Back in February I spent a couple of hours one Sunday morning with Dad at Military and Automotive car boot sale. While there was a beautiful wood and brass 1950s pigeon racing clock that I was sorely tempted by, I stuck to bargains, picking up some old car dials and an ‘electrical equipment carrying frame.’ It’s basically a small backpack frame that would have held a radio or something. For a fiver I was pretty sure I’d find a use for it, probably to steampunk and make a prop for Age of Aether.
For the last couple of months I’ve stared at it and wondered what it make, usually thinking about carrying a wooden box with some interesting technical do-dad. It wasn’t until I spoke to a friend a couple of weeks ago he pointed out something that should be really obvious – it makes a great frame for wings. Since then I’ve been looking at different plans online for folding wings, mostly coming from Steampunk or Cosplay communities. In the end the best information (for me) came from the YouTube video Articulating Cosplay Wings Tutorial by Axceleration. I’m not going to finish the wings in the same feathered style that she used, but the technical details of the frame she used were incredibly useful. I spent a lot of time drawing things out and confusing myself, and in the end it took playing with bits of cardboard and split pins to get the idea of how the parallelograms move, and how it can be altered for different effects.
This is pretty much the stage I’m at currently. I’ve looked at lots of design ideas, I’ve got my prototype made, and I’ve worked out how much tubing I need to make the final version. I’m going for aluminium tube rather than dowel as I want it to be a pretty solid structure and not liable to break due to my own clumsiness. I’m not sure if I’m going for round or square tube at the moment, it may come down to cost, as many things. Round tube is cheaper, and still lets me run cable for lights of EL wire if I want to go that route with the design.
Next stage will be build the frame full size, when I can afford to order some tube. I will make sure the next step is well documented and I’ll keep you posted!