Description
I bought a Wooden Orrery/Tellerium Kit from Laserdeko (made in Germany) on Etsy for a total of $154. (Shipping to the US was about $40).
https://www.etsy.com/listing/726933516/wooden-kit-tellurium?ref=hp_rv-1
An orrery (aka tellurium or tellurion) is a mechanical model that shows the position and motion of the sun, earth, moons, and planets. I bought this one (which focuses only on the sun, moon, and Earth) to teach my daughter about the seasons and moon phases.
There is a smaller, but less detailed, wooden orrery kit from Induku (made in Sweden) that's also on Etsy. https://www.etsy.com/listing/580457580/wooden-model-of-the-solar-system-orrery?ref=shop_home_feat_2&frs=1
For the painting, I only did a light coat of paint on the gears. But for the calendar ring, I painted it with acrylic, then covered it in a polyurethane gloss, smothered the engravings with a contrasting paint color, wiped off that paint with a wet paper towel, sanded with steel wool, and then covered again with gloss. This was difficult because some of the engravings were not very deep and sometimes the paint in the engravings wouldn't wipe off welll, making it not look very clean. But once it's all put together, it look fine. There is slight warping on the calendar ring, but it's not noticeable. This is the video from The Average JoeAnn that teaches how to paint engravings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WNd82-K09E
One of the the big issues in the video is that the orrery didn't pressure-fit into the calendar stand (so when the date changed, the gears didn't move.) I have a fix for that in my video.
If you do plan on buying this kit, keep the spare pieces and template boards, just in case you need to make a modifications like me (I will also have a major modification in the next video).
As for tools, it helps to have some bypass pruners and calipers (or ruler) to cut the rods to the correct length. It's also handy to have a small mallet to hammer in the rods and embroidery tweezers or an awl l to poke out the tiny holes.
In my next video, I will talk about what I like about the orrery, what I had to fix, how it works, modifications, and tips on hanging it.
Wooden Orrery Kit, Part 2 (How it Works, Modifications, Hanging Tips)
https://youtu.be/8mj7zYv03Ac
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE REVIEW I WROTE THAT'S TOO LONG FOR ETSY:
I looked at ALL the orrerys available online, from the cheap plastic ones on Amazon to the ones you’d find in a classroom. But I really love this one because I could customize it with paint, it functions as a seasonal calendar and lunar calendar to the day, and I can hang it on the wall (with some modifications.)
For me, the orrery was easy to assemble. The hard part was painting it and trying to figure out how to fix it after I had hung it up (read more on that below).
The reason I give this kit 4 stars out of 5 is that the instructions could use some work. For example, the manual says tools are not required, but you definitely need tools—the minimum being an exacto knife and a ruler (I used calipers and a bypass pruner). Wood glue, sand paper, and dowels are included with the kit though.
Here are some tips/corrections when going through the instructions (but hopefully some of the mistakes will be fixed in the future):
STEP 1: “13 x 4.5 mm” means cut 13 rods that are 4.5 mm long and glue these where red dots are.
STEP 4: The blue and green disc are parts #12 and #13.
STEP 17: Make sure to glue gear #3 very well to the axle. This is a vital part of the orrery, because if the glue fails, then moving gear 3 will not move the lower set of gears, as these gears move the date. (FYI, the upper set of gears moves the moon).
STEP 21: Part 45 is actually part 46.
STEP 26: Gear 32 (the jagged looking gear at the very bottom of the orrery) should fit snugly within the orrery stand. For me, it didn’t fit snugly, so when I moved the date pointer, none of the gears moved. This could be fixed by gluing it directly to the stand. I was hesitant to do this because I wanted the option to recalibrate the lunar calendar if it went out of sync, so I cut out the “negative” of gear 32 from the board and glued that onto the stand. This way I can remove the orrery from its stand and reset the lunar calendar.
**Check the description in my my Part 2 video for the rest of my Etsy review!