Lego Combination Lock

A long, long time ago I got an itch to make a combination lock out of Legos. I made a little demonstration model, and it's been sitting in a bin for 5 years or so. This weekend I finally got around to documenting it so that I can take it apart and reuse the parts.

The design was inspired by How Stuff Works.



To make the notches in the wheels I used Lego tread, with one link of chain instead of tread. This creates a gap. The tread was wrapped around a large gear.



Here's a shot of the lock with the three notches lined up. The fence is currently resting in the notches.



Because of the limits of Legos, I had to use gears in pairs to make the disks. In the image above you can see the drive pin and the wheel fly of the first stage on the left, and the drive pin of the second stage to the right. Counting from the left, there are breaks in the axles between the first and second gears, and the third and fourth gears.



Finally, here's a goofy little video of the lock in action. It sticks a bit at the end and I have to jiggle it.

Dress Experiment

Normally I wouldn't feel so nervous about making a dress, but this one is for a wedding and for my friend Melissa who lives in NYC. Fittings might be an issue. So I came up with this idea- to use this tutorial from threads to make a dressmakers dummy out of duct tape. Or rather, to have Melissa make it and send it to me. I realized in conversation with someone last week that the variable a duct tape dummy doesn't tell me is how deep/wide it should actually be. Right now my most ingenious idea is to stuff it with bubble wrap, but I heard about some spray in foam that hardens that might work better if I can find it. Anyway, here it is up and together, though I can't start on it until I get more cast off bubble wrap.

Here's the pattern from Vogue. If I can figure out how, it will have a higher back and no train.

Happy <3 Day