One winter’s day I decided to try something based on a cuckoo clock. I didn’t really want to make a clock, the interesting bit for me is the door which opens to let a cuckoo briefly appear and sing their song. The doors are usually very small to leave room for the clockwork mechanism. Without the clock, I could make the doors bigger, perhaps offering space for someone bigger than a cuckoo. A cuckoo appearing when the doors are opened is what everyone expects, so of course I couldn’t have that and I went through a range of options until I finally settled on a lion.
Why a lion? Well in 2013 the amazing Carlos Zapata built a beautiful automaton called “Nero The Lion” which you can admire in this video (https://youtu.be/aMLTes4d3CY?list=UU7dQA67JQJOKKraMgbdG5gQ). On his website (https://carloszapataautomata.blogspot.com) Carlos explains that, In the 1920s, a lion was on the loose in Birmingham (UK) for 3 days until it was recaptured using a football net from Aston Villa, my local football club as I was growing up. His automaton provides a dramatic reconstruction of the event and provided me with some inspiration.
The tableau shown when my doors open is much simpler. There is one surprise as the doors open and that’s it. The rest is up to your imagination. Maybe the bossy lion has taken over the cuckoo’s home? Perhaps the cuckoo is considering whether to lay its egg in this luxury home? Maybe this illustrates the long-lost Aesop’s fable of why cuckoos no longer build nests, choosing instead to cheekily leave their eggs in other birds’ nests, haunted by the memory of finding a lion in their home in the trees? Or maybe it just shows what might happen when a cuckoo returns after popping out to fetch a pint of milk?
The Movement
I decided on a downward pull to move the carriage forwards while opening the doors. A long spring is to close the doors – I just had to find somewhere to put such a long spring.
Making
The walls of the house have guides for the carriage.
A hole is drilled for almost the full length of the carriage to take a long spring. One end of the spring is fixed with a piece of dowel at the round end of the carriage. The other end of the spring passes through the hole in the back wall to be attached to the house. At the left and right sides of the carriage you can see the protruding dowels which run in the guides. The brass rods are responsible for pushing the doors open as the carriage moves forwards.
Pulling the cord down turns the lever around its hinge which pushes the carriage forwards. As the rod moves along an arc around the hinge, a slot is needed in the carriage to allow for the (unwanted) up and down movement while pushing the carriage forwards.
The hinges for the doors are simply made up of brass pins passing through two pieces of wood. The pieces of wood do rub together, adding friction to the movement. This turned out to be of no consequence as pulling the cord downwards generates plenty of force and the friction is not noticeable.
The Tree
To be able to pull downwards and thus open the doors, some space is needed underneath the house, so I made a stand suggesting a tree.
Carving the Figures
Making a plastercine model first makes sure that the size is right. Otherwise, as the figures don’t have moving parts, it is then just a carving job.
Reflections
The moving carriage seems quite thick. Maybe it would have been better to use gravity (e.g. a lead weight) to pull a slimmer carriage back into the house. On the other hand, having lead weights hanging around doesn’t look so good either.
I did consider making the cuckoo nod as the doors open – as in some conventional cuckoo clocks. I decided against the additional complexity. Perching it on the door seemed just fine to me, as the door opens, the bird swings around with it.
When I showed this to my young tester, she delighted in removing the lion and replacing it with a long succession of other lodgers. The principle remained the same – the surprise of seeing who is inside as you pull the cord and the doors open.
Images
Download – https://wordwise.de/Cuckoo_Archive.zip