which I didn’t have time to implement. (The piece need to be ready for a show in Oakland). Chief among these was a mechanism to spread the feathers on the lower half of the wing.

I decided to create a “final” version. Flying Machine No.3 is quite a bit larger then the previous two. It was built in a modular fashion so that different elements could be removed and worked on independently. The ability to disassemble the machine without a torch allowed me to polish and patina the piece to a much greater extent then its predecessors.

I made extensive use of brass in place of copper because of the greater weight of the wings. The brass is polished while the copper has been chemically darkened. The tips of the feathers are silver. Steel was used to wind springs and build the chain. Ill try to post higher quality photos in the future…

I was able to find a great piece of purpleheart wood for the base in a local hardwood dealers scrap pile…

The motion is still a bit shaky. I might add a small chain tensioner to correct this…

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ]

Here’s a size comparison of the three pieces together…

I think I’m done with the Flying Machines for the moment. At some point I would like to create a wing mechanism that more closely resembles a bird in flight, but for now I have a few other machines keeping me busy.

Tags: fish, flying machine, Kinetic, Mechanical Sculpture, Sculpture, Sunil Hall, wings

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 1:41 am and is filed under Flying Machines, Mechanical Sculpture, Sculpture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.