The Csák Series
EXPERIENCES WITH CSÁK CSEKE
April, 19, 2021
I completed the Csák Series - four figures. They all worked well. Then I painted them and made the stairs and they didn't work any more. Csák Csobán was good enough but not perfect and I gave it away. Below I summarize my experiences with Csák Cseke.
The basic problem was the step flip. He could not flip down the step. He turned to the side and fell down. As he went down the step and his feet touched the next level, he didn't stop for a moment but started the back flip right away and consequently fell off. In other words the toelift was too much. His toes didn't even touch the ground.
First, I thought there is too much play in the shoulders and that causes the fall. So I made threaded holes into small metal pieces (like big, flat washers) and glued them on the body. This did not helped at all.
The black arrows show the metal pieces glued on the side of the body.
I thought of extending the heels but they were already much larger than those of Keve, which is the best working figure.
As I took off the extension from the heels, small pieces came off from the heels themselves.
Finally, I found the problem or at least I thought I did. He falls too much on the step. During the stepflip he puts his hands on the edge of the step, puts his weight on his hand and his whole body with the legs turn down. His feet should not touch the step below, but should be just above it with a few millimeters. If this distance is too big, he could easily turn off and fall, if it is too small, he won't be able to continue going on. And for some reason, decreasing the distance between the two steps did not solve the problem.
So, I took off his hands. Cseke had balsa wood hands connected by the thumbs. Now, he wobbled too much on his small hands. So, I attached some extensions on the hands.
Extension on the hands to eliminate excessive wobbling.
Removing the hands wasn't enough, so I attached some match sticks on the soles to make him taller.
In the following pictures I try to show the correct ratio of the legs, arms and step height.
Finally, there are some pictures of the completed figure. Later, I put a traverse between his hands and I corrected the paint.
Unfortunately, this Cseke still doesn't work well... But I don't give it up. I will find the problems and will correct them!