Customer Reviews

Make Your Own Working Paper Clock

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm building this clock now, and having a ball. Nonetheless, I'm here ordering a second copy because I messed up a key part--you have to be extraordinarily precise in assembling this clock. I have a few bits of advice:

- Save yourself some shipping costs and order two of these now.

- Use Aileen's Tacky Glue as your adhesive.

- Use as little glue as possible (very little).

- Have lots of clamps and weights on hand. I am using spring clothespins and lots of coins. I think surgical hemostats would help a lot, if I had any.

- Be liberal with X-Acto blades. I may well use 50 on this project.

- Spend no more than an hour a day on this. Personally, if I spend more than that, I get impatient and make mistakes.

This project requires considerable time and patience but you *can* end up with a clock that really works. As previously mentioned I think the best strategy to to work about an hour or so each evening, it took me too months to complete the clock with extra hours on weekends. It works! The key is the gears. The main issue is the concentricity of the gear wheels -- in other words, their outer edge rotates a constant distance from the center. Get this wrong and the wheels will bind as they rotate against one another. Two problems: finding the center, and constructing the gear wheels consistently. The first gear you meet is the main drive wheel, it took me a week to construct. Put an axl in it and spin it to make sure it's concentric as you build. Make sure the inner mesh gears of the secondary gear (and others) are consistent (no teeth wider or narrower than others, trim them with a exacto knife if needed. Tip: they should be bent into an straight accordian shape before glue, this way you can see that all teetch are even. The main gear and secondary innner gear are most important -- up to the escapement. The later hand gears are no problem. Once complete you need to patch, trim, reposition axles, cut... Note that on the book cover the squished main gear teeth that the author adjusted to make the wheel concentric!

As the author claimed, you cut the book into about 160 peices then glue and assemble them into a working clock. I just finished making my clock. It didn't work. The pinions and gears just didn't mesh right. There must be tricks to get the precision of alignment necessary for the clock to run, but the author revealed none of them. Lining things up by eye, and being very careful just isn't enough. I was surprised to read other reviews where the clocks worked. Even so, I was amazed at the engineering of these paper parts, and am considering ordering a couple more books from which to re make parts (the author recommends this from the start). At the very least, reading this book, and making the clock from it, will leave one with a very good understanding of how such clocks work, but not necessarily an understanding of how to make clocks that work.

Length:: 0:44 Mins

Here is how the finished product looks like. Cool, isn' it?

After 3 weeks of late night work, I finally finished it yesterday. At the beginning the pendulum only swung 5 to 6 times and then stopped. After tuning the position of wheels 3 times, now my clock can keep ticking for couple hours. It is very cool!

However, it is very difficult to set time in this clock. But that's okay to me, coz I don't expect it to show correct time anyway.

Some suggestions:
- as all other reviewers said, all the cutting must be very precise.
- Get yourself a pair of "normally closed" tweezers and of course a pair of regular tweezers as well. It helped me a lot when gluing pieces together.
- I used knitting needles instead of wire for axles. I used 2.25mm (US #1) for axles for motor wheel and minute hand, and 1.5mm or 1.75mm (US #000 and #00) for other axles
- I cut a big rectangular hole on the face, and removed the case, so that people can see the cool wheels inside
- I have to tilt the whole clock to the right a bit, or else the pendulum will stop swinging after a few seconds
- I added two quarters to the end of pendulum rod, which seems to help a little bit
- Make sure you get your wife's approval on making this clock, because for sure you will be spending many nights on this project

This is an interesting design for a clock. I put mine together in about a month (working several hours a night). When I noticed a couple of design flaws. The gears are not going to mesh very well, no matter how well you put it together. Also, since you must use wire for the pivots the clock hands are going to be extremely difficult to get to move properly since you cannot securely fasten the gears to the pivots. However, it looks great when you finish it! I did not put the cover on because I like to see the gears. Since I don't use mine as a clock I painted the gears and use it as reference for when I build wooden clocks. If you want to make a working clock I strongly suggest looking into making a wooden one. There are lots of free plans available online. I recommend a website called Gary's Wooden Clocks. This website has lots of information, tips, clock plans, downloads and links for the clock building enthusiast.
In short, this is a good introduction to clock making but is not its self a good clock.

I got one of these books as a gift in 1985 (I was 14) and built it over Christmas break. It was very time consuming, and patience and precision were key. It ran quite well at first, but after about a week, the paper started to wear enough that the friction caused it not to keep time anymore. Eventually, it started binding and quit running altoghether.

It's almost 15 years later now, and I found it in a box. Wow! It doesnt run anymore of course, but it's still a great conversation piece. I think I just may get another one of these and give it another go round...

This is not a beginners project!

I have attempted this clock 3 times now over the past 20 years. Admittedly on my first attempt I didn't have enough patience to assemble the parts correctly, so I didn't have a chance.

This third time I did take my time cutting and gluing. I managed to make most of the parts without too much trouble, but the instructions towards the end of the project are much less explicit than in the beginning. Take your time and review the schematics. Many times they are much more helpful than the written instructions.

Make sure you follow the lines EXACTLY when you cut. There are very small tolerances to the parts that you have to keep for this to work. The main problem I had was the star shaped shafts. These need to be kept uniform in shape for the gears to mesh properly.

Also, be prepared to adjust the spacing between gears by moving the axles around on the frame. Again, if your frame was not perfectly done, the holes that show axle placement will be off resulting in wobbles and such.

I have been able to make the clock tic for a few seconds, and that was satisfying enough for me. Maybe next winter I will pull it out and try to fine tune it again.

I have an older copy of the book, and the recently purchased copies
have the following typo. On p. 35 there are two + symbols defined in
step E. The first is the one which ought to have dots accompanying
it, to indicate that bearnings are needed at that point. (You can see
this symbol on the pieces of the clock, such as part #49, #50 etc.)

Donna Dietz

My husband and I just finished a New Year's weekend marathon of clockmaking.

I got this book years ago, attempted it once and bailed out at piece 57 or so. This time he and I finished it together (Having another person I think is VERY helpful so you can keep each other motivated.)

There are several typos in the book as mentioned above and as one of the other reviewers mentioned, the instructions for the last sections -- for constructing the minute and hour hand pieces and the final assembly are sketchy at best. Consulting the drawings can be helpful, but I have to say it also just makes you figure out for yourself how the thing ought to work -- then you put it together accordingly.

Our hands and backs are aching, but it's put together and we're still together. We still have to adjust the pendulum fork and also the escapement wheel, but after 18 hours, we're ready to look at it as a lovely objet d'art, not a timekeeper.

I don't think we'd do it again -- that would be my third go and his second -- but it was very cool to do it once.