AUTOMATA - "Pirate Puppet" Pt.4

LAND HO!  We be headin' fer home soon! 

I'm sorry it's taken me over a month to get back to this little project.  Fortunately, I had a vacation day today, and made some good time on this guy.  In my last post, I said I would have the pirate's beard and jacket ready to show.  However, it dawned on me that I need to make sure all the mechanical bits on this thing work, before I start with the final details. Happily...everything actually went according to plan!

So, I started painting the rest of the base.  Above and below, you can see the color scheme.  I tried to make the "deck" look all "distressed" with multiple colors and textures.  Below you can see that front of the box for the wheel has not been glued on yet.  I need to keep all the parts removable so I can work on them a bit more.

Here's a little detail of the front...I added just a touch of "ocean blues" just to give it a little accent. I also have gold on the beaded molding strips that go around the top of the base.  I found the nice detailed molding at Michael's Crafts store...they have some cool stuff in there, if you look around a bit.

Time to show you the steps of this phase of construction.  Here are all the little "hook eyes" that I run the fishing line through and connect to the three levers.

As the lever is pushed down...it pulls the string to make the action happen.

This is a close up of under the pirate's jaw.  The string goes through a hole in the neck, then runs down a little groove that I cut into the back.  There's a hole at the base of the waistline that goes to the hook eyes.

And here are the ways the Pirate will move when you push each lever.  The one on the right makes the wheel turn, and the arm goes up with the rotation.

The middle lever makes the mouth open.

The left lever raises the "hook arm" with a salute!

And here's what happens when you push all three levers at the same time!  
SHIVER ME TIMBERS!!!  
See ya next time, as I put the finishing touches on this puppet!