Issue 52 February 2026

You will need: a length of dowel 25mm in diameter. Some dowel or skewer 4mm in diameter. 2 brass or jewellery rings. Holes need to be drilled in the length of 25mm dowel as shown on right. Fig. 8. Do this by putting the dowel into a vice and drilling downward, very straight with a 4mm drill bit. You can only probably drill about 3 cm deep or as the length of drill dictates. Now slice the dowel on a table saw (is safest) into 5 or 6mm wide slices. Make four. Take the 4mm dowel and cut into 2 segments of 55mm (a) and 1 segment of 50mm(b) And two small segments of 35mm( c). Before installing there are several considerations. One is how is the array going to be put in place; in what order can it be done? See set up in Fig. 11. It was decided to glue the (a) rods to the first and last cogs as these can be poked through the side opening from the inside in both left and right sides. The shorter segments (c ) were also pre - glued into the outside holes on the other two cogs. Just so they were not forgotten, the rings were kept close by both these cogs. As an extra precaution I tied lengths of strong black cotton to them prior to assembly in case it turned out too diƯicult to tie in place. The knot in the cotton had a blob of glue on it as well. As it turned out, all this worked out ok. With experience the middle section can be pre - glued up and the side rods (a) can be inserted later and glued into place. A few adjustments were needed to the shape of the cogs as I had not left enough clearance. That was easily done but could have more easily been avoided if a better plan had been made beforehand. The strong cotton on the rings was fed into two holes in the ceiling above the figure and tied to each of the arms just above the wrists. When the knobs are turned on the side, either together or separately, the arms move up and down. To finish oƯ the shaft ends. Glue a bead or wooden shape to the left hand end. For the end you will ‘twiddle’ you need a bigger bead or shape that you can grip easily. Glue this to the end of the shaft. This is a permanent fix. Some set ups are put together so they can be dismantled. That seemed a bit hard at this stage. This is a simple automaton but really doable for a someone new to the art. a a b c c Note: the dowel looks a bit tatty because the Jack Russell called Elvis snaƯled it and ran oƯ and chomped on it before it was rescued! Miniature Time Traveller 13 Warning: Check the depth of the space for your mechanism. Learn frommy mistakes! The round followers had to be reshaped so they could revolve freely. Chalk it down to a greenhorns mistake. Fig.7 Fig.8 Fig.9 Fig.10 Fig.11