When You Need a Break from Ships...

[MThomas]

When the shipyard starts to become more of a chore than a welcome pass-time... it's definitely time for a well-deserved, temporary change in scenery. Burn out happens to all of us. So, what can one do, that requires the same tools as model ship building, that is very artistic, rewarding, interesting and also sometimes quite challenging? "Wooden Gear Clocks!" That's what! They are great fun to build and will usually require a bit of 'tinkering with' to make them eventually run smoothly and flawlessly. Humid days will slow them down and dry days will speed them up. They will 'never' be as accurate as our modern time pieces, but that's okay. Just reset the hands to the proper time each day or simply wait until Sunday and reset the hands to the ringing of the local 'Church-Bells', like folks actually did it way back when 'sundials' were the equivalent to our modern-day atomic clocks. Nobody cared about minutes and seconds back then. People went to work sometime around sunup, and quit work sometime around sunset. Clocks were very expensive, and most folks didn't even own one.

I have a few of these wooden geared clocks, different builds, in different rooms of the house and I enjoy all of them. They're really fun to build and tinker with while getting them dialed in... and also rather nice-looking pieces after all is said and done. The link below is a video of my 'favorite' clock to date. It has what is called a 'grasshopper-escapement'. It's very silent. The jumping and 'flicking' of the arms of this escapement are mesmerizing and hard to take your eyes off of. If anyone is interested in building any of these things, you can buy kits from one source that I personally know of and DIY plans from several sources. Just Google "Wooden Gear Clocks" and take your pick.

Here's a video of my favorite clock, so far, the one with the 'grasshopper' escapement. It was 5:25pm (thereabouts) when I took this video... Wooden Gear Clock