Weight Lifter
Built by Peter Clay in June 2012 for the Olympic Games Secretary’s Challenge
This model was designed by Les Nightingale and published in Constructor Quarterly in 1993.
It is simply a weight lifter on a plinth, raising and lowering dumb-bell weights. The figures arms are Narrow Strips, and I repeated the figure to the side using standard strips — so the exercises were beneficial! (Despite the fact that it is the “manikin’s” legs that are actually doing the work!)
It is built to a yellow, silver and black colour scheme and makes a good display model. The mechanism is simple, a rod pushing the figure up and down via a connecting strip lock-nutted to an Elektrikit bush wheel. The only problem is the motor which is quite noisy.
Points of interest are:
- The base which is a (replica) Hornby System of Mechanical demonstration base
- The motor is the 6-speed PDU in green, from Temsi
- The “manikin” figures bodies are Exacto bent trunnions which have slots rather than the big holes in standard ones
- The Flanged Wheels and Pulleys of the dumb-bells are period Meccano finished in black.