During our recent trip to Venice Janet decided to buy a present for me, as my birthday is less than a couple of weeks after our anniversary.
There was a great deal of choice with our endless walks around the shops while in Venice.
I settled on a new wooden 'snap together' kit, the type that comes as various sheets of laser cut plywood which requires no glue.
This one would be a little more challenging than the previous ones.
A fully functioning pendulum clock, all the gears, ratchets, and escapement are made from thin plywood.
The only non-wooden parts are a small elastic band which is used to lock the pawls within the winding rachet mechanism, and the string for the weight which drives the whole thing.
The actual assembly was not difficult and it took just a day to work through it slowly. Some parts were quite fiddly but the instructions were clear enough. Each of the gear sections had to be built separately and everything would be placed in the framework to complete the clock.
The thin, 3mm diameter, spindles for all of the rotating parts had to be inserted with specific lengths on each side of the gears which was awkward. Using the piece of wax candle provided to coat the wood made it slightly easier but I did break one of the little dowels - they must have anticipated this and there were a number of spares in the kit.
The next day it was time to put everything together and then to see if it worked. This was the biggest challenge. Some of the gears were not aligned on the spindles properly which caused them to jam up and stop the machine. I probably spent most of a day adjusting and re-aligning parts to get it to move freely but eventually I could wind it up and let the thing run without the escapement and pendulum in place. Next, it was time to test the pendulum and see if it would run.
With the clock balanced on the edge of the table to allow the pendulum to swing and the weight to hang down, everything seemed to be working - excellent !!
But it only ran for a short time, sometimes just minutes, sometimes for more than an hour, before it seized up and stopped. More adjustments were necessary.
It took a couple of days, working on and off, to get it to run for any significant length of time. Then I accidentally knocked it off the table and broke the pendulum arm 😭
I managed to glue the pieces back together and repair the break. But the alignment had been compromised and it needed another day of fiddling to get it back to a working state.
Now it was time to find some wall space and hang it up.
It took a number of days to get the clock to run consistently but it did manage a few days before another disaster fell on us.
While I was pulling the winding string down the ratchet unit popped out of the hole and let the weight go into a freefall. As the gears ran wildly one of the intermediate pieces broke its spindle - but I hadn't noticed.
I put everything back together and it all seemed to run, in fact, it went on for a few hours at a time but always stopped.
Finally, the broken spindle gave way, and again it went into freefall. This time I could see the gear set that was very much off centre. I had no choice but to take it apart and replace the broken spindle.
The task took a couple of hours but that was the final fault with the mechanism and it has now run consistently for many days, and during that time I have been adjusting the pendulum weight to get the timekeeping accuracy as close as possible to real time.
The only part of the kit that did not, and still does not, work is the little spinning turret on the top of the frame. Every time I put it in place the clock runs for a while and stops.
All things considered, bearing in mind that it is made from fairly soft wood, it is a really good project. It took a lot of adjustment and patience but it is now a fully functioning timepiece.