Turn, thread, drill, assemble.

The latest quartz piece is all put together and ready to be sculpted with the grinding tools.

More soon!

Succesful Test

One of my favorite concept drawings uses a tellurion mechanism. A couple years back I figured out the math for the necessary gear ratios, but now I thought it was time to cut some (a lot of) gears to test my math, and make sure everything works as it should. It’s a little crude, but certainly adequate for a mock-up.

A quick breakdown…

-This display mimics the movement of the earth and moon around the sun. Because it moves in a one year cycle, it also indicates the months, and the solstice/equinox.

-The center of the carriage will have a sun on it, as you can see from the drawing of the clock. The entire carriage, along with the earth and moon, will rotate once every 365.25 days. I used that number so that it aligns with a Julian style perpetual calendar mechanism. 

-The earth rotates so if you were to draw a line through the place you live, it would point directly at the sun at noon each day.

-Then the moon moves around the earth with its synodic cycle. If you note the location of the moon in relation to the earth and sun, you can see what phase it’s in. If it’s directly between the earth and sun, it’s a new moon. If it’s on the other side, it’s a full moon.

The math for this mechanism was deceptively tricky, for me at least. That center gear needed to turn .99726215  each day. Then the carriage, which works off that gear, needed a .99726215 to .002737850 gear ratio. This necessitated some very strange gear tooth counts.

After a lot of work, I finally (nervously) turned the 1/day gear through it’s yearly cycles, and I’m happy to say everything is working perfectly!

Now, should I get the opportunity to move forward with this design, I’ll know it’s good to go!

Road Trip!

Last week I rented a large SUV, and drove from Michigan all the way to Seattle to deliver “Perpetual No.1” to its new home. The scenery was absolutely stunning! I thought I might regret committing to such a long drive, but I’m so happy I had this experience. Obviously some car ride iPhone pics can’t capture it (not even remotely close), but here are a few snapshots from along the way.

The clock was successfully installed, and it’s now ticking away in its new forever-home. I’ll definitely miss it, but it’s in good hands.

Now I’m back home, with a bench full of new projects and a hunger to get back to it!

Finished Gears

I just finished carving up the new set of gears for the mechanical clock I’ve been working on. They’re all balanced and ready to put back into the clock. 

Things have been a little busy lately, so I wasn’t able to make video footage of the process. If you’re interested, at the bottom of this post I added a youtube video of a gear being made for “The Grasmere Commission”

Gear Spokes

Cutting out the gear spokes for the mechanical clock I’ve been working on. This is done both for aesthetic reasons, and also to lighten the gears so the clock train is more efficient.

Next I’ll start sculpting the spokes with the rotary tool to make them more three-dimensional and organic.

Craggy & Branchy

Last week my air conditioner broke, and while it was being repaired I couldn’t work in the shop. I decided to take my drawing supplies up to the dining room table and scratch down some quartz clock designs. 

Here’s what I came up with. I think I need to make some of these!

Tabletop Timepiece

New quartz clock on the way. 

Time for something a little different - My first tabletop piece. It’s actually kind of surprising to me that I’ve never made one before. Now that I’m trying out some designs, I might have to do more…maybe even a mechanical one someday.

Should be a fun one!

Design discovery

Interesting photoshop experiment.


A little backstory:

I had two rather large projects that never quite got off the ground. One was a big free-standing clock that featured a tellurion dial (moving model of the earth, moon & sun). The other was very similar to “Perth”, which was a wall-hung mechanical with a perpetual-calendar dial.


I spent quite a bit of time on drawings and mechanical plans for both, but unfortunately they’re dead in the water. This is a sad reality for me, because they would have been epic!


Then yesterday I tried this - I used the drawing of the wall hung piece, but photoshopped the tellurion dial in place of the perpetual one. And voila!


I think the curls of the sun work really well with the curls that sprawl from the numbers. 


Note that there are two versions - One has tabs representing the equinox and solstice. The other would have them wrapping around the inside of the ring, which allows the globe to be bigger. Not sure which one I prefer.


Maybe someday this one will become a reality….


maybe


New clock finished

This is a redux of a clock from a very long time ago, which was simply titled “Quartz 8”.

Revisiting earlier designs has made one thing painfully evident - I take waaaaay longer on my work than I used to. Pieces of the exact same size and design take about three times longer. The simple truth is I add a lot more detail, and construct things more carefully now.

I really like the way this one came out.

Enjoy!

Carving Away

Yesterday I finished adding the curves, twists, and gnarl to the first numeral. Giving my Foredom a workout as usual.

On to the "III". Hoping to finish this piece next week

New Quartz Progress

All cut out and assembled!

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve seen this pattern before. Draw, saw, drill-tap-thread, assemble. My little jewelers-saw and my screw-threading jig have certainly seen some miles over the years.

Next up…sculpting these parts into something pleasingly un-flat.

New Quartz Commission

New quartz clock on the way!

The design is set, and cutting has started. I decided to saw this one out by hand, rather than CNC. I like using the hand-tools from time to time. I figure it's also good to stay in practice with the old jewelers saw.

More on this one soon!

It's alive!

There’s a new heartbeat in the shop!

The new mechanical clock had its first pulse yesterday, and was ticking away through the night. This is always one of my favorite parts of creating a mechanical clock.

I also really love this type of escapement. If you’ve been following, you know that my most recent mechanical commissions featured the six legged Arnfield gravity escapements. While I really love those too, there’s something about the familiar, reliable, predictable performance of a well-made dead beat escapement.

Finished Frame

The clock frame is finished!

The holes in the plates were carefully drilled to accommodate the clock-train, along with the holes for the pillars that hold the main plates together. Then the pillars were turned and tapped, the plate screws were made, and voila!

I actually wanted to show the drilling operation on the mill, but the truth is I kinda got mentally lost in the work and forgot to drag out the camera. It’s a pretty straightforward drilling & reaming job, although it does require all of my concentration. Those holes need to be perfect, because they hold the arbors for the gears…and the distance between the gears is crucial.

This part of the process starts to get fun for me, primarily because the clock starts to take shape in three dimensional space. I have the gears cut, and I can see the first ticks (my favorite part) right down the road.

Barrel Threading

Yesterday I used the lathe to thread the barrel of the new clock.

This clock will get its energy from a weight. That weight will hang from a kevlar line, wound around this barrel. As the weight pulls down, the barrel turns.

It’s threaded so when the clock is wound, the line will neatly follow the grooves, and doesn’t get crossed or tangled.

Polishing

The escapement was fully hardened, and now it’s all polished up.

While most of this piece of steel was polished for aesthetic purposes, there are four surfaces that needed to be an absolutely perfect, mirror-finish - the surfaces that interact with the escape wheel.

That piece of steel rocks back and forth with the swing of the pendulum, interrupting the spin of the escape wheel. When it does, the surfaces that stop the escape wheel slide across the tip of each tooth. In order to slide friction-free, those surfaces needed to be polished to a mirror-finish.

In addition to the finish, the geometry needs to be perfect, so rather than attacking it with buffing wheels, I methodically polished it in steps. First with small precision polishing stones, and then soft wood sticks and very fine-grit diamond paste.

I’ve already checked the wheel & escapement on a test plate. Everything seems to be working as it should.

On to the next thing!

Steel Hardening

Fun with salt lava!

I can’t think of a better way to hang out in the Michigan cold than next to a 1500° vat of molten salt.

Yesterday I fired up the salt-bath kiln to harden some of the steel parts for the new clocks. This kiln does a really good job of evenly heating up delicate parts. With a torch I always had a tough time heating it up to the right glow without melting off the delicate thin areas. Also, since the parts are immersed, there’s no carbon buildup or scaling. A little soap & water and the salt and oil comes right off.

Next steps:

For the torsion springs it’s off to a second type of kiln to spring-temper them.

For the escapement pallets it’s time to start polishing. Like….lots and lots of polishing. Maybe forever.

The Great Wheel

Timelapse showing the 160 tooth “great wheel” being cut. This gear is used for the power/weight assembly, and is the biggest one in the gear-train.

More ratchet cutting

This morning I cut a 40 tooth ratchet wheel for the power/winding assembly of the new mechanical. This will be stacked on the same arbor as the 80 tooth one I cut yesterday. This one ratchets the weight (power source) back to the top, and the other one retains a loaded spring in order to keep power to the clock train when the clock is being wound. It’ll make more sense once I have all the parts finished, and I can show how they all work together.

More soon!