Automatic Curtain

The various curtains and drapes popular with homemakers on windows and interior doors, consisting of two sliding panels, are often hung for greater decorative effect on wooden rods with large rings.

If the material used is dense and heavy, opening and closing such curtains by hand is not so easy, and with abrupt efforts the curtain rings produce quite a lot of noise.

Of course, stores also offer improved curtain options with simple cord mechanisms or even electrified devices for moving the panels. However, they are more expensive and, as a rule, are arranged on metal rods, most often of the track type.

Yet a simple device for mechanizing the movement of curtains even on a wooden rod is not hard to make yourself, and such a system will work no less conveniently and reliably than the industrial ones mentioned above.

All you need for this is a thin but strong silk or synthetic cord. Its length is chosen so that it is a little more than twice the length of the rod of your curtain rail.

The cord is folded in half and passed through the rings so that the far cornice bracket ends up in its end loop. In addition, midway along the way the cord must be tied to the two middle rings, with one knot belonging to one branch of the cord and the second to the other branch. The free ends of the cord are thrown over the second bracket.

That is all there is to the trick. From the illustration it is clear that if you pull the left end of the cord, the curtains begin to open; and to draw the curtain closed, you pull the right end of the cord. The rings then move easily and almost silently.

Of course, similar mechanization can also be arranged for other types of curtain rails, right up to the so-called “string” type, using nylon fishing line instead of cord when necessary.

“Modelist-Konstruktor” No. 4’2010, B. REVSKY