Make Your Own Working Paper Clock (Paperback)

by James Smith Rudolph (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Cut this book into 160 pieces, glue them together, and have a paper clock operated by weights that keeps perfect time and can be rewound and regulated.

Product Details

• Paperback: 40 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (September 14, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060910666
• ISBN-13: 978-0060910662
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #150,172 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lot of fun for patient people, December 7, 1998

By	"hazydavy" (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

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.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very good book!, August 8, 2000

By	Peter Rowe (Portlan, OR USA) - See all my reviews

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!

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Provides insight into working of clocks, October 14, 1999

By	William T. Lockman Jr. ([e-mail]) "... (Morenci, Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews

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.