It worked for the first prototype but during the first use in rehearsal it bent while pushing and the slot widened enough, to let the break cable slip trough.
As it was usable, the mechanism proved to be too soft and weak. The plastic tube was then fixed to the outer cable with some hot glue and tape. Into the other end I fixed a piece of welding wire with the same method (sorry, completely forgot to take a pic here). I used a diagonal cutter to jam the break cable inside one end of the tube. To get the right length of the inner cable I fully extended the nose and soldered about one or two centimeters of the protruding end of the outer cable and cut of the unneeded part (with soldering you avoid the inner cable to untwist) As push/pull lever I used a small brass tube (using a dedicated tube cutter instead of a saw results in much cleaner and precise cuts).
The length of the slot was given by the travel way of the nose tip. I cut a slot into a small plastik tube, just wide enough to gide some welding wire, but to narrow to let the inner cable out. After giving a electrical solution some serious thought I left that path (still happy with it) and went down the mechanical one and used a bicycle break cable. To make it possible for the actor to control the nose, I needed a simple solution to extend and retract the nose secretly. I added a picture (a enlarged part of my panoramic shot) of the pumps and the packging. It's branded "Fischer" and comes most probably from China. It was a really cheap telescopic plastic pump from our local DIY-store. I'm getting a lot of questions about the kind/brand of pump I used. After toying around a bit with all the different materials I focused on the bike pump and the bike break cable. I came back to the workshop with various sets of tubes in different sizes and materials, a bicycle pump and some break cables, a pirates toy telescope and a light sabre. With that basic idea in mind I set out to spend some quality time in my favourite DIY supplies shop, as well as in various toy and bicycles shops. All this leaded to the basic idea to build a kind of telescope and a mechanism to push it out and pull it back in. To get to the key elements of the nose took me a lot of googling around, lots of emails and phonecalls with other prop and makeup departments. To give you an idea of the tools I worked with I made a panoramic shot of my workbench in about mid-project (it tended to look worse to the end of the project). The most important were a dremel and 2-component glue. You have to either ask the theatre (but to my knowledge the will not rent/or sell abroad) or to build one by yourself. I would gladly see what you made!Īnd as stated in my profile: I don't own this mask/nose, it belongs to the theatre, I built it for and I don't work in that theater anymore. Please leave me a picture of your successful build in the comments. It seems, that a lot of people try on building such a nose with the help of this instructable, which is a great honour for me. Above you see the very first of these prototypes, the rehearsal mask and the (almost) final mask. Over the time of about two months, I built various prototypes and two final noses, because when doing double shows, it's nice to have second (dry) mask to put on for the second show of the day. I agreed to do the technical part and makeup did the design part. It was very clear, that neither the makeup department, nor the props department could do this all alone, so we joined forces. Our director wanted to have the nose growing and shrinking visibly on stage without anyone touching it. A lot of theatres do this part of the play in a way that the actor has an extra nose he puts on in this moment, or he pulls the point of his nose to make it longer or they just do nothing at all. As probably most of you now, it's the story of a little wooden puppet becoming a real boy, and while still in his wooden stage, his nose is growing longer and longer, when he's telling a lie. In autumn 2015 it was the nose for Pinocchio. In my line of work as a propsmaster, from time to time I meet a very special challenge.
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