Photo Essay: Making a Clock!

So our deadlines are looming along with the end of the degree and, to go with it, the first ever BA (Hons) Horology graduate show. (shameless plug: June 15-18; see you there)

Our major project in third year is to make our own clocks to the designs we create in second year. This is without a doubt the biggest part of the course, and as well as carrying a very large percentage of the final marks, acts in a way as a very physical representation of our skills. Because of this it's not something to be taken lightly!

My own clock is nearly complete, and I have been going through pictures of the build in order to write the supporting text for the hand-in. I thought I'd share the images with you, explaining what's going on.

If you are interested, I made a post discussing the design process last May, which can be seen HERE. 

The first thing I chose to do was create my pillars, and my clock has a lot. Due to the triple-plate design, there are five internal pillars, three of which have hollow sleeves to allow each pillar to hold the three plates at the correct distance. The clock also features a bridge for the intermediate wheel (two more pillars) and a dial which is held down by four more. That means 14 components already!

All the pillars are held by screws at each end to make polishing easier. That means I had to tap threads into each and every one of them!

 Next job: screws. I've made plenty of screws in my time on the course, and didn't fancy making the 80+ screws in my design. I bought some engineering screws, but machined the heads to be more horologically appropriate (Ie; square). So even this shortcut took some work!

I also got my plates graveographed, so I knew where to put all the necessary holes. It's CNC, which means everything is exactly where it needs to be!

 The first 'interesting thing I did was my barrel arbor. As you can see, it's a little more complex than what you might normally expect!

For the hooking I chose to weld a piece of bar on.

I also made a key to fit the winding square, by adjusting a bought one. It was a perfect fit! I would take the key section and solder it to a custom made body at a later date.

Next job: Cutting wheels! First you turn blanks to the correct diameter.

Here you can see me getting the correct depth of cut.

With the wheels done it was time to turn the pinion down to the right shape. At this point the arbors are still much longer than they need to be.

 And polish them

To ensure the accuracy required for my meticulously designed clock, I used a pantograph to cut the skeletonised parts in the front plate, and the crossings on my wheels. Not only does this mean I get the exact shapes I designed, but also saves a considerably amount of of the time I'd take to get the accuracy I want!

Again, even the shortcuts require a lot of work. The crossings all take a lot of cleaning up.

Could it be... A CLOCK?!

I used the pantograph for the wheels too, but found very quickly I needed a reliable way to centre the wheels to the template. For that job I made these two mushroom shaped pointers.

 Looking good! By this stage I had also put collets on the arbors in the appropriate places. I chose to have my wheels held on by screws rather than being riveted, so I could remove them for polishing. It also looks nicer, and is much more complicated to do!

More modifying screws to be horologically appropriate.

Three wheels more or less done!

 Another thing I chose to do to make my life more difficult was use ball-races for bearings. The first job this required was making 'seatings' in the plate for each bearing to sit in...

 ...and then a recessed cap, complete with three countersunk screws to hold each bearing down.

 This took a lot of time.

 But looks really cool, in my opinion! And again, it was what I see as a show of skill.

 With the bearing ready for the arbors, I started turning the pivots. These are much bigger than a traditional pivot, but must be made with the same accuracy and finish. I made a tool to hold the arbor steady, and prevent bending while cutting the pivots. I'm really glad I took the time to do this as colleagues have had a few accidents at this stage...

I started with the centre wheel; and it worked pretty well! I was pretty happy at this point but...

 ...this isn't right. Annoyingly, I found that I had cut my wheels to the wrong size. There's a formula for working out the size of the wheel blank, and I remembered it wrong, leading to this massive error in depthing. Of course, because I had (wrongly, obviously) trusted my design, I hadn't manually depthed the wheels. If I had I would definitely have found this mistake earlier. Unfortunately the error was so bad I would have to make a new front plate.

[pause for royal visit]

To take my mind of the rather stupid mistake, I decided to work on something different for a few days: the motionwork. I had opted for a single stage reduction, which results in a massive hour wheel.

 Here you can see them in place on the new front plate, to give an idea of scale. As they aren't subject to much driving force, they're more finely crossed out so you can see the rest of the mechanism behind them.

 I also took this time to make some progress on what will be the dial.

finally, everything is in the right place! You can see in this image I've still yet to refine the front plate on the pantograph.

 More work on the dial.

 The motionwork ready to go, with the friction drive

 everything in place:

 At this point the majority of the train was in and ready to go, so I decided to add my platform and see if it would actually go. The make or break moment!

And it did! A joyous occasion for all involved. Pause for a well deserved pint.

The next job was making a bridge to hold the motionwork in place. At this point I also polished all the plates, so it would look nice for a while.

 With the clock more or less complete, I turned my attention to the superfluous complications, such as the power reserve indicator. Here's a 'wig-wag' arm.

 I had to buy an internal gear for the power reserve, and while shopping found worm gears. I thought it'd be fun to use it for my winding mechanism.

Added a ratchet wheel, and an arbor with a square.

Then some supports to hold everything in place

And a click & spring

With everything for winding in place it was time for the last major necessary component, the barrel! It proved to be more of a challence than I had expected, with three ruined at various stages. some damaged because they came out the late, one melted. All annoying! Got there in the end though.

The most recent thing I did was drop the tourbillon into the dial. This makes it a little more subtle, and has the added benefit of making room for hands! An important part of a clock, I'm told.

 And here it is as it currently stands! Still a fair bit of work to do, but it's really getting close.