Description
I bought this orrery to teach my daughter about the seasons and moon phases. This orrery is made and ships from Germany. It can be found on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/726933516/wooden-kit-tellurium?ref=hp_rv-3
This is the link to Part 1, which show the unboxing, Painting Tips, and Assembly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_jjaxsyrdY
The “negative” piece that I glued to the table makes it so I didn’t have to glue the orrery gear piece onto the stand. But the downside to that is that it may not be as easy to get the full moon to line up with the right date; however, if the lunar phases become out of sync, you can easily reset it.
I highly recommend buying this kit—as long as you learn from my mistakes! It was actually easy to build. The hard part was painting the engravings and trying to figure out why the gears kept skipping. I also really like that it doesn’t take up any of that valuable table space. Send a comment if you have any questions! I’ll try to leave a detailed review on the Etsy listing.
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THE REVIEW I WROTE THAT'S TOO LONG FOR ETSY:
*The first part of this review is at the bottom of the description in my Part 1 video.
HANGING TIPS:
I really wanted to be able to hang this and was excited when I translated “Leichtgangige Mechanik” on the manual, which means, “Easy Hanging Mechanics.” It was definitely easy to hang, but after letting it go all the way around a few times, the gears began skipping and the lunar calendar no longer was accurate. I discovered that gear #3 (which is the upper center gear) was no longer glued to the axle. This axle is connected to gear #5, (lower, smaller, center gear) and it controls the date, so when the glue fails on gear #3, the date no longer moves. I think what happened is that in Step 17, I didn’t glue it well but it could also be due to me hanging it and gravity putting too much stress on that connection.
My solution was to make sure that gear #3 and gear #5 were securely connected. I drilled a ½ inch hole (using a step drill bit) in the middle of part 43 to make room for a spacer/connector (I think it was a spare part 44?) and connected gear #5, the spacer, and gear #3 using wood glue and small furniture nails.
Now with this fix, the orrery isn’t as fragile. Now I could move the gears and not worry about the moon phases being off. I would definitely do this fix again, even if I were planning on leaving it on a table.
My last tip on hanging the orrery is to make sure that the current season you’re in is always at the bottom, so the moon and earth remains towards the top. The moon and earth is a bit heavy, so the gears will not stay in place when the moon and earth portion starts to dip down.
The last thing I did was add a tiny bit of electrical tape to the end of the earth dowel and bottom, center dowel when I found that it was no longer pressure-fit.
I highly recommend this kit (as long as you don’t make my mistakes and follow my hanging tips if you plan on hanging it.) For me, it’s a beautiful 3D piece of art on the wall, that’s functional as well!