Why build clocks?

One week ago we changed our clocks one hour forward for British Summer Time and today my first clock is still showing the correct time. This was a pleasant surprise!

Once upon a time every clockmaker would have had a regulator clock in his workshop against which he could set new and repaired timepieces. Now we have radio controlled clocks that regulate themselves by reference to world standard clocks. Perfect accuracy but where’s the romance?

My No. 1 clock keeps time when it feels like it, sometimes makes strange noises and generally behaves like an unruly pet. In other words it almost seems to be a living thing even though I know every component intimately because I shaped it from the original material, sometimes after several attempts.

One part that took several attempts to get right was the daisy wheel motion work. I first read about this in an article by John Wilding in Model Engineer magazine (Issue 4179, 4 October 2002) and decided to try using it on my own clock.

The first attempt was based on the drawings in John Wilding’s article but I could not get it to work. I then sat down and used CAD to draw dozens of possible positions for the pins and effectively define the required shape for the daisy wheel. This revealed my errors in scaling from Mr Wilding’s article and also provided me with a way of transferring the drawing to the metal by printing the drawing onto an adhesive label.

Even then it took me two goes before I ended up with a combination of daisy wheel and pin wheel that worked. Now, if I need to know the exact time I can check the soulless electronic alarm clock but I much prefer seeing the approximate time on a clock that I brought to life myself.

clockmaking