Have you ever thought how you can make hair move? Inspired, as so often, by an image from the Internet, I wondered first of all how to make triangles hanging from the circumference of a head stand up. It seemed pretty complex to me and I wasn’t sure that the result would be worth the effort. Then I noticed that I still had a few bases for thumb push puppets lying around so I decided to stretch the concept a little of what hair looks like.
The Requirements
This is fundamentally a fairly simple project and the idea is that when you pick the figure up and press its base the hair should move. A standard thumb push puppet has one spring in the base and four strings attached to a disc on the bottom of the spring. Having only four strands of hair seemed a bit thin to me so I went for eight instead.
There is however a reason why four is the standard number and I guess that it has to do with keeping the tension about the same for all of the strings, when no one is pushing the base up. The spring permits the disc in the base to tilt in any direction, thus compensating for some of the differences in tension at four points on the circumference. Having eight points around the circumference might bring the points too close together for tilting to effectively correct for differences in tension. My quick fix for this is only use four points but, instead of fixing each string to the point, I arranged for a smooth anchor bar around which each string can slide thus allowing both ends of each piece of string to be used up on the figure’s head. If the friction is low, the tension at the two ends will be very similar. This results in eight ends to play with and the tilting of the disc can compensate for slight differences in tension as usual.
Making
The base needs eight holes for the four pieces of string. The figure’s dress will cover the four old, unused holes.
I modified the original disc which fits into the base by cutting four notches and gluing a piece of bent brass rod on top with epoxy resin adhesive. This arrangement leaves plenty of space for each string to slide easily.
The head is a 40 mm diameter beechwood ball predrilled with an 8 mm through hole. Slid onto a slanted piece of 8 mm dowel this can be rotated to drill eight holes which are suitably spaced for hair at the top, but which are slanted so as to come together at the neck hole.
The figure’s body is a beechwood cone with the tip cut off and a through hole, widened at the bottom with carving tools. The strings come out of the holes in the base, pass through the conical body, out of the neck hole and into the head, where each string has its own hole from the neck up onto the top of the head.
Before the final assembly, the parts have to be painted.
I used masking tape and a block of round wood to press and hold the disc up, compressing the spring a little and holding it in place while the strings are threaded up through the figure.
I used kite-flying string as it is both flexible and strong. Patience is required while threading, but using long strings helps. Five small brown balls go on each string and the last one to go on is then glued in place after closing the hole with a tiny piece of dowel which also jams the string as it is pushed in. It’s important to tension of all eight strands of “hair” about the same, so that they all stand up when the spring is released. If one string is less tense than the others, two strands of hair will flop down and spoil the effect. It took me three goes and much gnashing of teeth to get this right.
I almost added arms to the conical body but decided they would just make it harder to hold and operate, so I painted them instead.
For the video I borrowed the story from a well-known English nursery rhyme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB6XfBY2um8
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
I have no idea what a tuffet is. In my case it’s obviously blue, whatever it is. In retrospect my thumb puppet could have been a cranked automaton where a spider appearing causes her hair to stand on end. Some other day perhaps.
Photo archive https://www.wordwise.de/Hair_Raising_archive.zip