A Brass Alarm Clock.

Hi Brian,
Nice to see the progress also the photos are great.
All the Best. Ian
 
So to continue altho i stoped posting for a while Work has sill been progressing.
The next thing to make was the gears, so the blanks had to be cut to size and the new cutter mounted on its mandrel.

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Then the gears were cut on the mill.

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After cutting the teeth the gears have to be marked out for crossing. For this job I have made a jig .

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The gear is then put on the mill for crossing. This job is normaly done by hand but I just love my mill.

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The next part was the escapement . this has 2 wheels quite unlike a pendulam clock.
First the blank is cut with 15 radial slots.

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And then the backs of the teeth are cut to give clearance

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Andrea is getting quite a pile of parts, good progress for a lad who had never been in a workshop before,

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Thats it for now more to come soon.

Brian.

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Welcome back Brian. It's nice to see the progress on the alarm clock. Is your helper staying interested as the project progresses?

What tooth form did you use for the gears and did you purchase a cutter for it or make one yourself? I finally got a copy of Wilding's English Regulator book and hope to start it soon. He calls out a module .6 cutter to make all of the wheels but I thought I would try making a simplified hob to cut them.

Tom
 
Hi tom
If you look at Model engineers utilitys. it has a good section on making clock gear cutters
I have made one from this download and it worked well.
For this clock i purchaced a cutter from Timekeepers workshop. Have a look, the prices are wey below other outlets. You will have to deside on the depth of tooth taditional clocks have long teath modern short , maybe the book will say.
The expence comes in the pinion cutters you need one for every diferent number of leaves. and you cannot get away with cheap cutters.

The lad is OK he wanders a bit when doing hand work, he thinks the harder you push the quicker it will get done. but he enjoys the machines and is good with the micrometer. He is just not used to getting his hands dirty.

Best regards Brian.
 
Brian,

The project you have set for yourself & Andrea is superb, I would say the youngster has a gift, And his work looks superb It is really good to hear of you helping him , Everyone needs someone, as they start out on lifes path, to show them how to make things, Who knows, Many years from now, he will think on the time you spent teaching him, Maybe it will lead to a career for the kid?
 
The lantern pinions where turned in the lathe

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the holes drilled and the pins fitted (unfortunately I have lost the photos of the drilling and pin fitting but I have one of the finished pinion ready to be parted off )

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The gear and its mating pinion on the depthing tool.

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During this time I had also made quite a pile of parts in my box. keeping ahead and sorting the problems.

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The time had come to get the movement working in its basic form.

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having got the movement working Attention was centered on the motion work.
First centre the cutter.

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Set the dividing head to give the tooth spacing.

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Then cut two ajacent teeth until the depth is correct.

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Then you can cut the rest at the same setting.

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until you have a gear.

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Things are now close to having a clock that tells the time!!!!

More later Brian

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So now we have all the parts to make the hands turn. First thing to do is to set the gears to run together. this often takes a bit of give and take because we have 2 sets of gears with common centres.

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Having established the distance weuse the points on the tool to mark the point for the plate .

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The shaft has to be reduced in diameter to give clearance under the small 4 tooth pinion and threaded 10 BA.

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After making a pair of hands the whole movement was assembled and placed on the test stand.

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This is the position as of now, the clock has run for 18 hrs and lost 35 mins without even trying to regulate it,this is good, as it easy to make it go quicker, but often hard to slow a new clock without it stopping.
Now I have the drive weights--dial-- alarm work-- and perhaps a chime on the hour ( single strike ) Enough to keep the 2 of us working for a while yet.

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Brian it is great to see that you are taking the time to teach the young man something that most kids will never see,
and more great is seeing a young man wanting to learn something most young men will never learn it today world.
 
Andrea has been preocupied with school and church matters for the last 2 weeks , so I have pushed on to smooth out the way for his return.

The alarm on this clock is driven by a similar escapement to the main one. but i thought this one we could make simpler .
So I cut the teeth with a slitting saw .

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And then removed the waste with the hand saw.

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This proved to be a lot quicker.

next job was to mill the ratchet teeth in the side of the scape
so the mill was set up to the recomended angle.

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and the teeth cut.

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I was very happy with the result.

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Scape now finished ready to put on the clock.

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Next will be the dial.

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The brass plate for the dial was attached to a wooden face plate by a centre draw bar and double sided tape then cut out. silvered,

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and numbers fixed .

Then a trial line up on the movement.

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At last its starting to look like a clock.

Brian

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