Building The Puppet - Joint Plates

In order to connect wooden body parts with each other, I need some sort of solid connection in between. In my case, I need ball head screws (which I have ordered online) and joint plates. Most stop motion puppet armatures use metal joint plates, and typically thick ones; however, I didn't want to use these for my puppet as they are vastly expensive to order online, and they are too big and too thick for my puppet. Therefore, I have decided to create my own from scratch at a metal workshop with the help from a technician.

First, I outlined my joints on a piece of thin metal. I made sure I marked where I need to cut and drill the plates. Based on where I marked the holes, I used a hammer and a hard pointed pen-like to create  half holes.

Then, using a hole punch, I made the holes accordingly. The metal was later cut into separate joints.using a very sharp tool.

Once I had all the plates cut, I cut and filed there edges to make them smooth when rotating.

Finally,  I had an entire set of joints. They turned out to be in a good size, not too big nor too small. However, due to human error as I did create them manually, they are not all very consistent. Some wholes are slightly shifted from where they are supposed to be, and some edges are not exactly round. However, these issues are minor and should not affect the movement of the puppet.