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I have always liked mechanical clocks, and hope to get a nice Grandfather clock some day...this kit is just for fun.
This kit goes for around $40-$49 online but some guy on ebay is blowing them out for $15 plus shipping.
I hesitate to recommend the kit as is has some flaws, most can be fixed easily but the largest issue is it it a spring wound clock and it will Only run for about approx 6 hours on 1 wind-up....this makes it not practical as an every day time keeper....some guys have converted it to weight driven, but that requires a fair amount of extra work.
In the end I could not resist the low price and a chance to test some of my ideas to fix the clock issues.
Issue #1 The Escapement wheel has Really slender pointy tip gear teeth, these are easily Chipped off (sharp pointed tip only) there is also a "spider" wooden gear in the winding mechanism that chips with use and guys where getting only about 6 months use out of the stock Spider (or less)
The Manufacturer solution was to just supply (1) spare Spyder gear
Only time will tell, but my "fix" was to dip each tooth of the escape wheel and Spider gear in that Super thin (like water) super glue...this soaks in and I dipped each tooth 2x....I also gave this treatment to the "Pallet" in hopes the super glue will "Harden" the Plywood teeth.
The other mod was to burnish all gear teeth with pencil lead graphite Rather than the kit supplied wax....guys in the reviews reported it taking up to 3 days tuning to get there clocks running....mine took off on first try and has not stopped yet, hopefully that's a good sign.
The graphite is so effective at reducing drag, I had to adjust pendulum bob to nearly max long setting to slow my clock down, I very quickly have it regulated to within 10 seconds per hour, but now need to run the clock for longer periods to dial it in closer.
I did not do a full blown "build log" as there are Much better wooden clock kits on the market, However this may be the only wooden clock kit that actually "ticks" for only $15 plus shipping.
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It's a fairly "busy" looking clock and between the "Skeleton" style and all that blonde wood....its not instantly obvious what time it reads,(2:19am) it runs well enough that I am kind of regret not apply a stain and varnish. I plan to at least paint the clock hands so it may be read from further away.
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If you have a 3D printer, this fellow is selling some nice looking STL clock files to print that seem somewhat practical:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWbKinQBavrH3iPMvgzVQzg/videos
His one pendulum clock has a 32 day run time. I keep thinking about giving one a go, but I already have so many other projects in the queue. -
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Update: The clock is running very well and keeps good time "IF" you keep it wound up....this is quite a chore, and might be suitable for someone with a desk job that wanted the nice tick-tock sound and did not mind winding at Every coffee break.
It was still enough fun, I have my eye on a new offering from Ugears, called the Aero clock, it is More than 3X as complicated as my clock and by the reviews only a very select few have been able to get it running so far.
As it is new the price is hover around $80 and as it is more in wooden puzzle Class than a proper clock kit, I will likely wait until after Christmas for the discount price.
The theme of the clock is "Aero" or more precisely hot air balloons, there is an extra "complication" (RH side) where a wooden hot air model balloon slowly rise for every Hour and at the top of the hour quickly descends.
I would love to see how this kit responds to my super glue "harden" teeth and pencil graphite treatments.... Only time will tell if I can hold out for the better price!
This one IS weight driven.
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Well, I am up to my eyebrows into another wooden clock build, this is the one hardly anyone has gotten to run...yet!
I was tired of all the blonde plywood, so I stained this one with Kiwi shoe polish, I am hopeful the wax base polish may offer a little humidity resistance.
Trying all my tricks on this one, hopefully I can conquer the "Aero" clock.
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Hi,
An interesting design, I like it. The idea of using super glue as a hardening agent is very good and I think it should improve the wearing characteristics of the wood. On the Aero clock unless the bearings of the compound pendulum are very low friction they are usually poor and inconsistent time keepers. A conventional simple pendulum could replace the compound one though it will be a lot longer but should require less power. I look forward to hearing how the clock performs.
Take care Tony. -
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The polishing every tooth with pencil lead is the only tedious task(for me) it is helpful to break this important step up into smaller burnish sessions rather than do every gear in the clock back to back.
The photo is the largest gear in the clock, I have taken a rest from tooth polish to build the little hot air balloon and gondola, there is a man about 1 inch tall standing in the gondola shading his eyes from the sun with one hand, the level of detail that can be had with laser cuts is impressive.
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Thanks Tony,
Here is a photo of gear teeth, the gear on left has had its teeth dipped 1X, the gear on right has had the pencil treatment.
I am treating the teeth by filling a beer cap with the thin super glue, I can dip 2 teeth at a time and it goes pretty fast to treat a gear, what is interesting is 1 dip is effective to prevent the outer layer of plywood from chipping when I am doing the pencil polishing, however, dipping 3 times with a couple minutes dry time between dips has the effect of filling the pores in the wood, and after the 3rd dip, the gear tooth has a gloss to it. I am not going to dip the entire gear set 3X on this clock, but the escape wheel and pallet will get 3X dipping. I have decided not to focus a ton of effort on this unit for cosmetics but test my theorys and see if I can get a fairly reliable time keeper.
If so, I will build a second unit with better stain and finish, I will be familiar with the parts and where they go so I could...say....stain the frame dark like walnut, and the gears a contrast color like cherry as an example.
The issue with teeth chipping is not huge, but certain teeth are worse than others, if we have a gear in front of us and we set it so the outer layer of plywood (grain) is running vertical, the teeth at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock will be Most resistant to chipping...vs the teeth at 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock the corners can easily chip (short cross grain) on tip of gear tooth... Of course the harder surface of the super glue does give a slicker surface to put the graphite on and make a clock that needs less power to run. We do have the option of putting less weight in the weight bag if the clock runs faster than can be regulated with the pendulum.
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Update: All that graphite burnish appears to have payed off, If I push the bottom large gear to spool up the gearbox, the whole thing will coast for 19 seconds! I feel this is quite good for gears that have not had a chance to run in yet.
The plywood on this kit is approx 1mm thicker than other kits I have seen from this maker, also the parts fit together without the need for high force, it would seem the maker is getting better at these kits.
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Hi,
Looking good, I think the stain has much improved the look of the wood, sort of mellowing it. I was wondering, what are the bearings lubricated with? I am familiar with the wooden framed clocks that were made in the Black forest many years ago which had wooden frames and arbors, beech I think, but had brass wheels, steel pivots and brass bushes in the frame. The bushes were made from rolled up sheet brass so the oil could leach into the wooden frame so they needed fairly frequent lubrication.
Take care Tony. -
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Hi,
Looking good, I think the stain has much improved the look of the wood, sort of mellowing it. I was wondering, what are the bearings lubricated with? I am familiar with the wooden framed clocks that were made in the Black forest many years ago which had wooden frames and arbors, beech I think, but had brass wheels, steel pivots and brass bushes in the frame. The bushes were made from rolled up sheet brass so the oil could leach into the wooden frame so they needed fairly frequent lubrication.
Take care Tony.
Hello Tony, much to my surprise, the axles that do not see much load from the weight drive like the hour wheel and minute wheel are just little plywood circles that fit in holes in the frame, I have done the graphite burnish treatment on these as well.
The heavily loaded gears(from weight drive) are small Diameter harden steel pins similar to dowel pins with a good surface finish, these also just fit into slip fit wooden holes in the frame. No graphite will stick to the dowel pins, but I do spin the pencil lead in the wooden hole, it is surprising how long a single gear will spin in this hole(tested during construction) however it seems like these would wear oval over time. I may harden these holes with super glue as well in hopes of adding some longevity to the clock. Also the pendulum pivot is the lower drag small dowel pin construction.
Thanks for the compliment on the stain color, I feel most anything would be an improvement over the bare blonde plywood. As there is not much attractive grain to plywood, it's kind of hard to know what to use for stain, I was mostly trying to avoid a blotchy look. The color I used was Kiwi Mid-Tan shoe polish. I applied with a shoe brush while the parts where still in there webs and it goes pretty quick. You can see some of the parts are not as dark(frame) then the hour and minute wheels, this is my fault, I did zero sanding! The frame sheets where very smooth and the hour and minute wheels could have used a light block sanding with maybe 600-800 grit. The nice thing about the shoe polish is you can slowly build richer color by keep loading your shoe brush and brushing more. I just tried to make each sheet look even and let dry overnight, the next morning I was eager to begin construction, but could have layed out all the sheets and give the lighter ones a second coat.
Photo: The clock is now temporarily mounted to the wall, I still have about 20% more of the instruction book to go, but it seems we do the final build phase on the wall to avoid tangled weight lines and also the little hot air balloon complication runs on a monofiliment fishing line. I may blacken the hands and numbers to make them easy to read at distance.
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Update: The Aero Clock Runs!!
The clock comes with kind of a "flour" sack to fill with weight, they suggest 4.4 lbs of sand or salt. I did not really want anything that could absorb moisture. Some on the reviews I read have used a big economy jar of bb gun bb's. The bb's I have on hand are not economy grade, so I would rather shoot them
Just as a test I put the weight from one of my kitchen clocks on and the Aero Clock began to tick! I noticed the tick tock sounded rather faint, so I weighed the kitchen clock weight and it's only 2.7 lbs. I added a stack of magnets and half a tin of airgun pellets and my tick-tock sounded strong. This new weight ended up at 3.5 lbs(still well below factory spec) and you can see from the photo I have both pendulum bobs adjusted near max to slow the clock. I feel quite sure If I go up to the recommended 4.4 lbs the clock would run faster than the stock pendulum could regulate, so it seems my pencil graphite burnish is indeed much lower drag than the candle wax most people use and is included in the kit.
If I find later that I want to go up to the 4.4 lb weight and the clock runs to fast, we are not stuck, if you glue a coin or similar small weight to the pendulum it will slow the clock more so you can fine tune with the factory adjustments.
I managed to get the balloon feature working as well, this was something many reviewers where stumped by...it is very fussy and the instructions are not clear but it's pretty neat when you get it working right. If someone gets an Aero Clock and wants tips on getting the balloon to work, I would be happy to write up a building tips list.
The balloon feature can be turned off and I am suspicious the clock will keep more accurate time with the feature turned off or perhaps if I go up to the recommended 4.4 lbs of drive weight I will have enough power in reserve the the balloon will not affect it but when I was running the clock on only 2.7 lb and turned on the balloon feature it slowed the clock by 1.5 seconds per min! That's a lot, but now as I type this I recall I did not have my balloon tuned properly so I will be much lower power consumption now.
I will get a better weight and let the clock run in for a couple weeks then see if I can get the time keeping regulated closely.
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And here is a photo with flash: my house is not well lighted.
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An impressive kit, and a well executed build.
Thanks for sharing your journey with us
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Hi,
The results of your efforts look really good, you must be very pleased. You darkened the hands a bit? As the gear train has steel pivots if you make another clock you might consider fitting brass bushes that are used in clock repairing you could open the holes in the frame and either push fit or glue them in, they will wear better have less friction and oil can be used to lubricate them.
Regarding regulation personally I would not use weight to do it as more weight means more side thrust and wear on the bearings.
I would use the pendulum, as I expect you know or have found out to make the clock go faster unlike a simple pendulum where the weight is raised to achieve this on a compound pendulum the lower weight is dropped or as it has two weights lowering the upper one has the same effect. The frequency of a simple pendulum is governed by the distance from its point of suspension to the centre of its mass which for a one second pendulum is about 1 metre or 39 and a bit inches. In a compound pendulum it is the ratio of difference in weight along with their distance from the bearing that governs the frequency, there is commercially made clock with a compound pendulum that beats seconds yet it is only 100mm (4") long.
The commonest use of a compound pendulum is a metronome which has a short arm with a heavy weight below its bearing point and a light adjustable weight on a long arm above it. The higher the light weight is the slower the pendulum beats.
So if you are still awake; I would use just enough weight so the pallets clear the escape wheel by about 1 mm then add weight to either the top or bottom of the pendulum to make it go faster. When adding weight it is important that the pendulum hangs vertically when stationary to keep it on beat.
Take care Tony. -
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That’s a great project. I’ve built a pump jack from wood trick. The first one is still running after hundreds of hours and everything uses toothpicks for axels. I powered it with a 35 rpm reduction motor for continuous running. I’m building a second one painted and using better build techniques just as you are doing.
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Thanks for the tips on the compound pendulum Tony. My general strategy is to move both weights a similar distance from there respective ends until I am within 1 second per minute accuracy, then just move the top Bob only 1 click at a time for fine adjust....there may be a better method.
I do not intend to use the weight for time keeping adjustments, the main reasons I am playing around with the amount of drive weight is "A" I still need to procure good ballast weight that will not rust or absorb moisture, and "B" I read a kit review where the builder could get no tick at the 4.4 lb weight recommended so he filled the flour sack full....then added a claw hammer hung on the bag extra!
With all this weight he could only manage less than 2 minutes of run time, so he obviously had excessive drag issues. I was pleased my clock would run on less than the 4.4 lb as a measure of the drag my graphite lubed clock has, but feel your suggestion of the pallet clearing the escape wheel by a measured amount is good advice for weight. I want enough power reserve to allow for weather conditions and balloon opperation but not a lot more than needful to prevent unnecessary wear.
Yes, I am pleased with the clock and it was big fun to build. I Really enjoy the challenge and reading the kit reviews to see what others struggle with so I have a bit of a game plan going into the build to see if I can get it to perform better. I really like the reviews where even if the reviewer has not gotten it to work, they at least describe the nature of the problem....other reviewers say things like..."impossible to make tick"....3 stars because fun to assemble and looks good when built" this is entertaining to read but does not help me prepare for every possible issue, for this reason I will likely build the clock again as now I am familiar with it, I know I could build a second clock better. The clock can be disassembled so I can make improvements to this clock as well. An added note: if you assemble these type puzzle kits with the bare wood, the fit of the square pegs can be quite snug to the point that if you need to take apart for repairs, you can easily damage the smaller square peg features especially as the dry wood on wood friction fit kind of grabs or wants to chip out on disassembly. Wax is very beneficial if rubbed on joints that may need to come back apart as it prevents galling. The Kiwi shoe polish wax base that I rubbed on with brush had the effect of pre lube all the square holes so it was a time saver for me....as with most things there is a down side and that is a wax lubed joint can work loose if it is on a part that received intermittent loads, an example of this is the clock hour face and minute face on this clock can be spun in reverse (on a ratchet feature) to set time, it's pretty easy for these joints to open slightly when reset time and the effect is my clock faces are now a loose fit. I can correct this eventually by wicking thin super glue into the problem joint while holding firmly seated. I am very reluctant to lock joints in this way as it is so permanent it would likely damage the clock to separate at a later date, but I will lock some of the joints as the floppy fit is annoying to me. -