A bit of a helpful video.

  Found this on Youtube.  It is of the Salisbury cathedral clock.  Although it predates the clock I am working on, all the parts are basically the same.  At about the 30 second mark is some good video of the verge and foliot rotating as well as the crown wheel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UKlVaGwJ78

More progress...

  Managed to spend more time on the forge today and made some decent progress.  Mainly I was working on the arbor for crown wheel.  Not really anything special about it.  The process was very similar to working on the arbor for the great wheel.  The arbor is mostly formed.  It just needs a bit of touching up.  I will post some pictures of it later.

Progress...

I am attempting to drive to getting the clock to actually ticking so I continued work on the escapement assembly.  Today I made two simple pieces.  The first was an "L" shape at the bottom of the verge and foliot.  This piece has two purposes.  The first is to hold the verge and foliot in place as it comes in contact with the crown wheel.  It is also a bit of a safety feature.  If the wire holding the verge and foliot breaks, this piece helps to keep it from falling through the clock.  It was a pretty simple piece and these pictures show it being made.





This final picture shows it riveted to the frame.  I have the verge and foliot resting in it.



  The next piece is mildly more complicated.  It is a "U" shaped piece of metal.  It is designed to hold one end of the crown wheel arbor.  Because of the placement of the verge and foliot, the end of the crown wheel arbor cannot hook into the frame.  This piece is designed to wrap around the verge and foliot and provide the arbor with someplace to rest.

  I started by rounding the end of a piece of metal.



The center part is then thinned out.



After some more thinning, a hole is punched and drifted to form the hole where the arbor will connect.



The other end is spread out and I punch two holes for rivets.



I give it the "U" shape.



The piece is riveted to the frame.  I used the old arbor from the great wheel to show how it works.  Notice that the end of the arbor goes into the piece rather than the frame.  This allows the verge and foliot to be in its proper positiong.

Perhaps I need to make a marking tool...

  So far, with all of my blacksmithing, I have yet to make a touchmark.  None of the pieces I've made have an identifying mark.  I just came across this article.  http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/yorknews/display.var.1280776.0.turning_back_time_to_york_1300.php

It's a nice design.  I could see doing something similar but different enough to not be a copy.  Now, if I only knew someone that knows how to make things like this...  :)

 

The best laid plans...

  Well, I had set aside the entire weekend to work on the clock.  Unfortunately I got the flu on Friday.  I probably picked it up on the airplane.  Anyway, the fever did not break until Sunday evening.  Oh well...  Here's hoping for next weekend.  I am really, really anxious to get back to the clock.  If I can get the crown wheel done soon, the clock could be ticking within a few weeks.

No updates for a few days...

  I am on the road on a business trip at the moment...  So no new updates for a few more days.  However, I am trying to keep this weekend clear (including Friday) so I hope to get in a decent amount of work.  I am going to try and finish the verge and foliot.  This includes some hardware on the frame itself.  Then I would like to get a start of the crown wheel assembly.  I think my goal should be to get a "U" shaped assembly done that holds one end of the crown wheel arbor as well as getting the hole punched on the outside of the frame for the other end of the crown wheel arbor.

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.