I should have more days like this...

  So today I decided to try out brazing to see if it was a viable option for certain parts of the clock.  Before I would try it for any of clock parts, I did a test on two pieces of 1/2" stock just laying against each other.  I polished them up a bit and then wired them together.  These were placed in the fire, some flux was added then I just laid a bit of copper wire along the junction.  The pieces were heated until the wire melted.  I let it cool and then tested it.

  Wow, was I surprised.  Not only were the pieces connected, I could not easily separate them.  I gave them quite a bit of force and the bond held.  I was very surprised.  This is the two pieces I ran the test on.  If you look carefully, you can see the residual copper.



  After that test, I went back to working on the verge (the vertical piece.)  I had done some work yesterday so after rounding it out a bit more,  I put the eye into the top of the verge.  This is used to suspend the verge from the escapement support.  Compared to the size of the face gives you an idea of how small the eye is.



Next, I had to make two small slits that will hold pallets (small tabs) that will engage the crown wheel.  These slits are about half way into the verge.  When I make the pallets, they will be brazed into place.



Next, I go back to the foliot (the horizontal piece.)  After punching and drifting the hole in the foliot, I began to stretch and thin the sides of the foliot. 



A test fitting of the verge and foliot.



The foliot as I begin to stretch it out.  Notice the right side is thinner.



For the foliot, I then put bends in that would be used to hold weights.  These weights are used to adjust the running speed of the clock.  At best the clock is accurate to about 5 to 15 minutes per day.  The weights are used to make adjustments to that accuracy.



Now the other side.



It is now time to join the two pieces together.  To do this, I heated them a bit, applied some flux then wrapped some copper around the joint area.  This shows it in the fire.  As the wire heated, I adjusted it to keep it close to the joint.  Once the heat hit a critical point, the copper melted and flowed into the joint.



After a bit of clean up (brazing produces some scale that makes you think you burned the piece.), this is what it looked like.  Once again, the copper is very visible.  I am once again surprised by it's strength.  I may go back and touch up the brazing some but it appears to be very solid.



Finally, I could not resist putting it on the frame.  Please note that it is not currently passing through the support.  The supports hole needs to be widened a bit.  Also, in the final version, I will be using horse hair instead of twine.  It was very cool to see it actually in the clock moving back and forth.



  So what's next?  I need to put the pallets in the verge.  Also, I need to make the weights but I want to hold off for just a bit on that until the crown wheel is done.  I think the next thing to work on (after finishing the verge and foliot) will be the crown wheel and its arbor.

  After almost a year of slow progress, I feel like things are finally moving again.  I am going to go over my schedule but I think I am going to make a real effort to have the clock telling time by May.  That gives me 3 months which should be enough time if I keep up this pace.  If I can get that done by May, I will begin to work on the bell ringing side of the clock.

Verge and Foliot restart...

  So I got back to the forge for a little bit today before the weather turned sour.  I began to work on thinning out the foliot when I noticed a small problem from yesterday got much worse.  Bad cracks appeared in the wrought iron and showed signs of getting steadily worse.  It appears that the wrought iron I got was not very refined.  A result of that is that it has a lot of fractures, cracks, etc...  that get worse the more it is worked.  So, I have to abandon using this particular wrought iron.  Disappointed, I switched back to mild steel.

  Times like this often give me a chance to rethink my approach and in some ways I'm glad for this minor setback.  As I thought about the verge and foliot a bit it suddenly occurred to me.  I don't need to forge weld the pieces, I can braze them.  This allows me to create the verge and foliot sperate from each other.  Since these are both going to be fairly fine pieces, it should be a workable solution and one that would have been known to a medieval smith.

  As I thought about it a bit more, another realization hit me.  Creating the verge separately is perfect.  It allows me to properly place the two pallets on the verge.  The pallets engage a wheel and give the clock it's tick-tock sound.  It is a little hard to describe right now but going with this approach should make it very easy to make the matching pieces.  Hopefully when I get some pictures of the process, it should be a lot more obvious.  In fact, I consider this so obvious that I am more convinced that this would have been the sequence it would have been done in period.  First the verge is created, then the crown wheel.  Have no idea what a crown wheel is?  Check back here in a few months and hopefully it will be done.

  So I started to work on the new foliot.  I was about a third of the way done before weather drove me indoors.  Oh well...

Verge and Foliot pt 1.

  Well, because of a last minute work schedule change, I was able to get some time in on the forge.  As a reminder I decided that this particular piece I decided that I will make it from a piece of real wrought iron.  I wanted at least one piece of the clock to be close to the real period material.  This piece I am making is the verge and foliot.  The verge and foliot is essentially a "T" shape.  The verge is the vertical piece and the foliot is the horizontal piece.

  So I took my piece of wrought iron and cut a piece off.  The piece I have is from an old prison in Atlanta.  This is what it looked like before I started.  The spots for the bars of the prison cell are quite obvious.

 

  Then using a chisel, I cut a strip from one side.  This was a fair amount of work (and actually represented most of my time on the forge tonight).

 

  This is the piece after being cut out and straightened a bit.  Notice that straightening it out also stretched it a bit.



  This shows the foliot with the start of punching for a verge.  The verge is on the top, the foliot is on the bottom (with the start of a slit).



  I follow that up with drifting it round.

 

  The verge is placed into the foliot and forge welded in place.  Notice the "T" shape.



  Now it is important here to mention that the final length of the foliot will almost double.  It will be thinned and stretched out.  Also, the foliot arms will also be thinned out and some of the excess cut off.  The reason I did not do this before the pieces were welded because they would have been too thin.  During the welding process, it would have been too easy to burn the pieces.  They needed some mass to protect them from the welding process.

  So, a good start for the weekend.  I am hoping by the end of this weekend that the verge and foliot are complete.

  Now for some notes on wrought iron...

  This was my first experience with wrought iron.  It is difficult for me to get it simply because wrought iron was not used heavily in Florida prior to mild steel replacing it in most construction.  As a result, it is very difficult to find it at recyclers.

  The wrought iron was very easy to cut.  Probably at least twice as fast to cut it than it would be to cut mild.  However, I was surprised by how prone it is to splitting.  It could be that the quality I have is a bit low but I think it is probably just the nature of the beast.  Also, scale tends to stick a lot more.

  So in summary, the splitting is a bit worrisome but it is much easier to bend and cut.  I am worried that the splitting may cause me a problem as I thin the piece out.

What's next?

  I've decided that the next logical piece for me to work on is the verge and foliot.  Partly because mechanically it should be next but also, to me, nothing represents a medieval clock more than this particular piece.

  I think that I may try to use some of my wrought iron on this part.  The rest of the clock is mild steel.  I would have loved to have used wrought iron for the entire project but wrought iron is expensive and hard to obtain in Florida.  I do have a little bit though and I thought it might be nice if at least one part of the clock was real wrought iron.

  The particular piece of wrought iron I will use actually came from a jail cell in Atlanta.  I guess the iron will still help with "doing time."  Sorry, I could not resist.  I will take a photo of the wrought iron before I start just to show that you can still how it was used in the prisoner cell.

Escapement support retry...

    I spent most of the day working on the forge.  I had some good progress, some setbacks, but I did manage to get accomplished what I wanted for the day.

  As a recap, I was rebuilding the escapement support that I had made a while back.  The primary reason that I was remaking it was that I wanted to make sure that I had enough clearance for the verge and foliot.  The other reason for remaking it was so that it would more closely resemble a surviving escapement support from the same maker of the clock that originally inspired me.

  So the original that I made looked like this...



  I started yesterday by making the post.  The first step is to mark where the shoulders of the tenon will be.  This is the tenon that goes into the clock frame.  For a sense of scale, that bar is 1" x 1"



I then taper the tenon down.





Next. to put shoulders on the tenon (to make it easier to square up to the frame...), I use a bolster plate.  The metal is heated and hammered into the hole to set the shoulders.  This also upsets the metal a bit to make the flare that will go against the clock frame.





After the tenon is done, I switch to making the piece that goes up.  This is just a post of about 1/2" width.  Just a matter of drawing it out.







Now, I need to do the flare for the base.  I do this by putting the piece in the bolster plate and using a square punch to push some of the metal down and out.



With a bit of metal to working with, some work with a ball pien to help define the base a bit more.  This was picture was taken before additional cleanup.



I now turn to making the top piece.  This is simple techniques of bending, flattening out.  The notches in the top were simply made by using a chisel.



This is attached to a crossbar that is in turn connected to the post I created up above.



A picture on the escapement support on the frame.  There is still a bit of work to do but night time was setting in.  It is very close to being done.



This picture is just to show the size difference with the old one.



It is much higher than the old one.  I still need to clean it up a bit.  It needs a little more hammer work to straighten it up and some file work to clean it up.

Overall, I am happier with this one than the first one.  There are still some minor things I would like to redo.  However, in the interest of making progress, I am going to hold off making another.  When (if) I complete the clock, I can always remake it.  But it should be usable until then.

Not as much progress today as I wanted.

 So today I started to remake the escapement support.  The one that I made a while back looks like this.



Although I could probably make this work just fine, I decided I wanted to make it look more like the original and also take a little more time on it to get it to look a little nicer.  Anyway I started on the post portion that actually connects to the frame.  Unfortunately I made a mistake that cost me about 2 hours.  Oh well...

After the mistake, I restarted.  I should be able to finish it up tomorrow.  When I am done, I will post some pictures I took today as well as a side by side comparison of the old and new piece.

Another work item...

  I've left this weekend open for smithing.  If things go as planned, I should get both Saturday and Sunday to blacksmith.  My goal for the weekend is to rebuild the assembly that from which the verge and foliot hangs.  Also, I want to make the piece the holds to bottom part of the verge and foliot (essentially an "L" piece of metal with a hole.).  This piece keeps the verge and foliot in place.

  I am also going to build a small layout table for working on the gears.  I had made a simple layout guide (thin sheet of metal on a piece of plywood) for the gears but it was too flimsy and it sat on the ground.  I use this to make sure that my gears are true circles.  I think the flimsiness of this led to some of the minor problems I had with first gear.  So the new table will be solid and stand about the same height as the anvil.  That should let me get the gears much closer to what I want.

  This is not an urgent item as I want to complete the verge and foliot assembly first.  I will have to go out and get a sheet of steel for this first.

Plan of attack...

Now that I've managed to make my first gear, I needed to stop and take a look at where I am at with the project to decide how to best proceed.

The problem with building a clock like this is that the parts must interconnect with very little room for error.  In making the main gear like I did, I probably did not leave enough room for the verge, foliot and crown wheel (the medieval version of the pendulum).  I could make adjustments on the current setup but I think in the long run, it will be better to remake the gear.

Not to worry, I think next time around I should be able to make the gear over a few days.  In fact, if I am disciplined about it, about 14 work hours are needed to make the gear.  I am feeling freshly motivated to get going on the project.

So, what am I going to work on next?  I think this will be the new order...  I am mainly putting this here just as a way to force me to think about what I should work on and in what order.

* Remake the hanger for the verge and foliot.  I want to make this look more like the original one of a clock from Dover Castle.  This should take an afternoon.
* Make the bottom holder for the verge and foliot to the center part of the frame..  This is a small piece of metal that keeps the verge and foliot straight as it "ticks".  This should be about 2 hours of work.
* Create the verge and foliot.  This is essentially a "T" shaped piece of metal.  There are some things I need to figure out with it.  I am thinking about 2 sessions at the forge.
* Create the end arbor hole in the center frame.  This is a "U" shaped piece of metal that wraps around a verge and foliot and holds the end of the arbor that holds the crown wheel.  This should be an afternoon worth of work.
* Make the crown wheel.  About 2 sessions at the forge.
* Make the crown wheel arbor including a temporary placeholder for the gear that will contact the main gear.
* Remake the great wheel and arbor.
* Make the winding spindle and clutch for the great wheel arbor. (This makes sure of the spacing on the arbor).
* Make the smaller gear on crown wheel arbor that contacts great wheel.
* Make permanent weights for verge and foliot.  The weights allow for fine tuning the clock if it runs too fast or too slow.  I will use temporary weights until this point.


When all of that is done, the clock should keep time.  I know this seems like a lot.  However, after finishing this test gear over the weekend, I have renewed confidence and energy.  The only thing that will slow me down is that I can only work on weekends with the days being so short right now.
 

Looks like a gear

Today was a good day...  I worked on the forge for about 4 hours today and managed to get all of the waste material popped out.  After a few tests, I was able to work on three teeth per heat.  I would heat the piece and chisel three of the teeth from one side, reheat and then chisel from the other side to finish getting rid of the material.

This is at about 1/3 of the way done.



Chisel from one side.

(Notice the can hanging from the anvil.  Makes for quick cooling of the chisel between teeth.)




If you look carefully, you can see that after using the chisel on one side, the material has been forced out some.


Chiseling from the other side and the tooth easily pops out.



And then finally, I could not resist putting it in the frame to see how it would look.





  And once I got into the rythm of cutting the teeth, it was a very easy operation.  Most of the time spent today was just waiting for the piece to heat up.  I cannot say for sure that this is the way they did it in the middle ages but I have yet to see a faster or easier way to do it.

All cut...

Well, all the gear teeth have been cut...



Tomorrow I am going to try and start popping the teeth waste out.  I think that will go faster and be easier on my arm than the sawing.  I am really looking forward to this step.

Things to note about this gear.

* I've mentioned before that the gear may not work because it has a few slight problems.  If that is the case, I'm not too worried.  I had always expected that the first gear would be a throw away.  It does not mean that I am not going to try and make it work just that I am prepared for it to not work.

* I need to get better about having a nice smooth, finished surface before I start trying to mark out and cut the gears.  My biggest problem with cutting was that the lines marking the cut points were not nice and clear.

* A divider (compass) works perfectly for laying out the teeth.  An article a few years back in the Antiquarian Horological Society had suggested some alternate techniques.  Quite honestly, the techniques are overly complicated when the divider method works just fine.  I have to disagree with the author on some of his suggestions.

* Overall, it takes about 15 minutes to cut 4-5 teeth.  This means that if I was a full time smith and my arm was able to take the sawing, the largest gear could have been cut in about 5 hours.  I am sure if I was practiced and once again in the proper shape, that time may be cut down to about 3 hours.  I think that this technique was probably the most likely technique used.

* I went through about 3 saw blades to cut this one gear.  However I think the steel may have been partially hardened in a few spots.  If I was using period materials, the saws would not be as high of quality but the gear would be wrought iron which is very soft.  I have some wrought iron and I may do some testing to do a comparison.

* In the future, from my new experience, I would expect to be able to produce the gears much faster.

Finally a real update...

   After taking care of a bunch of stuff around the house and at work, I finally got some time in on the clock.  On the main wheel, I am almost complete with cutting the sides of the teeth.  I've got about 75 of the 100 teeth cut.  I am going to try to finish them tonight.

  To give an idea of how much cutting is involved, I am cutting 100 teeth to a depth of about 1/2" in about 3/8" to 1/2" thick stock.  So taking 100 times 1/2" times 2(two cuts for each tooth) is about 100 inches of cutting so hand cutting over 8 feet through about 1/2" stock.  It would not be so bad if it was one long cut but I have to carefully start and angle each cut.

  So far I am fairly happy with the gear.  Once I start actually punching the teeth out (I hope tomorrow if the wind dies down) it should go much faster and I should feel better about it.  At that point I will have crossed (in my mind) the finally threshold in getting the clock done.  Even if this gear does not turn out well enough to actually use, I know have the skill to do everything I need to do on the clock.  It is only a matter of time.

  Pictures will follow in the next few days...