Tock Tick DIY Fix of a regulator clock

[Pete]

Updated OP.

Purchased an applied synthetic clock oil called Liberty Oil from Amazon. Some folks even utilize automotive synthetic oil....Mobile One...for their clocks.

[S-F]

I use whale oil. I wonder what the pro's say about the synthetic oils.

[Pete]

Updated OP.

[jgary]

I had to replace the works in my grandfather clock, now it's time to oil it. I have a great clock master who is about 70 ish. He has a couple volunteers who work in his shop to learn the trade who are not much younger than him.

[Pete]

Yeah was going to continue with this post moving on to the two antique clocks I have.

The art of the trade of being a clock master is going fast.

The partial take apart of the regulator clock (which I think is working fine now) was a real PITA and time consuming.

I had to utilize my large magnifying glass lamp that I use for electronic tinkering (surface mounting tiny stuff). I have done this before in another world of mine doing microsurgery (hours using a microscope).

Unrelated here still will pay whatever to rebuild old good shoes that I like rather than purchase new shoes and found that the shoe repair trade is almost gone now.

[Pete]

Updated OP.

[AshaiRey]

Hey Pete, due to your topic i finally took the time to make a clock. For about 20 year i tried to make one but never finished one till now. It's a wooden gear clock, all own design and it was a big learning experience. Now i understand mechanical clocks much better then before including their habits, flaws and how to over come them.
Thanks for starting this topic!

Regards,
Bram

[Pete]

Please post a picture of your wooden gear clock Bram.

The topic as time will never end unless I end.

[AshaiRey]

Well Pete thank you for your intrest in my work
Here they are

[S-F]

That's the coolest thing I've seen all week if not month.



How does it keep time? I can't tell from the pictures. Escapement I'm assuming? Is the long thing on the left the pendulum? Do you have plans for this you'd like to share? Do you have any resources you found while designing this that you'd care to share? Man! I wish there were a clock builders forum.

[Pete]

Wow!

Very nice Bram!

[AshaiRey]

That's the coolest thing I've seen all week if not month.



How does it keep time? I can't tell from the pictures. Escapement I'm assuming? Is the long thing on the left the pendulum? Do you have plans for this you'd like to share? Do you have any resources you found while designing this that you'd care to share? Man! I wish there were a clock builders forum.

Here's some more detail but first some background.
I designed this clock myself without any prior knowledge hindering my enthusiasm so i ended up with some bad decisions like the gear train.

I made 2 sets of gears
Wheel 1 = 60T
Why? I don't know but 60T seemed to me a nice number to have for the minutes gear.


Wheel 2 = 46T and a pinion of 8T that drive wheel 1
The escape wheel is a pin wheel with 38 pins and a pinion of 9T that drive wheel 2
So the gear train has a gear ratio of 38.3
Time in seconds for the escapement to make one rotation is then 93.9 seconds. This results in a pendulum period of 2.5 seconds for a tick and a tock. To get this time i needed a pendulum lenght of about 152cm (59.7")
So the long thing on the left is the pendulum.
The long pipe on the right is the bell that chimes every hour

A valuable source i used is this calculator at https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html

I printed the gear on paper, glued it on plywood and cut it by hand with a jigsaw. I placed the jigsaw upside down under a piece of plywood with the sawblade sticking upwards. After cutting the teeths i glued some sandpaper in the sawblade and sanded all the teeths up to the lines on the paper. After that its a lot of sanding en fine tuning each gear apart.

I have no other plans for this. I just started with the gears and the design grew under my hands hile building. Oke, i had to change my ideas a few times but i like this kind of flow. For example my initial goal was to make a clock that tells the time in minutes only but further in the process is wanted to show hours also. For this i made a gear of 3T on the minute axe and a large wooden chain with the numbers 1-12. So when the minutes turned ounce 3 shackles would pass and the next number would be in the circulair opening where you read the hour and minutes. This turned out not an good idea because the chain was to wobbly and got jammed from time to time so i discarded the idea. Now i have a ring with the hours on it and that is moved forward 1/12th by a 1T gear on the minute axe. It's still experimental but it works kind of. There is a slight problem when the double digit numbers are all on one side making it a bit more heavy on that side. The ticks and tocks of the clock vibrates the frame and the disk will rotate slightly due to this. I made a few small grooves in the inside of the disk to lock it on the pins where it lay on.

Ah, well, i love all this tinkering as you might know from my blog
http://zoelen.net

[Pete]

Curious what type of plywood you utilized for the gears?

Why plywood instead of solid wood for the gears?

Many years ago here collected little statues of mostly animals made from iron wood. I am not sure what type of wood it is specifically and just know it is heavy for wood.

[AshaiRey]

Curious what type of plywood you utilized for the gears?

Why plywood instead of solid wood for the gears?

Many years ago here collected little statues of mostly animals made from iron wood. I am not sure what type of wood it is specifically and just know it is heavy for wood.

The plywood i used is just regular plywood from homedepot. It has 5 layers. The middle en the 2 outside layers are thin and the 2 other are thicker. The total thickness is 9 mm and i believe it's birch.

It's better to use plywood because it keeps it shape better when the wood get dryer or wetter due to changing humidity. Also solid wood tends to crack more easily.

About your statues. That type of wood could be what we call in Dutch 'pokhout'. My father was a wooden ships builder amongst many other things and that sort of wood was usually used for bearings, shaft bearings, nautic clocks and sail blocks because it is self lubricating. The wood is so heavy that it won't float in water. Nowadays it's rare find.

[S-F]

Here it's called lignum vitae. It's heavy as a rock. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignum_vitae

I believe Ipe (epay) doesn't float either.