Welcome to my Wooden Clock Spot

For as long as  I can remember I have been interested in clocks and clock repairing but never got around to actually making one from scratch.

In the last few years I decided to remedy that, but lacking any training or facilities for fine metal engineering I decided to make them out of wood.

Wood is good because it is cheap, very adjustable and fairly rapid to work, so that if it goes wrong it is quick and easy to make a new part. The downside is that parts cannot be made so finely in wood as in metal so the gears tend to be larger than their metal counterparts.

Wooden clocks can be no less accurate than their metal equivalents. (John Harrison of longitude fame is my hero and he had wooden clocks built in the 1700s which are still running today and are very accurate)   I have examples that keep time to better than a minute a month, perhaps only a few seconds but that is actually quite hard to measure. More of that later.

Equipment used is a band saw to cut the outer profiles of wheels and pinions, and a scroll saw for any inner cuts that are needed. A pillar drill, a small table top lathe and a disc sander complete the mechanical machinery. Latterly a cheap Chinese laser cutter and a 3d printer have been added to the armoury.

All the designs are my own, often interpretations of clocks through the centuries and are largely made on the fly with few detailed drawings. Often parts have to be remade several times to function in the way I want them to. 

I started with a fairly simple design but as time has gone on they have become more and more complicated. and over time I will describe their construction here in the hope it may inspire other latent horologists.

Click on the tabs at the top to discover more.