Sunday, February 27, 2011

Sgt. Stubbs, Lab Assistant

My latest steampunk project, Professor Tauruscat's Dream Helmet, will be on display at the Museum of Curiosities, part of the 2011 Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition.

Demonstrating how the helmet works will be the professor's able lab assistant, Sgt. Stubbs (pictured above), on whom the professor has relied for many years.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Respirator Workshop at Nova Albion

In less than a month Nova Albion, this year's northern California steampunk convention will be taking place in Santa Clara, March 25 - 27.

I will be teaching a hands-on workshop in which participants will begin construction of a leather respirator, very much like the Excursionist pictured. The only difference is that most of the rivets will be replaced with hand stitching so that everyone can be working on it at the same time.

Cost of the workshop is $20 to cover materials, and everything is included except for stain (for the leather and canisters) and contact cement. The Excursionist sells at my Etsy shop for $125. Such a deal! The schedule for workshops has not yet been announced.



Sunday, February 6, 2011

Tauruscat: Front Plate Finished

Here is the front plate stained and antiqued and in place on the front of the helmet. The colors look better now, don't they? And the URF does not stand out as an anachronism.


Saturday, February 5, 2011

Tauruscat: Front Plate

My son Erin is designing the electronic components of Professor Tauruscat's helmet, and has included an ultrasonic range finder as a switch for the lights. I am mounting this on the front of the helmet. It works by sending out an ultrasonic beam that measures how far away the object in front of it is. Depending on the distance it signals the Arduino to perform a certain sequence of lighting the LEDs.

The URF is shown above at the bottom center, and will be press fit into the acrylic mount on the right, than inserted into the leather plate that is shown being stitched together.


I constructed the mount to incorporate the URF into a Victorian looking plate so that it would not look out of place. The leather and mount still need to be antiqued.

The URF switch will allow me to wave my hand in front of the helmet and activate the blinking lights.