Leonardo da Vinci Wing. Fourth Day

I fashioned a fabric wing from one piece of light weight cloth. I sewed the edges with the scallops, as seen in the da Vinci drawing, and used a straight stitch with the ends left loose so that one can pull them to tighten the edges as need be. 

I had to pierce the fabric and reinforce it with more stitching to enable the small levers beneath the wing fingers to be set in place. Then I ran strong and unstretching fishing lines from the levers, through the pulley system, and to the handle. 

There was much fussing and distress while I tied the corners to the ends of the fingers and ran the strings from the driving lever to the projecting attachment  points. The whole contraption was becoming unruly and hard to manage, with a small mishap that caused a fracture in one of the fingers, and which led to much cursing and dismay. But I was able to bind this up with glue and a tight winding. 

The final assembly reminded me rather more of a severed duck's foot than of a wing. The webbed foot will close up if you pull on a tendon. 

I'm afraid to say the wing worked no better for being finished, despite the light weight of the cloth. It was still necessary to work the driving lever so that it raised the wing before it could be brought in a downward flapping motion. The strings worked to some degree of action to close the wing fingers and to catch the air, however the weight of the whole structure made everything tend to sag downward. If I were to imagine stronger spring steel to ensure the fingers remain straight, and if I we're to imagine a counterweight to make the wing point upward before it is driven down, then I would perceive a device so full of counteracting forces that the effort required to make any appreciable movement would require the weight of an elephant. And elephants, I'm sure, will never fly. 

The Florentine is a masterful painter; I have seen his work and it bears a divine 

genius that seems to give solid form to the flat painted canvas. His pen rendition of a flapping wing encourages unquestioning belief, but the reality of his design, as drawn, falls short of its intent in construction. Yet he has these visions that surpass the thoughts of the common man. One has to wonder if, in the future, new materials that are lighter and stronger than any we know today may yet be discovered or devised. New methods of driving force into the working of the wings may indeed bring the power of a herd of elephants into the hands of puny man. And then, yes, elephants may fly.