Last week I received an email from a friend of the website asking where they could find the Paper Crow model as, although it was on the site, there was no link to let you download the instruction sheet. Turns out that the Paper Crow is from some years ago and was listed on an old part of the site that no longer exists.
I’ve been running the site at www.robives.com for quite a while now - could it be more than twenty years!? There is just me so although I do try to look back at old parts of the site to make sure everything is working there are still plenty of dead ends and dead links. Let me know if you come across one and I’ll make sure to fix it. Anyway, back to the crow…
I’ve re-made, rephotographed and re-uploaded the crow which you can now find here. As always paid subscribers to this newsletter can download the pdf from the bottom of this page - thank you so much for your support! Blow through the hole in the top of the crow’s head and it makes a rasping cawing sound just like a real crow!*
The file comes as a pdf with the parts and instructions ready to be printed out on your printer then cut out and made.
It’s been a while since I first made the crow so I thought I might have a go at improving the model. (Spoilers - nope)
In the current version, air is blown down through a hole in the top of the head, The air goes around the corner and out past a paper tongue with a weighted end. This makes the tongue vibrate back and forth creating the characteristic rasping sound. I’ve built a couple of models that use bellows and thought it might be fun to link bellows to the crow.
Rather than blowing through a hole in the top of the head the crow could sit atop a set of bellows and caw when it was pressed down - that was the plan.
I made up a test rig of a fairly large volume set of bellows and the rasping part from the crow model.
Nothing. Just the wheezing sound of the air escaping the hole at the top on either side of the tongue. My theory is that the rasper needs far more airflow than can be provided by the bellows. I tried a scaled down version of the rasper one at 80% size and one at 65% size but still no luck. I guess I could also try larger bellows but for now I’ve decided to release the crow as is with the thought of revisiting soon to see if I can make a bellows version with a redesigned rasper that needs less air. Not all projects work out as intended.
And on that philosophical note, thanks for reading and a special thanks to my lovely paid subscribers both here and at www.robives.com. I literally couldn’t do this without you!
* You can see a video of the paper crow with audio here and judge for yourself!