Craynerd builds Wilding's - Woodward's Gearless Clock

[raynerd]

Hi John
Yes, I`ve just taken a look on ebay and there are quite a selection for sale, including some auctions for a lot of say 3 or 4 different size clamps. I do have a couple, a very small one and then some really big ones, nothing inbetween.

Chris

[raynerd]

I was reading about cutting the spring steel this morning and apparently you punch it out. So as soon as I got home this eveing I had a go. As per Wildings instructions, I folded over a strip of brass, marked out on both the template and the spring steel:





I made this punch but stupidly have rounded the edges so I`ve not ended up with a good clean cut. It worked really well and I did get a disk, but it has pressed the edge a little.





I then went on to make the top clamping bracket:

The whole lot suspends from the bracket I made in my last post. The plans call for 2BA studing but I just cut down a long bolt, turned down the ends and rounded them:


Cutting off two 7/8" brass disks 1/16" in thickness. I then went on to mill a flat on the top and tap one 10BA and the other drilled clearence




Both John Wilding and GadgetBuilder stress the importance of the spring steel being square to the brackets. Wilding suggests this method to lock it all down square:



And the final setup:


and now fitted with the invar pendulum rod.


Pendulum next....

[sbwhart]

Good progress Chris keep the posts comming watching with interest.

Stew

[raynerd]

Cheers Stew, the spring steel was tricky to work with and I`m not totally happy but to be honest, I pretty sure it is just asthetics as the bits that are a bit "iffy" in terms of the holes where the screws go through, are clamped. I might try and make another but it looks like it`ll do the job. It acts as a nice pendulum with just the rod attached so when I get the 4" x 2" steel bar on it, it should be good.

Thanks for watching and posting.  I`m currently multitasking and have "the other Colin Thorne project undergo as well!!" 

Chris

[raynerd]

Didn`t do any last night,... I bloody fell asleep.....fancy that!!! Grrrr

Got the pendulum up and, well, swinging tonight!

Hacked off a 4" (just over) length of 2" dia silver steel:



Drilled it through 6.5 mm to make an oversize hole for the pendulum rod


I re-drilled the top 8mm to a depth of 10mm and then I turned up some bushes out of brass for the ends with a 6mm bore to accept the pendulum rod






The hole pendulum unit was assembled:


And then a picture for those of you that don`t know what a pendulum swinging looks like    Hey, I had to include it!! Photo is rubish but here you go.. in action:







I`m going to need a quick stand so I can easily remove the brass back plate from the wall and then place it back on to test. I don`t know if there is any way of doing this without the faff of unscrewing it each time.

So a bit of time tidying out my workshop tomorrow and then I`ll make a start on the count wheel. Then I`ll move back to the pendulum pawl brackets and then hopefully I should be able to get a minute timed out by the pendulum dragging the count wheel forward....obviously at that stage the clock will stop after a few mins because it`ll get no impulse but I`ll be able to check the general mechanism is working!

Chris

[doubleboost]

2 Inch silver steel 
You dont hack silver steel it is lovingly sliced 
Mind it is looking great 
John

[raynerd]

haha    ... sorry, hack was the wrong word 

[75Plus]

I KNEW that asymmetrical pendulum reminded me of something. Finally remembered the name and here it is.





Joe

Here is a suggestion to make it easier to switch back and forth between test stand an wall mounts. Make 2, mount one on the wall and the other on your test stand. You may need to make mounting studs for the clock back plate. This basic mounting idea can be found in many of the old clocks.

[raynerd]

In what way do you mean my pendulum is asymmetrical?  

EDIT:  Ohh yea, you mean the pendulum is not symetrical in terms of being in the centre of the clock?

[raynerd]

Failed miserably cutting the count wheel tonight   :-(

[doubleboost]

If it was easy everyone would be doing it 

[spuddevans]

Sorry to hear that Chris

Failed miserably .......

Surely the only way to fail and learn, if every time we failed we were happy then we would have little incentive to improve.

Keep at it, you'll get there in the end

Tim

[raynerd]

Very true both of you!

I will have to start again tomorrow. Sadly it was about 2-3 hours of work down the drain, mind you that was going at my snail pace!



 

[Rob.Wilson]

Only two hours work Chris ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, i have screwed up parts that had two days work in them   

Anyway whats a count wheel ?

Rob

Tomorrows another day 

[Stilldrillin]

Very true both of you!

I will have to start again tomorrow. Sadly it was about 2-3 hours of work down the drain, mind you that was going at my snail pace! 

It's tomorrow now Chris!   

You've had some practice....... Work a little faster today....... Then you'll not have wasted so much, if you have the same result! 

Good luck! 

David D

[raynerd]

Yep, I`ll have another go this evening after work. I know the reasonS why I went wrong so I`ll give it another bash. It was my stupidity. I spent most of the time setting up the cutter height which has been the issue in past wheel cutting attempts, that was good this time so I am learning.


Rob - in simple terms, the count wheel uses the swings of the pendulum to "count" the divisions of one complete 360 rotation in one minute. It is basically a ratchet wheel with 48 teeth. The pendulum does exactly 48 complete swings in one minute. The pendulum has a metal wire (pawl) attached to it and as the pendulum swings it gathers a new tooth each count. If you attached a "hand" to the count wheel, it would actually be a seconds hand rotating once in 60 seconds. However, it would look very odd on this clock, it would rotate 360 deg ever minute but would actually do 48 jumps/divisions rather than 60 jumps/divisions, i.e 60 seconds!!  On this clock the seconds hand would actually go backwards as well as the pendulum count pawl pulls the seconds hand anticlockwise!

The nice thing about this clock is that I should be able to keep testing it at each stage. Once the count wheel and arbor is done, I can then test that it is "counting" the seconds...although it`ll soon run out of juice as the pendulum will be getting an inpulse. That being said, it should accurately time 1 minute, ideally a bit longer since the design of this clock only gives the pendulum an inpulse each minute.

Chris 

[raynerd]

I`ve spent a little while finishing this count wheel but managed it last night! The count wheel has these ratchet like teeth so that as the pendulum swings, the gathering pawl/wire slides up one of the slopes and drops behind a notch pulling the count wheel around one place.


I started with two rough cut pieces of 18g CZ120:


Made an arbor and chucked them both up:


Turned them down to 1.5" diameter:


I then made my profiling tool to cut the teeth, a 60 deg cutting tool but I needed a flat parallel to the mill bed when mounted:






I then unscrewed the chuck and mounted it on my rotary table on the mill. It managed to get out of true when I did this in my previous efforts so I set up a DTI just to check it was running OK - which it was this time! I must have knocked it last time, but my arbor was also longer in my other efforts which may not have held as well. Also, it sounds stupid, but I think there was some vibration last time and the chuck wasn`t tight on the rotary table that is why it didn`t cut properly.


I then centred the wheel - made sure by making a whitness mark, moving to the other side and checking it was at the same height - you can just make this out on the photo


I started cutting the teeth!!


Wheel teeth cutting complete and worked just fine!!  


I was then in two minds - remember I cut two teeth at once since it is 18g brass, the two together provided support for one another. I didn`t want to cross them out together as I risked spoiling them both if I failed. So I opted to remove one (as shown above) and remount the other on the chuck arbor and mount it under the rotary table. My dad then helped me with some nice maths so I could calculate how many degrees I needed to rotate the rotab and then lift the cutter for so many degrees and then back down etc to cross the wheel out








Then it was time to file it all square. I appreciate I could have got much more accuracy using the rotary table for all the crossing out but I decided to saw the little pieces out and file to size as described in the plans. This is the setup I`ve seen people use -  a long wooden board, a groove cut and you sit on the board with the work nicely on platform infront of you ...worked very well



And after 20 minutes of rough filing I`ve got it coming to shape.



OK OK - it needs a lot more filing to make it look neat and quite a bit more work on burnishing the teeth but I`m nearly there....

[Stilldrillin]

That looks great Chris! 

Blummin well done! 

David D

[saw]

Good work 

[NickG]

Well done, looks great 

[DaveH]

Chris,

Looks great, the way to go.

Well done

 
DaveH

[modeldozer]

Chirs,

Well done 

Cheers 

Abraham

[spuddevans]

Making good progress there Chris Keep up the good work.


Tim

[doubleboost]

Very nice 
John

[kvom]

WRT to punching spring steel: for my locomotive spring leafs I used a carbide endmill to make nice, clean, round holes in blue spring steel.  Much easier than punching.

I'm following this project with great interest.