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Rolling Ball Clocks #2

"Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.." -- Greg Anderson

Making the Gears

In the first clock, I made the gears by sequentially gluing teeth and spacers around the circumference of the core disk. I used a printed template as a guide to keep a running track of the spacing so that I'd end up with equally spaced teeth all around the gear. This worked OK. But not great. The resulting gears meshed well over 90% of rotation. It quickly became obvious that this MUST be 100% for the clock to keep accurate time.

Therefore spacing is critical! Anyone who has made gears will say; "Duh".

If you Google "wooden gears", you will find many sites that describe cutting gears out of plywood. There are template generators that will print out patterns. But I prefer the look of walnut teeth and oak spacers set in a plywood core and covered with hardwood facings.

That's all about the basic gears.

Next step: Hubcaps.

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