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7 Free Wooden Gear Clock Plans for You Eccentric, Masochist Woodworkers. Ever since I had the pleasure of seeing Keith Chamber’s wooden gear clocks in person, I’ve been on the look out for more all wood clocks.

7 Free Wooden Gear Clock Plans for You Eccentric, Masochist Woodworkers

See Wooden Gear Clocks by Keith Chambers >> I think wooden clocks are one of those dividing lines in woodworking… To have the aspiration to make a clock, entirely from wood, puts you in your own unique category. One well-known seller of wooden clock plans, Clayton Boyer, pitches his most-difficult plans like this: “Selling plans for the clocks on this page goes against my basic philosophy of trying to spread joy in the world through creative woodworking. However, I have come to the conclusion that I should not stand in the way of a woodworker’s desire for additional frustration in his/her life when they obviously want it so badly.”

He won’t sell plans from his “Masochist’s Corner” unless you’ve built one of his simpler clocks first… and sent him photographic PROOF that you completed it. I love it. Here’s his Simplicity, his, er, simplest offering: Clock and Watch Escapement Mechanics. A clock is usually taken to the shop for repair because the clock fails to keep running.

Clock and Watch Escapement Mechanics

It runs for a while and stops because not enough power reaches the pendulum to keep it running. One way to get it running is to double the weight, but this causes enormous wear and consequent damage in the long run. The other way is to overhaul the clock. The job of the repairman is to do whatever is necessary to minimize the power losses between the weight and the pendulum. The clock is cleaned. There are two kinds of power losses in a clock: frictional losses and losses caused by the action of the escapement (which result in additional frictional losses). Power losses caused by the action of the escapement are less obvious. As the escape tooth pushes on the pallet, the tooth exerts a force in the same direction as its direction of travel at that point. Design. Design can have many beginnings. Sometimes, as was the case with my Andrea electric desktop clock, the basic design comes from a picture seen on the web—in that case, one of John Pickron's clocks. ( ) From the picture, the general shape and size of the clock were guestimated, alterations identified, a motive force selected—in this case a 1 rpm motor, after which the gear train was designed to fit.

Where you start will depend on imagination and knowledge of clocks and what is possible—or seemingly impossible — but which you want to prove otherwise. If you are talented in the design department, the process may start with drawing a rough diagram of what the finished clock is to look like. If you are like me and lack the high end design juices, you might choose to purchase the plans from one of several suppliers on the web. Once you have a bit of experience you can take satisfaction in changing the plan provided by a third party and adding your own ideas to it. Parts Of A Clock Press. Diam. Sockets, Cords, Switches, Plugs. How does a perpetual calendar work? Gear template generator. This free online gear template generator is designed for making scale accurate paper gear templates which you can glue onto wood and then cut out with a bandsaw.

Gear template generator

I recommend printing the gears with an ink jet printer. Even cheap ink jet printers print very scale accurate but Not all laser printers are accurate. You can still access the old (pre 2015) Flash based gear geberator Getting the printout to scale correctly, avoiding cropping Different browsers print at different scales depending on browser type and printer configuration.

Use an ink jet printer I recommend using an ink jet printer. Printing the gear templates To print the gear template, use the 'Print' button, instead of printing the web page from the browser. The gear generator program that I created and sell doesn't need the scale calibration, and can paginate across many pages for larger gears. Some notes about gear design and this gear template generator This gear template generator generates shapes for involute spur gears.