THE CONSTRUCTION OF PROFESSOR TEETH

Initially, I planned for Professor Teeth to be as follows. Professor Teeth would rest atop a diorama that I had created of a hellish scene. An old-school table-mounted handcrank would be attached to the diorama. When operated, the handcrank would cause Professor Teeth's teeth to chatter.

I rigged a CD to act as a cam, and connected some fishing wire between the cam, threaded it through some skeleton keys, and tried it out. The fishing line broke. I tried it with several different wires and strings, but the problem was the same-- there was a disconnect between the handcrank and the jaws that meant it wouldn't work.

I bought a small servo motor, and that didn't work either.

I decided that I wanted to have it be automated. I would rig up a telephone so that you could talk into it, there would be a delay, and Professor Teeth would answer you. The phone handset would be rigged to a switch that would make the jaw chatter randomly, several times a second, so that as soon as you picked up the phone the jaw would start to chatter and you could begin to interact with the device.

Radio Shack has small devices that can record up to 20 seconds of audio and then play it back. I picked up a couple of them. I also got a telephone jack and a cheap telephone and experimented. I could get the jack to rig to the "speak" and "record" buttons of the audio device.

I was well on my way.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get the jaw to chatter. It was time to get professional help. I contacted Jerry Chamkis, creator of the Kosmophone; after a little back and forth, we set up a meeting. I brought the phone and head to his house.

Jerry's advice proved to be invaluable. He helped me improve the circuitry of the phone and to understand my options for the head. My servo motor was useless, as was my hand-crank. The best option would be a solenoid, a magnetic coil and a plunger. When current is applied to the coil, it pulls the plunger in rapidly. Jerry gave me several leads for solenoids and sent me on my way. It would be easier, using this method, to pull the jaw open when power is applied than to pull it shut. I used rubber bands to hold the jaw shut.

The next day, I hit M. C. Howard's, a surplus electromechanical / electronics store here in Austin. It's a veritable wonderland of bizarre crap; I found several switches (to control the phone function) and a nice small solenoid that would fit in the head itself. I got two. I also found a heavy, industrial-grade telephone that would work much better than the crap one I picked up at Goodwill. I also went to Radio Shack and bought my first ever soldering iron. It's basically huge. The next day I discovered that it is possible to get blisters on the tips of your fingers.

The solenoid required 24 volts to work. I tested it with a couple of nine-volts in series, and it managed a half-hearted tug. Great! I set up another meeting with Jerry.

Jerry's house is like a stereotypical mad scientist lab. When you walk up to the front door, everything appears normal-- garden, treehouse, porch swing-- but the first thing you see once you step in the door is a massive tank of liquid nitrogen. It's beautiful. He's got a ridiculous amount of electric and electronic equipment for any kind of project. He also has a ridiculous amount of power tools-- far outshining my pitiful hand-drill and hacksaw.

We disassembled the head to see how we could fit the solenoid into it. He's got a great power drill, which we used to drill through the crossbar inside the head and make the plunger pull directly up from it. We screwed a bracket into the solenoid and into the crossbar, mounting the solenoid onto it, and used wax wire-wrap to connect the plunger and the jaw. When 24vDC was applied to the solenoid, the jaw sprang open. Success! Now I had to figure out what sort of batteries to get to make the solenoid function, and I had to work out what sort of enclosure to put the works into.

I went to Batteries Plus and got two 12-volt batteries, which I hooked up in series. It worked!

I imagined using this MacBook box as the enclosure. Unfortunately, when I put the head on it and made it chatter, it bounced up and down like it was on a goddamn trampoline. The cheap-ass cardboard was not a sufficient surface for the heavy head.

I went to Goodwill and found a nice heavy small box. Then I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of 1/4" acrylic and an acrylic cutter. I went home and cut the acrylic to size.

I used my drill to very slowly drill holes through the acrylic so I could mount the base of the head on it and the phone jack in the upper corner. In the meantime, I had received a super-cheap guitar distortion pedal from Musician's Friend. I experimented with the pedal, running the phone audio through it. Unfortunately, instead of garbling the shit out of the audio, it played it back crystal clear with an intensely irritating high-pitched whine over it.

I visited Jerry's house again. I used his drill press to drill more holes in the acrylic to afford the switches that would control the phone. Drilling through acrylic is tricky-- if you get overzealous, you can crack the acrylic very easily. It's best to work your way up from tiny bits to larger ones, and from there I used a small cylindrical file to enlarge the holes to be large enough to fit the two switches.

I put in the two switches, drilled another small hole to mount the Radio Shack audio device; installed the switches to the telephone and soldered them, installed the Audio device.

At this point, it was time to tackle the main problem-- the head automation. Figuring out a way to make the head chatter at random was proving far more difficult than I had thought. Jerry had a spare small relay that he tried with several different resistors to control the current from the batteries, but none of them worked. I concocted a crazy bullshit scheme to create a disc with copper running from the center to the diameter at varying intervals and mounting that to a servo with a line from the center to one terminal and the other terminal brushing against the diameter so that, as it came across the copper, it would open the jaw.

This proved impractical for several reasons.

As it happens, I had an extra switch. We decided that the best way to do this and have the desired effect was to take the automation part out of it altogether. We ran some wire from the batteries out through a hole in the side of the box. At the end-- about six feet-- I installed my spare switch. When the pushbutton switch is depressed, it sends current to the solenoid, opening the jaw. Since it's ultimately user-controlled, it can be as randomly jarring and off-putting as possible.

Success! We soldered the solenoid to the wires. Overjoyed with the success, I depressed the button again and again. Until it stopped working.

The solenoid had failed. We couldn't figure out what had gone wrong! Luckily, I had the spare solenoid. We soldered the wires directly to that solenoid's connectors and tried that-- but that solenoid had failed too! We eventually came to the conclusion that the act of soldering the wires to the solenoid connectors themselves instead of to those small Y-devices that slide onto the connectors caused them to fail.

Damn.

The next day, I went back to M. C. Howard's and got another couple solenoids. I also went to Toy Joy and got a small megaphone toy that garbles voice, a number of small skeletons and chattery teeth, and some small fingerhooks designed for holding coats and towels.

Once home, I soldered the wires to the small Y-connectors and then crammed the connectors onto the solenoid itself. Success!

I screwed the fingers into the side of the box to act as a telephone handset. Success!

I rigged up the small megaphone to garble the telephone audio. Failure, goddammit! Failure! No matter how I tried in the next few days, I couldn't get it to work. After the problems with the distortion pedal, I was very frustrated.

However, there was some small consolation. Despite the wiring for the head and the wiring for the audio being unconnected-- I stress again, no connection between the head and the phone, no connection, the phone is powered by a 9vDC and the head is powered entirely separately by two 12vDC in series-- a strange thing happened.

When you press the switch to activate the head, the phone speaks.

I want to stress again that there is no goddamn connection between the head switch and the phone. I have no idea why what happens actually happens.

It is a happy accident.

So it goes.

I put the chattery teeth and skeletons and skeleton keys into the box, screwed it down tight, and it's done.