If you’re going to dress like an animal, make it more convincing by making your tail wag! Though Instructables user Umberfur wrote her tutorial specifically for wolf tail, you can apply it to any tail. She used an Arduino Uno Microcontroller to create the animatronic tail and paired it with bicycle brake cables, Klixx, pantyhouse, paper clips, and more. Here’s part of her process for making the skeleton of the tail:
Take your Klixx toys and pull apart all the little pieces. I like to keep my colors separated, so once you have done that, take a closer look at the inside of one of the pieces. You see the two little knubs sticking out a bit from the inside walls? Those have got to go so grab that Exacto Knife and carefully cut off those little knubs (Please if you are a wolf cub allow your parents to do this for you). After you cut off all those knubs place two pieces together and move them back and forth. Hear anything? No? Great! Now then, turn them over so that the single flat end faces you. Clamp them down tightly and drill a hole all the way through. Take the drilled out piece and place it on top of the dual end of another component. Mark where the hole is and drill through both ends. Repeat this for all the pieces you plan on using for your tail.
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