http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

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Wooden Gear Clockby marvay on December 31, 2007

Table of Contents

Wooden Gear Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Intro:   Wooden Gear Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 1:   What You Will Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Step 2:   How Does It Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 3:   The Pendulum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Step 4:   The Gear Train . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

File Downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Step 5:   Designing The Gears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

File Downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Step 6:   Cutting The Gears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Step 7:   Gear Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

File Downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 8:   Assembling And Finishing The Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Step 9:   Final Thoughts And References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Author:marvayFavorite Show: How It's Made

Intro:  Wooden Gear ClockI've added video of the clock. I will be working on carving out windows in the face of the clock. I will upload pictures and/or a video of that when I am done.

I've been into woodworking for a few years now. I love the idea of being able to make things that I can use. A few years ago I came across a clock that was made out ofwood. The face, arms, frame, and gears were all wood. It really impressed me, and I kept it in mind for a future project.

I've decided to take on the wooden clock in this Instructable, and hopefully share what I have learned to help others with similar interests.

One of my goals with this was to use common tools that are more widely available to most people. I didn't use any expensive hard to find wood working machines, orcostly software packages when designing this. The software used is either open source, or free, and the machines used are some of the common ones that mostwoodworkers would have.

Step 1: What You Will NeedHere is a list of things you will need

For Designing:OpenOffice Calc - For calculating the Gear ratiosfree2Design - For designing the gearsGimp - Modifying and editing imagesBlender - For rough modeling gears to make sure there aren't any interferences between gears and axles.

*note - You probably can use Blender to do all the designing, but my Blender skills aren't up to speed. It was easier to draw them dimensionally accurate in a 2D packageand import that into blender.

For Woodworking:Scroll SawDrill PressMiter Saw (Table or Band saw will also work)Hand SawClampsSpray Adhesive (3M Super77)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Step 2: How Does It Work?The clock I have designed is a basic pendulum clock. These have been in existance since the mid 1600's. It uses a weight as the energy source, and a pendulum toregulate how fast this energy escapes.

The weight is wound around one of the axles. As it pulls down, it rotates the gears causing the minute and hour hands to rotate. If this was just the weight and gears,when the weight was released, the gears would spin for a few seconds and the weight would hit the floor. This isn't very practical unless you want to pretend you are in atime machine. Placement of the weight and cord is a little critical. You want it farther down the gear train so you aren't winding the clock every 4 hours. Once or twice aday isn't bad. The farther down on the gear train, the slower it will unwind. If it is placed on the hour hand, you can easily get by with winding once a day.

We need some way to allow this energy to escape slowly. This is where the "Escapment " comes in. From the word escape, it allows the energy of the weight to escapein a slow manner, as to not use up the energy at once. This escape mechanism also creates the "Tick Tock" that you hear from clocks. The escapement is built out of theescape gear, escape lever, and the pendulum. The pendulum swings back and forth moving the escapement lever in and out of the escape gear, causing the gear to stopspinning. This allows the energy of the weight to be spread over a period of time so you are not winding the clock every 2 minutes.

Step 3: The PendulumPendulums are an interesting mechanism. They are a weight at the end of a string or pole, with a pivot at the opposite end of the weight. The period of a pendulum is thetime it takes to go from one side to the other and back again. The neat thing about pendulums is that this time, or period, is not dependent on the amount of weight orlength of arc, it's dependent on the length of the pendulum. So, if you had a 2 foot long pendulum with a 5 pound weight, pulled to the right at 90 degrees, it would takethe same amount of time to swing across and back as a 2 foot long pendulum with 2 pounds of weight pulled to the right at 30 degrees. The weight at the end of thependulum does affect how many times the pendulum will swing. So the pendulum with the 5 pound weight will swing for a longer amount of time, than the 2 pound weight.This is helpful because we want to keep the pendulum swinging. You can, however, have too much weight. As we will see next, the escapement helps give the penduluma push. If you have too heavy of a weight, you will not have enough energy to keep it swinging.

For our clock, we want to have a period of 2 seconds. That way, it will take the pendulum 1 second to swing to one side. With each swing the escapement will allow theescape gear to turn one tooth at a time. If the period is 2 seconds, this will basically make the escape gear our second hand since it is rotating one tooth every second.For a period of 2 seconds we need it to have a length of 1 meter. Since our escape lever will have 2 teeth, one to stop the escape gear at each end of the pendulumswing, our pendulum will need to have 30 teeth. It will make one rotation every 60 seconds. Many pendulum clocks have the escape gear on the second hand axle. Thatis what we are going to do.

As the pendulum swings back and forth, it rotates the escape lever in and out of the escape gear. This causes the clock gears to stop and start rotating every second.The lever is designed so that as it is moving out of the escape gear, the gear gives it a little push. This push is enough to keep the pendulum swinging.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Step 4: The Gear TrainSince the escapement gear rotates once every 60 seconds, we can make another axle rotate once every 3,600 seconds. This will be our minute hand. Then we canmake another axle rotate once every 43,200 seconds (12 hours). This will be our hour hand. When we calculate this we will have a functioning clock on paper.

The spreadsheet shows the calculations of the gear ratios needed. I started with a 3 axle minute hand, but moved to a 4 axle to keep the size of the gears down.

To make a minute hand, you need a gear ratio of 60 between the Escapement axle and the Minute Hand axle. For an hour hand, you will need a gear ratio of 12 from theMinute hand to the hour hand.

The spreadsheet shows the formula and the calculations to get the number of teeth for each gear. By using the spreadsheet I was able to plug in different number of teethfor each gear and pinion to try to get the Gear Ratio needed.

File Downloads

Gear_ratios.ods (11 KB)[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to 'Gear_ratios.ods']

Step 5: Designing The GearsWhen designing gears, there are many parameters that can affect the size. I took some of the standard values for the variables when making the calculations. I used apressure angle of 20 degrees, and a Diametral Pitch of 8. These combined with the number of teeth of each gear, I was able to calculate the Pitch Diameter, RootDiameter, Outside Diameter, and Base Circle Diameter.

Now that I have the Diameters of the gears, I can start drawing them. I found instructions on drawing gears with CAD and followed them to draw these gears. It waswritten by Nick Carter. A link to his page is in the last step in the References Section.

The free2Design file has the Gears and Pinions with a layer that shows the lines drawn to create the teeth. While researching clocks, I came across Gary's Clocks. Hementioned that there is a big difference in what you can draw with CAD and what you can actually cut using a scroll saw. I learned this the hard way. Cutting the gulletbetween the teeth is a bit tedious. To try to speed things up I decided to add circles between each teeth to be drilled out with the drill press. That saved time trying toround out the valley between the teeth, but I think it caused some problems with the teeth meshing with each other.

Along with the gears are the Escapement and the Ratchet Mechanism. As stated earlier the Escapement is a mechanism that allows the energy to escape slowly. This isdone using a gear, lever and pendulum. What hasn't been talked about yet is the Ratchet. We said that a weight is wrapped around an axle with string, and it slowly letsout to drive the clock. We need a way to re-set this, or wind the clock. The Ratchet will allow us to do that. It fits loosely over the axle of one of the gears, and pushesagainst the gear with a pin and lever. When the clock needs to be wound, the Ratchet can be turned counter-clockwise without moving the gear. Then when the weightpulls it clockwise again, it catches on to the pin fixed to the gear, and continues to power the clock.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Image Notes1. The ratchet is where the cord winds around the axle. A weight hangs on theright side of the axle from the cord, causing the ratchet to lock against the leverand rotate the gear. When the cord runs out, you can rotate the ratchet counter-clockwise without having to move all the gears.2. Ratchet is not locked to the axle.

File Downloads

4Axle-rev4-circles.e2 (232 KB)[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to '4Axle-rev4-circles.e2']

escapement-ratchet.e2 (52 KB)[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to 'escapement-ratchet.e2']

Step 6: Cutting The GearsNow comes time to put the hard design process to the test. Cutting the gears. After printing out the full size drawings, I cut them out and glued them to the wood. A sprayadhesive works great. I use 3M Super77, and it dries fairly quick. At least within a few minutes after gluing, I'm ready to start cutting without it peeling off.

I drill all the holes first. It's easier to handle a full size board with the drill press than trying to clamp a gear blank that's only 1.5 inches in diameter without splitting it. Also,if something goes wrong, you haven't wasted all that time cutting it out just to have the board split.

After drilling the holes, I cut the gears out around the outside diameter, then I start cutting the teeth.

Image Notes1. Drilling the fillets and the valleys saved time when cutting the gears on the scrollsaw.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Image Notes1. I found it was faster to do all the cuts on one side of the tooth, then cut all theopposite sides. As I cut, I would get into a rhythm cutting an arc in one directionand could cut at a faster pace. I wouldn't have to stop and switch directions everyfew seconds.2. Cuts on one side of the tooth. I went back when I finished and cut the othersides. This piece is when I realized it was faster to cut it this way, rather thanswitch between the right side and left side every few seconds.

Step 7: Gear PlacementI drew rough gears in Blender with the Outer Diameter and Pitch Diameter to figure out placement in the frame. This told me if I will have interference between a gear andan axle, and give me a rough idea where my axles will be placed. After creating a 'template' on where to drill the holes, I drilled the first one starting with the EscapementAxle. Once that was drilled, I slid the gear on an axle, placed it in the hole, placed the mating gear on an axle, and held it in the approximate location. I then modified theplacement of the next gear, marked it, and drilled the hole. Then I would re-check the fit with both gears on an axle fit in the hole. If it fit, I was on to do this again with thenext gear. This continued until all the holes were cut, and the gears fit.

Three axles will go all the way through the frame, and three axles will have blind holes. I now have one side of the frame drilled, but I need a matching frame. In order toget a mirror image of the holes, I cut a half inch length of 1/2" dowel to place in each hole. I drove a brad nail into the center of each piece of dowel and cliped off the endof the nail with a pair of snippers. I placed the mating board on top of the nails and pressed firmly. This left an indentation where each of the centers of the holes shouldbe drilled.

After the holes were drilled, it was time to assemble the clock.

Image Notes1. Plugs with nails to help find the mirror image on the facing board.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Image Notes1. A little firm pressure is all that's needed. You don't need to drive the nails intothe board. All you need is a small indentation.

File Downloads

gearPlacement.blend (366 KB)[NOTE: When saving, if you see .tmp as the file ext, rename it to 'gearPlacement.blend']

Step 8: Assembling And Finishing The ClockI slide the gears on the axles and place them in their slots. Place the face over the axles and secure it with the 1/4" dowels. The Escape Gear and Levers go on the backwith the Pendulum. I created 2 square bars across the back to hang it on the wall. These are raised away from the back of the clock using 1/4" dowels and allow a placeto attach the pendulum.

Well, here are some pictures of the assembled clock. I need to do a little sanding here and there, and add a finish as well as numbers, but it is finished for the most part.

Being that this was my first clock, I didn't get too complicated and left the hour and minute hand on separate axis. To combine them, as on most clocks, there would bemore gearing, and axles that slip over one and other.

There are a few things that I plan on improving. First is the look. I know it's not the most appealing clock, but I was more focused on function. Replacing the front boardwith Plexiglas is one idea. The gears look great, and I'd like to show them off more. The other thing I'd like to improve is my scroll saw skills. I cut a LOT of gears thatmade it into the kindling box.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Image Notes1. Escape Gear2. Escape Levers3. Arms that move with the pendulum to move the escape levers in and out of theescape gear. They also give the pendulum a push from the escape gear to keep itswinging.4. Pivot point of the Pendulum5. I've never really used dowels for support or to mend things together. I am reallysurprised at how well they hold without any glue.

Image Notes1. Hour Hand - I plan on cutting out numbers to place on the face of the Minuteand hour hand.2. Minute Hand - I plan on cutting out numbers to place on the face of theMinute and hour hand.3. Please, no Cease and Disist letters!

Step 9: Final Thoughts And ReferencesI always like starting projects that require me to do research, and learn new or improve my skills and abilities. I hit several areas with this projects. When I saw my firstwooden clock years ago. I never realized that when I started to create one, I would learn so much about how they work. I now look at clocks and watches from a newperspective. I now start to look for the escapement, and follow the gears through.

As I said I learned a lot, and I wanted to share the sites where I got some ideas. I figure they helped me, and they might be able to help others.

Gary's Wooden Clocks - a very helpful site with several cool designs submitted by various people.

How Stuff Works - a decent overview of the parts of a Pendulum Clock

Nick Carter - a detailed instruction on how to draw gears in a CAD program. The nice thing is it isn't specific to any one program. It's generic enough that any CADprogram will work

And finally, working with gears wouldn't be complete without using the handy dandy Machinery's Handbook 24th edition. This is the source for my formulas andcalculations.

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LeatherCoveredPendulum Clockby gmjhowe

K'nex Clock(Photos) byMasterdude

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

Comments

50 comments Add Comment view all 125 comments

 UpgradeTech says:  Feb 26, 2009. 1:16 AM  REPLYUnfortunately, the freeware version of free2design is unavailable. Are there any other substitutes?

 durgledoggy says:  Jan 29, 2011. 1:16 PM  REPLYBe a student and get a student licence for AutoCAD.Or join their beta program and get their beta software.

 Ed2 says:  Nov 2, 2010. 3:47 AM  REPLYThe best free computer drafting program out there is at www.allycad.com!

 JThomasAlbert says:  May 1, 2009. 6:53 PM  REPLYA9CAD is fairly easy to use and totally free.

http://www.a9tech.com/a9cad/

Unfortunately, it does lack certain advanced features that would make your design work a lot faster.

For example, in the case of designing these gears, it would be handy to have a "Polar Array" feature. That's where you select an object or group ofobjects, Pick a center point, tell the program how many duplicates you want and how many degrees you want it to cover. The program would thenautomatically rotate and place the objects for you. So, you could draw one tooth of the gear, tell the program how many teeth you need and where thecenter of the circle is and it would draw the whole gear for you.

Alas, with A9CAD, you would have to draw each tooth individually. :(

Still, it is free and it is effective. I was trained on AutoCAD at work, but couldn't afford a license for home. A9CAD is a good free substitute.

 Ed2 says:  Nov 2, 2010. 3:55 AM  REPLYthe free version of allycad will allow you to copy a gear tooth x number of times in a polar fashion around the center! Or if you don't mind metric andusing module instead of diametric pitch then use the included tool for drawing involute gears. It's a great program, I've used it for going on 7 yearsnow, and built over 13 clocks using it. One tip. Wood clocks need more clearance and backlash than metal. Part of the fix is to set the centers 0.04"further apart, which with involute gears will not affect their speed.

 hondaman900 says:  Dec 30, 2009. 3:38 PM  REPLYCan it open the "e2" files in the instructable?

 kd4uwk says:  Jan 13, 2011. 2:43 PM  REPLYThanks This was a big help

In Step 4, there is a spreadsheet with each gear,the number of teeth, and the ratio that the gear train creates.But for a quick reference,here are the Gears and their teeth:Each line represents an axlePinion 1 - 12 teeth Wheel 1 - 36 teeth ,Pinion 2 - 10 teeth Wheel 2 - 40 teeth,Pinion 3 - 8 teeth Wheel 3 - 40 teeth,Pinion 4 - 12 teeth Wheel 4 - 40 teeth,Pinion 5 10 teeth Wheel 5 - 36 teeth.The escapement gear has 30 teeth and is not in the list above since it does not factor into the calculation of the gear ratios.

 kd4uwk says:  Jan 13, 2011. 2:40 PM  REPLYThanks for the work hereI like this & trying to make onewish i could open the filesor that jpg files cound be downloaded

 Ed2 says:  Nov 2, 2010. 5:06 AM  REPLYGo to abbeyclocks.com or maybe its abbyclock.com. It's a great page by a guy named Mark Headrick. Escapement animations will help ya alot. Plus he hasa downloadable (FREE) paper on designing escapements!! It is super!!

 DerrickAD says:  Dec 17, 2010. 10:22 AM  REPLYI've tried to send you a Private Message but it doesn't seem to work. Can you send me one so i can respond?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

 reichert99 says:  Dec 13, 2010. 3:14 PM  REPLYam I missing something. When I try to download I get a tmp file. do I need to be a pro member to download?

 Ed2 says:  Nov 2, 2010. 5:00 AM  REPLYEmail me for a pdf I made showing a way easier method than Nick's. No offense intended to nick1

 Ed2 says:  Nov 2, 2010. 4:04 AM  REPLYYa know. The hardest part I ran into 6 years back when I started designing wooden clocks was how to draw a gear tooth. I came up with a easy way to do itand also designed a spread-sheet in open-office to calculate all the necessary info to do it. After clock #2 I gave up on cycloid gears and went to involutegears. I also found that lantern pinions work far and away better than cut pinions plus are easier to make! After building 13 clocks (everytime I put one on thewall someone wanted to buy the thing) and no problems thus far I think I have most of it down pretty good. It is way too addictive!LOL

 jackdi says:  Sep 30, 2010. 9:18 AM  REPLYWow!I am extremely amazed!I hope i would have time to try this out.

Thanks Marvay. Great work!

- Jack -

 afenerty says:  Sep 11, 2010. 4:30 AM  REPLYIm releasing very shortly new software which can help in things such as clocks or geared mechanisms. You can see the tutorials and such now atwww.gearotic.com , its inexpensive and should aid in making all things geared much more easy to make and envision.

ThxArt

 stefke says:  Jan 15, 2008. 8:53 PM  REPLYCool! Now I know how to build someting like this

 Johnsons on fire says:  Jan 17, 2008. 1:22 PM  REPLYI like this one better. (Sry marvey). Can you do an instructable for it?

 odisej says:  May 5, 2010. 12:30 PM  REPLY

 stefke says:  Jan 17, 2008. 3:20 PM  REPLYThis clock is "Simplicity" and you can bay pans for this clock here . But I want to build my own clock and here is two more pictures of that clock.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

 nandog says:  Apr 9, 2009. 4:40 PM  REPLYwonderfullll it would be great to have this instruct. ps: nice instruc buddy! will work it on some friends cnc

 Johnsons on fire says:  Jan 17, 2008. 6:56 PM  REPLYsweet......

 marvay says:  Jan 17, 2008. 6:13 PM  REPLYNo Problem, I've seen that clock and it is cool. I wasn't going for style on this Instructable. Those are cool, and I've seen several others that areamazing. But the instructable wouldn't be worth much if I said: Step one: Buy Plans Step two: Paste plans on wood and cut. Step Three:Assemble cut parts. I decided to go more into how and why the clock keeps time, and some background on how to design your own. I know thisis no work of art, but it's a step in that direction. This is the first clock I've built and designed, and it won't be the last. Thanks for the pics, stefke, ifanyone else has pictures of clocks you've built or have seen, please post them. I always like to get ideas for the next clock.

 stefke says:  Jan 18, 2008. 2:41 PM  REPLYYou are right about that instructable will be stupid Step one: Buy Plans Step two: Paste plans on wood and cut. Step Three: Assemble cutparts. This is grate instructable I learn some rely good things about gear clocks and I am planing to build one when some day search onGoogle "Wooden gear clock" or something like that you will find great clocks, pictures and videos

 octochan says:  Apr 11, 2009. 8:52 PM  REPLYThis is a really helpful and interesting instructable on how clocks work! now I merely need to figure out how to apply all this information so I can make a 13hour clock (that runs 26 hours in a normal 24 hour period).

 GreyGhost2 says:  May 1, 2010. 5:50 PM  REPLY Ummmmm... Why do you want a 13 hour clock?

 octochan says:  May 1, 2010. 6:35 PM  REPLYMainly because it's a neat concept. It gives you the impression that you're getting more hours in a day, even if they're shorter. Also because they hadseveral in the Labyrinth, and I always wanted one :D

 GreyGhost2 says:  May 5, 2010. 2:39 AM  REPLYWhat a cool idea.  I am about to embark on my first wooden geared clock. 

 gogiva says:  May 2, 2010. 7:00 PM  REPLYOnly one word: beautiful. I will try to make one.

 scarabeetle101 says:  Jan 25, 2009. 9:59 AM  REPLYI found this really good gear template generator at http://www.woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html which will cut the time down loads.

 antidartan says:  Apr 23, 2010. 6:33 AM  REPLYany way to make it use inches in stead of mm?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

 thepelton says:  Feb 13, 2010. 10:23 AM  REPLYI found a website called www.woodgears.ca where you can describe a gear, and it lays it out for you.  It may have some difficulty with ones smaller than tenteeth, but it will easily make plans for 20-30 teeth.

 crankygnome says:  Jan 20, 2010. 4:55 PM  REPLYconfusing- but great job! i just hope i will be able to figure this out

 dexterac says:  Nov 10, 2009. 12:32 PM  REPLYuber cool. i am making this for my love of life. This will be a birthday gift for her. awesome work!!! :) 

 geppetto425 says:  Jan 17, 2008. 9:12 PM  REPLYMy gosh, why not just order a kit from Clockit? All this work has already been done, why reinvent the wheel (sorry for the pun). Oh, sorry. Nice work though.

 kingalexl says:  Nov 8, 2009. 1:54 PM  REPLY SOMEONE has to make what goes into the kit. why not him?

 marvay says:  Jan 18, 2008. 6:56 PM  REPLYIt's about creating and designing it yourself. I don't feel I re-invented anything, but I showed how to design a clock so you can build something that iscompletely your own. When you were a kid and put together a model car, did you make that model? No, Testors or Ertl did. You just assembled it. Butwhen you made your pinewood derby car, you MADE that car. You designed the body. You carved the wood. You assembled the wheels. And you racedyour car. That's the difference.

 crankygnome says:  Jan 20, 2010. 5:03 PM  REPLYim still a kid... in wood shop... who doesnt know anything about pitch

 geppetto425 says:  May 4, 2009. 10:01 PM  REPLYI stand corrected, I bought the plans for Galileos's Bicycle, a wooden kinetic sculpture... lot's of fun making it and my wife loves it. Look it up onyoutube

 Re-design says:  Oct 24, 2009. 8:48 AM  REPLYFirst rate job.  On both the project and the instructable.

 its a lion says:  Aug 5, 2009. 8:10 PM  REPLYWow. I never realized how much went into clocks. Then for some reason I looked at an escapement today, and was sucked in. I have spent the last 6 or sohours reading everything that I can find about their construction. I found this after trying to get a detailed view of the gear train. This really helped me tounderstand it. Thanks. Nice clock.

 rockyreasoner says:  Jul 29, 2009. 3:49 PM (removed by author or community request)

 rockyreasoner says:  Jul 29, 2009. 5:42 PM  REPLYNevermind... to download the files: - Right-click on the filename and choose "Save as" - Save the file as (i.e. "Gear_ratio.ods") INCLUDING the quotationmarks

 Smidge204 says:  Jan 3, 2009. 10:16 AM  REPLYfree2Design appears to no longer be available. Even if you can get a copy of the software, which is possible via 3rd party sites, it attempts to "validate" itselfthrough think3's website which no longer hosts the required pages. I'm sure it's possible to bypass but what a pain, huh? I do have a question for marvay,though, which I haven't seen anyone ask yet: What kind of wood did you use? It looks like either hardwood plank or a very high grade plywood? How thick?Looks about 1/2 inch or so. I'm toying with the idea of making my own using epicyclic gearing, just to be fancy :)

 runmgh says:  Feb 6, 2009. 11:25 AM  REPLYI've read that hardwood plywood is the best wood to use. I believe it's because it expands and contracts less. Technically any thickness would work, butI'd stick with .250". Other material options include acrylic and aluminum.

 grantdevine says:  Jan 10, 2009. 4:06 AM  REPLYAny chance someone could post a sketchup model of this?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wooden-Gear-Clock/

 j_l_larson says:  Jan 6, 2009. 2:27 PM  REPLYthat is pure sweetness

 runmgh says:  Nov 20, 2008. 8:04 AM  REPLYI can't seem to find Free2Design anywhere. Does anyone happen to have the files as DXFs?

 Benthomash says:  Nov 11, 2008. 9:43 AM  REPLYCouldn't the gear behind the robot guy be used as a second hand gear?

 froggyman says:  Oct 4, 2008. 5:55 PM  REPLYthis is a great clock if you are not very good at wood working, but if you would like plans for intermediate to advanced woodworker check out the sitehttp://www.woodenclocks.co.uk/index.htm

all the plans on it are free and somewhat easy to follow

 kolem says:  Aug 18, 2008. 3:06 AM  REPLYVery nice, just one problem i got is i cant open your files it downloads the files a .tmp file

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