Puppet Props - Cuckoo Clock

I made this Black Forest style Cuckoo Clock for an Oktoberfest-themed puppet show.

The sticks at the bottom are part of the support system.  I split a photo of the clock three times (into 8 equal parts of about 8.5 x 11 inches each) to make it about 22 x 34 inches.  The parts were pasted onto foam-core board, and to counteract curling of the board, blank paper was pasted on the back side.  The shape was cut out and the edges colored brown to hide the white color of the foam core.

A double door 4.5 inches wide and high was cut into the area above the clock face.  The hinge areas were reinforced with clear plastic packing tape.  The cuts for the door were widened a bit to eliminate friction on the door edges.  A puppet bird can push the doors open, and when the bird withdraws, the doors are pulled closed by a weighted string.

Here are two views of the back side:

Popsicle sticks were glued on the back to strengthen some narrow areas.  Two wire hooks with attached wood sticks enable the clock to hang on the top rail of the puppet stage in front of the top curtain.  The big sticks go down between the top curtain and the top script rail, preventing the clock from tipping forward, especially when a puppet bird thrusts its head through the door.  (A script rail holds a row of four open three-ring binders across the 7-foot width of the stage.)

The vertical narrow box between the two big sticks encloses the weights that pull the doors closed.  This box and the foam-core ridges on either side of the two big sticks push the clock away from the top rail and the top curtain so that the top rail and curtain do not interfere with the rise and fall of the weights.  More details on the door-closing mechanism next.

The next views show the doors held open by a tissue box:

Each door has a wire taped to its back side, but extending on the outside about two inches below the door.  A string attached to each wire passes through a grommet hole on one side of the "XII" of the clock face.  These two strings are actually the ends of one loop of string from which the weights hang.  Thus the weights pull equally on both doors, whether one is open or both.

The next view shows a few other details:

You can see the string loop from the grommets going into the box that allow the weights to slide freely without pressure or friction from the stage curtain.  You can also see the heavy wire pieces that anchor the top of one of the wire hooks that hang on the top rail of the puppet stage.  The wire loop that passes through the foam core board is painted brown on the front side.  The colored paper on the back of each door covers the wire that is taped onto the back of the door.