Another quick video.  This is showing the arbor in place on the clock.  This arbor is for the crown wheel.  I am making good progress now and I hope over the Christmas/New Year holiday to get the clock ticking.

Verge and Foliot work

So I am progressing and I need to get better about updating this site.  I have mostly finished the verge and foliot.  I still need to add tabs that will engage the crown wheel and do a bit of shaping for where the weights will hang but it is looking good.

Here is a short video showing it action.  I apologize for the low quality as this is my cell phone camera.

Ack! Haven't posted here in a while but progress to be shown!

Sorry for the one or two of you that might be checking on this blog.  :)  I haven't posted here in a while but I have been working.  I guess because I've built the frame before I was not worried about documenting it too much.  Anyway, the new frame is done and it looks much better.

I will try to better from here on out about posting regular updates.

Things have been happening...

  I had the past week off from work and I managed to do the most significant work I've done on the clock in a long time.  I would have been able to do more but it is still too damn hot in Florida to be able to more than a few hours at a time.  Once I get my notes together, I will post an update.  Things are still moving forward.

Trying to recover information

Due to the previous blog site I used (Xanga) closing down and them not being really good about letting me download a full version, I am going to try over the next few weeks to go back over the old posts and restore images.  I should have most of the original images but I may make a few mix ups.  Hopefully, I will have all of the Xanga links gone in a few weeks.

Finally back to work...

As I get older, I find that doing blacksmithing during the summer months in Florida is just not enjoyable anymore.  Today was an unusual day in that due to some early morning storms, the weather was a bit more bearable so I got back to work on the clock.  As we move into the autumn months, hopefully I will get back to work.

So today I started with working on the finials for the post.  I had actually attempted these a few months ago but I made them a bit too skinny which meant that I did not have enough mass to attach them to the posts of the frame corners.  For today, I remade one of the finials and I had much better luck.

First the finial.  This shows the bottom of the finial in the mold that I made.  The mold supports the shaped of the finial so that I can punch a square hole in the bottom of the finial as is shown in the photo.

And here is the top side of the finial next to the mold to show how the mold matches the finial.

Next I indent the very top of the post .  This gives the finial something to hang on to when it is hammered onto the post.

I put the finial on the post and hammer the sides as well as use a ball pein to shape the bottom some.

Finally, a comparison of the new post to what is currently on my previous clock attempt.  They are a pretty close match.  Once I clean up the new one and finish it, it should look noticeably better

Finial posts cut

A note before I go into the work today.  Currently I am working at a slower pace.  There are several reasons for it.  The primary reason is just that it has been 5 years since I consistently did blacksmithing.  As a result, I am not as in good of shape for it as I need to be.  The primary issue is my hammer arm.  I am still building up the endurance.  However, the moment my arm feels weak at all, I stop.  An arm that is tired can cause a bad hammer blow that can lose hours of work.

Anyway, excuses aside I feel that things will begin to accelerate now.  I am feeling good.  Things are looking good.  I am sure I will have some setbacks but that is part of working on this project.  I hope to get the corners done next weekend.  Once those are done, the rest of the frame is rather easy to put together and things will really start moving then.

So today, I worked on cutting the posts that the corner finials will sit on.  It really was not anything special, it just involved cutting some metal and shaping up the pieces just a bit.  Right now, the lengths are not the same.  That is not an issue because they have not been cut yet.  So nothing terribly exciting but here are the work pictures.

In the top photo are three of the corner pieces.  The top piece is after being cut, the middle is in the process of being cut (using a chisel) while the bottom one is just marked for cutting.