Philip Woodward , Gearless Clock, Horology

Home Links Video Gallery About Projects Coin Change Machine Eazy Pod Filter Modification Disk Building Dr Woodwards Gearless Clock – (Plans by J. Wilding) by C.Raynerd Introduction: Back in 2003/04 at the age of 20 y/o the professor and my tutor at Uni was hugely into Patek Philippe watches. I had a bit of interest and because Patek make hand made watches they after show images of their production shops and this brought out my hidden engineering interests. Knowing I couldn`t buy a Patek, I purchased some old pocket watches off ebay to take apart (Smiths). It must have been total luck, but I managed to fix one and suddenly thought I was a clock maker. I decided to buy a Unimat 3 lathe off ebay that I somehow won it at a fantastic price. I made a few posts on NAWCC forum and a chap over in Yorkshire invited me around to see his Unimat 3, clock builds and repairs. In his home we discussed the current ME article showing John Wilding who had just finished writing his plans for Dr Woodward’s Gearless Clock and was posting them in Model Engineer mag. Being a fool, I ordered all the materials and purchased a copy of ME (just the first edition of the build). I asked my dad for some help and one Saturday morning we drilled 3 mounting holes for the brass back plate and failed when it came to soft soldering 3 washers on the back!!! I realised very quickly that I didn`t have the skills to make a clock and so all the materials and lathe were sold. So now in 2011, with a couple of years experience behind me, I`m going to give this another go. I recently ordered all the brass plate and received this a couple of weeks ago and I`m just waiting on the remaining materials, mainly imperial bar stock to arrive from College Engineering Supplies. I`ve also taken delivery of a length of nylon cord and some 0.006” spring steel. Last week while on holiday, I appreciatively took delivery of some 1/8” ID bearings from Clive off Madmodder! This is the clock built by John Wilding: Dr Woodward originally wrote about the design in his book – My Own Right Time but sadly I can`t find it in the library. I have of course purchased John Wildings lovely write up of the plans and build process. He mainly cuts the clock using a Unimat, I`ll be following his methods unless I can utilize my small mill. I should state right away that this build log has be written already by the notorious GadgetBuilder who details fantastically his build of this clock. He has made some excellent modifications of Wiliding’s design, especially the automatic maintaining works. Unfortunately I`m not confident, intelligent or daring enough to deviate from the plans other than a couple of fasteners where I`ll be using metric instead of the specific BA series.I would also or daring enough to deviate from the plans other than a couple of fasteners where I`ll be using metric instead of the specific BA series.I would also like to thank John, Gadget builder for all the help he has given me through this journey of building my first clock! Without his advice and insight, I would have struggled to complete the clock. The clock uses a really unique method to run. A series of colliding pawls, hooks and rods give the pendulum an impulse, with the energy provided by the large weight. There are two main stages to the clock, the going motion which regulated time and provides an impulse to the pendulum and the daisy motion. I`m going to start back-to-front and talk about the daisy motion first. Basically, the mechanism rotates a main central arbor once each hour – the minute hand is connected to this. The daisy motion is used to convert that single hour rotation into a 1/12 of a turn for the hour hand. Here is a youtube video I made of my daisy wheel plus a link to a