• WRSE event number 2

    Kenneth Zaborny • 03/10/2017 at 17:58 • 0 comments

    Tom and Crow were invited to another special event at WSRE. My friend Mark helped me wrangle the bots since my sister was tied up with her teaching duties.

    I spent a few minutes before it started talking to Trace Beaulieu about the screen used bots and how they were puppeted. It was an amazing experience.

    She was able to attend later that night and Crow received a signature from both Trace and Frank.


  • MST3K event

    Kenneth Zaborny • 04/05/2016 at 16:49 • 0 comments

    The local PBS station had a MST3K event and asked that I bring Crow and Tom Servo to the showing. They were also celebrating Doctor Who so K-9 tagged along.

    My sister and I with the bots.

  • Assembling Crow

    Kenneth Zaborny • 02/28/2016 at 17:56 • 0 comments

    Crow's arms are constructed from a couple of old lamps my parent's found in a house they are remodeling. That saved me a lot of money.

    The eyes are obviously just pingpong balls painted with a florescent yellow Krylon paint and black gloss acrylic.

    I was going to design and print a mechanism to control the eye movement but I found one on Thingverse from someone that had previously built a Crow. It works perfectly.

    Crow's construction is complete. I've already started planning a way to give a voice to Crow in the same way Tom Servo can speak.

  • Painting Crow

    Kenneth Zaborny • 02/28/2016 at 17:46 • 0 comments

    Crow's paint is even more difficult than Tom. It's a two stage process with a shiny gold base and a lime gold metallic candy coat. Too many candy coats and you'll end up with a too dark, incorrect tint. There's also a flat black used for all "inner" pieces.

    The first step is to get every part coated with the gold base. When you do the lime gold metallic coat you want to hit all the parts with the same number of coats at roughly the same time. Temperature, humidity, and flash times all contribute to the color fastness.

    Before:

    After:

    Comparison:

    You can see how much of a difference the candy coats can make.

  • Building Crow

    Kenneth Zaborny • 02/28/2016 at 17:39 • 0 comments

    I found that Crow is a lot more difficult than Tom. That's probably why you see a lot more Toms than Crows.

    I was able to find that lacrosse mask on Ebay for cheap. The Tuppercraft pieces were also found on Ebay. The beak, shoulder components, eye/face soap holder, and manos (hands) were all from MST3KBots.

    Cutting the bowling pin was no easy task. It's a very thick resin. I'm glad it's so strong but it was a lot of work. I ended up chipping it in a couple of places. Thankfully I was able to patch it.

    You can see the finishing bondo I used to cover up my mistakes.