Changes to the Life Size Doll Armature

Last blog post I showed my first attempt at an armature for a life size doll.  As I mentioned then, I needed to make a few adjustments because my hardware store did not carry a four way connector.  Basically, I added a rectangular section that allowed me to use another three way connector for the connection for the neck and head.

That section will also be used to help secure some of the material that will be used to fill in the body to normal proportions.  I am debating whether I want use longer pieces of pipe for the downward sides of the rectangle.  A little extra length would be helpful.  It would only have to be about another two inches on each side.  The sides are only slightly shorter that my own rib cage.  The advantage of having the sides longer would be that I would use less material in filling out the shape of the doll.  PVC pipe is not very heavy, so it would not add much to the weight of the piece.  I guess that I will go through my scrap pieces to see if I have some bits left that are long enough.  I am more or less down to the end of what I have on hand.

Other than than, I am ready to glue the armature together.  That would have been completed already if we had not had a slow-moving storm move in over the area.  It has poured down rain for days.  The weather radio has been going off at all hours of the day and night issuing flood warnings.  I did not want to glue this up inside because the glue stinks to high heavens and I am pretty sure that it is toxic.  I did not want the armature back in the house until the glue has cured.

I still have one other problem with gluing the armature outside.  I might have worked on this out on the back deck.  We have a little workbench there.  However, last Sunday, my husband and I learned that we have a mother skunk and her kits living under the deck.  She did not spray us, but I am not sure that I want to be dragging materials out onto the deck at the moment.  I guess I will have to work in the shed.

When I started this project, I was thinking that the doll would be about forty-eight inches tall.  I was wrong.  At this point, with the armature attached to a base, the doll is going to be as tall or taller than I am by the time the head and neck is mounted.  There is extra length in the legs because the hip area is not directly at the bottom of the torso.  By the time the body is shaped, some of that leg area now exposed will not be visible.   The forearms are also longer than normal because the measurement also takes the area for the hand from wrist to to the beginning of the knuckles.

Last blog post I had written that I would put in the measurements for the armature on this post, so here they are.  I will issue a caveat on these measurements.  This is my first attempt at making a life- sized  doll.  Things may change as the project progresses.  I may find out that something does not work as I thought it was going to work and could be changed.  So take the measurements with a grain of salt, and work your armature to your own satisfaction.  I will also give the number of connectors used in the doll.  Keep in mind that some of the connectors need not be used if you can find a four way connector to attach the neck, shoulders, and spine.  If you are using the four way connector, you will also have to add length to the spine to account for not using the second three way connector.  Also, I chose 45 degree angle connectors at the shoulders because it better suited the pose I plan for the doll.  You could choose to use 90 degree connectors.  The picture should give you some insight into how the armature is put together.

I used 1/2 inch diameter pieces of pipe for this project because that is what we had at the house.  In short pieces it is fairly rigid.  This is an experiment, so I cannot say for certain that it will be strong enough, although I believe it will be.  This is an indoor piece.  If you are planning to make this for an outdoor project, you might want to consider using a larger diameter pipe for added strength against the wind.  The base is for an indoor project.  For an outdoor project you might want to forego the base and pound rebar into the ground and set the pipes on them.  A normal base would just have four pieces of pipe and four 90 degree connectors.  My base has extra connectors because of the pose I plan for the doll and because I was working with scraps and needed to connect shorter pieces of pipes.

Legs:  2 -28 inch pieces (5.08 cm.)
Hips:  1- 3 way connector 2 -1& 1/2 inch pieces of pipe (1.27 cm)
Spine:  13 and 3/4 inches (34.92 cm), 2- 1 & 3/4 inch pieces of pipe for lower edge of rectangle (4.44 cm)  2 - 90०   connectors, 2 - 4 inch pipes (10.16 cm)
Shoulders:  , 3 - 3 way connectors (Two of these attach the ribs to the shoulders. The center connector will be the connection to the neck and head.) 2- 1 & 1/2 inch pieces of pipe (3.81 cm.),
2- 3 and 3/4 inch pieces of pipe 9.525 cm), 2 - 45० connectors
Upper arm:  2 - 10 inch pipes (25.4 cm.)
Forearm and portion of hand:  12 inches (30.48 cm.)
Base:  wooden base 24 inches wide x 12 inches deep x 1 inch high plus connectors as needed for your project, strap hangers and screws to secure the pipe to the wooden base

Check back next Sunday afternoon for an update on this project.

Armature for Life Sized Doll

Finally! I am back to my large doll project.  It feels as if I have been away from it for months.  Today I have pictures of the first attempt at the armature.  I say the first because it needs a few improvements before I get on with filling out the body.  As with any experiment, there can be a few things that need to be tinkered with here and there before I get it right.   At this point, the armature is only dry fitted, not glued together permanently, but it is enough to give you a general picture of it.

You will note that the hips appear to be uneven.  That is   because the pose the doll will be holding will have the doll making a short jig step.  In that position the hip would be raised.

Some of the parts that I needed for the armature are not available locally.  Most of the fittings are readily available at the hardware store, but I found that some parts are specialty parts that I would either have to order online or find a work-around for them.  Being that this project is on a deadline, I decided to try to work something out from locally available parts. 

Note the bend in the leg.  Need to replace hip joint connector.

One of the specialty parts was a four way piece that would be used for the neck.  It is a four-way connector.  When I was looking at pictures of armatures online, the connector was used to connect the spine, neck, and shoulders.  There was no such piece at the hardware store.  I decided that I would have to cut down the length of the pipe on the spine in order to add an additional three way connector and some pipes to form a rectangle to represent ribs.  the top part of the ribs will have another three way connector to form the shoulders and neck.  That may be a bit complicated to visualize, but I will be posting new pictures of the re-worked armature next week.  I don't consider this new concept a total nuisance.  The "ribs" will give me another area of support for the materials used to fill out the body.

By the way, it appears that the pipe at the

Neck needs a four way connector.

shoulder says nine inches.  That is upside
down.  It is a six inch pipe.  I will give the
measurements for the armature once I have
reconfigured the armature.

Another specialty part that might have been helpful is a PVC joint that has been designed to articulate the shoulder joint.  I have seen them used in posts by people who do the haunted houses at Halloween.   However, I plan to have the joints for this doll fixed in place rather than be able to move, so I did not pursue trying to find this particular piece. 

Also, during the time I was traveling, one of my ninety-degree angle pieces seems to have vanished.  No doubt I will find it sooner or later under all the debris that has piled up while I have been dashing in and out between trips.  For the moment, one hip is being held together by a three-way connector.   That will be replaced with a ninety-degree joint when I fix the armature.

What I really wanted to focus on for the moment was the legs.  You will notice that one leg has a bend at the knee without having a joint.  I wanted to blog about that because I may have some useful information on the process.  It might save readers the cost of a few lengths of pipe if I can give you a heads up on part of the process.

I used a heat gun and softened the pipe.   This was the type of heat gun used to help strip paint, rather than the type used for craft embossing projects.  I did not try a craft heat gun, but from my experience with the one I have, I do not believe that it would be hot enough for this project.  Anyway, you aim the heat gun at the pipe and try to get heat to all around the pipe, not just the underside.  It took less than a minute.  That was easy enough, but here is the part that you need to know about.  It did not bend exactly where I had marked that I wanted the bend.  You will need to heat the area slightly higher that the place that you want to bend.  If you just heat it at the mark it tends to bend below it.

As always, when working with any type of material, you should use appropriate safety equipment.  Wear eye protection.  Use heavy gloves to protect your hands.  I did not notice heavy fumes, but I worked outside when I was bending the pipe.  If you can't work outside, make sure your area is well ventilated.  The heat gun is very hot, make sure that you have a fire extinguisher nearby, just in case.  Also, make sure that you have a safe area to set down the heat gun when you have finished using it.  It takes a long time for the heat gun to cool down.

The bend in the leg was not just a random angle.  I decided on the pose I wanted the doll to hold by striking the pose myself.  Then I measured that angle of the knee with a digital angle ruler.  Once the intended angle is found, you can tighten the device to hold the angle so that it can be transferred to the material. 

The angle finder is somewhat expensive, and replacing the button battery can be a little pricey.  If you don't have one, there are other means of determining the angle.  You could use a flexible curve if you have one, or even a fairly rigid piece of wire.  You could even make your own angle finder out of two straight pieces of cardboard and a brad.  Once you determine the angle, tape the cardboard so it won't move.  If the actual number of the angle is important, you could use a protractor to measure it.  There are plenty of ways to determine the curve, so don't let the lack of a particular tool discourage you.

You might also notice that the lower arms seem a little long.  This was not a mistake.  My plan is that the pipe length includes the length of the palm of the hand.  When I make the hands, the pipe should end at the beginning of the knuckles.  More on making the hand in a future post.

That is about all for now.  By next week, I plan to have the armature reconfigured.  I should be posting new pictures.  Check back next Sunday afternoon for an update on the project.

Road Trip and Mars Trip

Life is finally starting to get back to normal after a long trek on the road.  I did not post all the pictures from the road trip on the last post because the blog post was getting too long.  I thought I would share another photo today.  Next week I will have photos of the doll project.  I am woefully behind on that project, and really need to get going if I am going to meet the deadline for it.

Sorry if there are formatting issues.  Sometimes when I make a long post, the format messes up when I insert the pictures

I grew up during the space race and my childhood was filled with memories of things such as the test flights sending animals into space, John Glen's flight with its dramatic countdown and seeing people land on the moon.  There are many place names associated with the space program that draw may attention back to those days:  NASA, Cape Canaveral, Goddard Space Flight Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base.  The news focuses so much on the rockets taking off from Florida, that I sometimes forget how much of the space program is close-by.  I was reminded of mid-Atlantic states' role in the space program when we drove past a sign for the Goddard Space Center.  Goddard is in Maryland.  Virginia is home to a NASA site and a test site called Wallops Island.  Some days, when the weather is right and you can find a place without trees blocking the view, we can see a launch from Wallops Island.  Although it may sound  a little silly, I was delighted to get a photo of the Goddard Space Flight Center sign while we were on the road. 


I have also been fortunate enough to tour Cape Canaveral and tour inside the building where they house the rockets used in the space program.  I was even able to see the crawler that transported the rockets to the launch pad up close.  The rockets and crawlers were tremendous.  You just cannot get any idea of the size of these things from viewing them on television.

Given my history, you can probably guess that I have stayed interested in the current space programs.  I did not sign up to be an astronaut (no girls allowed then, strictly a boy's club).  I did not sign up for Elon Musk's Mars project (too old), so I did the next best thing, I sent my name to Mars.  The InSight spacecraft lifted off yesterday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on its mission to Mars.  My name, (along with many others) is inscribed on a memory card showing that I had an interest in the space program.  Six and a half months from now, the InSight spacecraft will land on Mars.  It may not seem like much, but at least my name arrived on Mars before anyone set foot on the place.  As my husband quipped this morning, "Someday someone's going to find that thing and say 'who are all these people?'".

I suspect that the program to send your name was really started to get children interested in space, but I am sure that many of the names that signed up are adults.  At any rate, when I signed up, they emailed back and they said I could download a virtual boarding pass and a virtual mission patch.  So for a family account for generations to come, here they are; pictures of my mission patch and boarding pass.

For the record, my name is also inscribed on a memory card for the Parker Solar Probe as well.  I don't expect anyone will be finding that memory card. 

Check back next Sunday afternoon for the latest update on my projects.