Strings and Dowels

String

String, twine, and monofilament can add tension, motion, and sound to a mechanism. It can pull something into place like in the drafting desk card by Michael McGinnis, or transform the book into an instrument like in This Book is a Planetarium by Kelli Anderson (as seen at 0:43 seconds in the video). The thread can also be a visual element for parts too delicate to make out of paper, such as the rays of golden light on the final spread of Angels by Chuck Fischer, pictured below. You can watch a video about the process of designing this mechanism on the bottom of the Paper Engineer, Illustrator, Author page. In The Elements of Pop Up by David A Carter and James Diaz, the pull tab with a spinner and pull tab with a pulley,

Examples: Michael's desk card, The Elements of Pop Up - Pull tab with a spinner, pull tab with a pulley, This Book Is a Planetarium - instrument page Night Circus- flags, One Red Dot, string attachment method for crossing plane mechanisms.

String with Dowels

Examples: Night Circus, Pop-Up Book of Phobias - Dentist, Sabuda Wizard of Oz - Tornado, Mommy - Mummy.

Dowel & String Spinner video tutorial by Matthew Reinhart

Twirling Mechanisms video tutorials by Duncan Birmingham