The Requirements
It’s my friend’s birthday soon, and I thought that she needs congratulating on reaching the grand old age of ten! So a mechanical congratualtion would be just the job. Peter Markey did a splendid happy clapper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx6hnNDoT50) as did Carlos Zapata (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2BStPMRf9g). Per Helldorf produced a fine version called “An evening at the Theatre” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPlDv_I8FqQ) and Martin Smith made a “Variable Applause Machine” (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aPSxc_zgnDo). The list could go on and on, but it’s safe to say that there are loads of examples out there for some inspiration, each one with its own particular flavour.
My version had to be female and have loads of movement. I borrowed Peter Markey’s clapping mechanism and decided to keep it simple with just a single cam both moving her arms and opening her mouth.
Making
I decided to start with the figure as this would then define the size of the base on which it stands. A wooden egg serves nicely as a head and a slanted cut gives us the widest mouth possible.
There are two pieces of 8 mm dowel. The dowel attached to the lower part of the head will be moved by the cam. The other dowel will be fixed, standing behind the clapping figure with a hinged link to the head. As one dowel moves up, relative to the fixed dowel, it pushes the head up and opens the mouth.
The moving dowel also has a horizontal piece of 4 mm dowel which moves the slotted links attached to the arms. As the dowel moves up it moves the slotted links and rotates the arms.
I carved two hands using limewood and used some 8 mm beech dowel for the arms. The elbows were a 90 degree joint which is straightforward and I set the angles of the hands by gluing them while they touched, in the clapping position.
With the hands together for a clap, I then glued the slotted linkages to be more or less horizontal.
As the moving dowel pushes the head up, the slotted links move the right arm one way and the left arm the other way.
By pushing the moving dowel upwards with my finger, I measured the travel from the initial resting point. This told me the dimensions for the cam, i.e. the difference between the minimum and the maximum radius. In my case this was 20 mm and 34 mm and I chose to have just two peaks on my cam. More peaks would mean more claps per rotation of the crank.
Once I knew the size of the cam, I knew how tall to make the base. To make repairs easier, I screwed the base together.
After painting a smart dress and making a matching hat, I added some dangly earrings which followed the pattern on the dress. As every girl knows, dangly earrings are a great attention grabber.
Reflections
While she sits there unmoving, with her hands pressed together, she does look a bit stern, as if she’s waiting for something. As soon as you turn the handle, she suddenly looks delighted – maybe her horse has just won the Epsom Derby? The angling of her hands is quite human, all in all she makes quite a dapper impression, a really dapper happy clapper!
Video
Link https://youtu.be/iQW5ZvTvcN8
Images
Download here: Download here https://www.wordwise.de/Clapper_Archive.zip