Category: Horology
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Making a Cutter for the Engine by Hand
One of the final pieces for the Wheel Cutting Engine I’m reconstructing is the critical cutter – the spiky toothed steel wheel that actually cuts the slots. Excitingly, I identified a set of cutters that go to the Dominy’s wheel cutting engine in storage at Winterthur (in a bag with a lump of lead, half…
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Filing Iron Pinions by Hand
As part of my ongoing reconstruction of the Dominy’s wheel cutting engine, I made three iron pinions by hand. I recorded the process for two of them. Each took about 6 hours. It was a lot of filing! I tried out a couple of files (most of which were kindly given to me by David…
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Filing a Brass Gear by Hand with a Dividing Plate: Third Wheel for the Engine
For the third wheel in my reconstruction of the Dominy’s wheel cutting engine, I again used the manual dividing plate, but this time with an indexing arm instead of a compass. In cutting out the teeth, I decided to just use files, foregoing the jeweler’s saw. The file I used to remove most of the…
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Cutting a Brass Gear by Hand (With a Dividing Plate)
As part of my ongoing reconstruction of the Dominy’s wheel cutting engine, I cut a 32 teeth brass wheel or gear. It is based on the dimensions of the second stage wheel in the Dominy’s engine. To do the dividing of the circle into 32 parts, I used a manual dividing plate, which I made…
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Making a Dividing Plate
As part of reconstructing an 18th century American wheel cutting engine I am exploring techniques used to divide and cut the teeth into gears (known in horology as wheels). Instead of quite laboriously marking out the divisions onto the wheel to be cut, as I previously explored, I am going to try using a dividing…
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Cutting a Brass Gear by Hand (Without a Dividing Plate)
As part of my reconstruction of a wheel cutting engine, I cut a brass gear by hand with files, a saw, and a treadle-powered lathe. I did not use a dividing plate but rather marked the divisions straight onto the wheel. This is part of my reconstruction of an eighteenth century wheel cutting engine. I…
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Dominy Wheel Cutting Engine Prototype
For my masters thesis at Winterthur, I have chosen to research a wheel cutting engine in the Dominy collection. Made (or perhaps purchased or commissioned) in the 1770’s by Nathaniel Dominy IV, it is a tool used to aid in cutting the teeth on clock wheels. Compared to other wheel cutting engines, it has several…
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Verge or Crown Wheel Escapement Comtoise/Morbier Clock
This is a french Comtoise or Morbier clock with a crown wheel escapement. Also known as a verge escapement, this form of controlling the release of energy is the earliest known type of escapement, and the one used for the longest time, supplanted in the early to mid 19th century by the anchor escapement. Here’s…
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Repairing an Eli Terry 30-Hour Wooden Clock
Here is a beautiful Pillar and Scroll clock, likely dating to the 1820’s or 1830’s. Eli Terry innovated new ways to produce wooden works clocks, achieving the first mass-production with interchangeable parts. Several very clever design and production details made this clock affordable to more people than previous brass-movement tall case clocks were. Our first…
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30 Hour Ogee
Ogees are my favorite (of the common clocks I see) to work on. Here’s a nice example I fixed for my friend Thomas. It had a series of small issues: The suspension spring was bent and kinked. I was able to just straighten it out. The escapement pallets had some wear in the form of…
