Homemade Wood Clock Test Run

This is going to be a short post... well maybe not. As I start to write this it's Sunday, it's late and I am tired! What I wanted to put up was the test video of the clock running. Anyone following my blog knows about the wood clock that I am making and if not you can check out the earlier posts in the Woodworking Label.  Without further adieu here it is - enjoy!

     

     

There are a couple of things that I would like to point out about what is going on in the video. The first thing is again this is a test. The clock motor is running a lot faster than it normally does to keep time. The second thing that I think I should point out it the hour hand. If you look really closely at it you might notice that it is a wood "q-tip" with a pointed cotton end! That is because I didn't have time today to make a hour hand so I stuck that on there in it's place. The more I look at it the more I think I will keep it actually.

If you look at the video you will see a C-Clamp that is in the back of the clock. That is there to hold the tube that had the hour hand in it. As I mentioned I didn't have time to make the hour hand and I also didn't have time to make something to keep the hour hand spinning... The C-Clamp does that for now.

   

As mentioned in another post HERE I'm using a motor and gearbox from Tamiya to reduce the speed of the motor and further reduce it with a couple of gears that I got out of an old copier that I took apart HERE. I attached one of the gears to the motor by drilling a hole though the gear hum and put a pin through the gear and through a hole in the gearbox output shaft. Pretty simple...

   

The gear that mates with the gear that I just mentioned is a little more complicated because it's mounted to a hollow shaft (or tube) that the minute hand is attached to. It's hollow so the hour hand can be connected to another shaft going through the center. Have a look at the above picture and you can see the shaft, the gear and a little tongue sticking up on the end of the hollow shaft. I was worried about the gear slipping on the outside of the shaft so I cut that little tongue and bent it up. You can see some slots on the hub of the gear that the tongue fit's into when I slide the gear right up to the end. With a little bit of glue it worked out really well. The gear doesn't slip and the clock runs nice!

One quick mention to the Woodgears site that I have in my "Sites I Like" in the sidebar. Check out that site for really cool woodworking projects and the gear template generator that I used for the gears in my clock. If you have not already checked it out please do.