doncraig wrote:Very well done Eric. That looks a great clock does it keep reasonable time ? I have built a clock by Brian Law and it hasn't ran for more than 5 seconds, it keeps stopping. I will need to figure out what's wrong
take care
Don W
Thanks Don, I looked at some of Brian Law's plans, and some of Clayton Boyer's, but settled on D Huggers based on the overall design and quality of the plans, and the hardware was all laid out to be ordered from McMasterCarr really easily. MY goal is someday do my own clock design, but this was fun to get a sense for the design and build process with something I knew would work.
My clock is currently in the living room, it keeps time within 2 minutes over 24 hrs currently. It requires winding every 24 hrs, but that's OK, I walk by it every day. I still have not 'finished' it with stains, etc, because I'm afraid I'll throw it all off...
Some hints for you, I also had issues with intermittent stoppages after first built. The closer you get the the escapement end of the gear train, the less 'torque' is there from the weight. I had to do some very careful watching and marking the escape wheel with pencil to determine what teeth it would occasionally hang on, then do some light sanding as required to make it happy. I think in the end I had a tiny bit of runout from the center of rotation of the escapement wheel, to the tooth tips, so I had to 'shorten' some of the teeth a hair (like .010" sort of numbers)
Another thing I did was build it all up without the escapement, and then run the mechanism by spinning it multiple time by letting the weight free fall (not totally free, I mean I caught it ). I think exercising all the gears/joints, watching for any hints of binding, and watching the escapement close are what got mine going reliably. It is really sensitive to binding if you don't have excessive weight to drive it.
Hope that helps! Feel free to ask anything else. I've only built one clock, so not sure I have much else to offer other than what I shared above. I really enjoyed the clock build, just wish I had more time to play with doing another of my own.
regards
Eric