Oh! Hello There! Welcome!
I didn’t see you at first, please, do come in, sit down, sit down. Why did I decide to start woodworking even though I have no idea what I’m doing you ask? What’s that? You didn’t ask? Well, I’ll tell you. You were just leaving you say? Nonsense, I don’t mind at all, it’s no burden for me to share this fascinating tale with you, in fact it’d be my pleasure! Really, you ought to sit down and stop edging towards the door, I already told you I’d be happy to chat, it’s no trouble at all. Put down the gun you say? Don’t be ridiculous! What a sense of humor, I can tell we’ll be fast friends, fast friends indeed.
I suppose it all began with a video about mechanical watches. I stumbled onto it on youtube, you see I’m an avid studier of the esoteric videographic arts; I’ve seen it all, from “Top 10 Movie Details You Missed” to the ever changing nuances of “lofi hip hop radio — beats to relax/study to”.
I was instantly drawn in by the iconic newsreel accent, but it soon became apparent that this was one of the most informative, no nonsense educational videos I’d ever seen. The visuals leave no room for confusion. It doesn’t obsess over boring technical jargon, but at the same time it doesn’t gloss over details. It treats the viewer with respect in a way that seems to have been since lost. It is truly a masterwork and I can’t recommend it enough.
Anyway, I assume you’ve watched the video by now? Oh good, you’ve finally sat down. In the corner with your head in your hands is an odd choice, but please do make yourself comfortable. So I watched this video, and as you know a good youtube video leads to a few dozen hours more. Another excellent one I’d recommend is “Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers: Shafts, Gears, Cams, and Differentials,” which walks through all the clever parts in a mechanical computer used to compute trajectories in the navy. But eventually, I found myself in the wonderful world of Wood Gear Clock youtube. And at that point it was sort of inevitable that would I try to build one of my own.
Since I live in an apartment and the only tools I owned were a few screwdrivers and a hammer, I started out with this kit, which you can get on Amazon. The kit comes with all the parts pre-cut (by a ~laser~), you only need some glue, a flush cut saw, 5 pounds of lead!? and a voracious appetite for sanding. So much sanding. Sanding for days. In between each and every gear tooth. And you have to coat every gear tooth with some pencil graphite. Graphite works as a lubricant for wood parts. There’s a sort of grace in the monotony of sanding a million tiny laser cut wood parts and meticulously drawing pencil graphite all over them in your kitchen. It was slow going. Please don’t make me sand anything ever again.
As fun as days and days of sanding is, all things must end. Assembling the clock involved a lot of dowels, glue, flush cut sawing, and actually a lot more sanding of the dowels. Here you can see the wind wheel and ratchet which is designed to only spin in one direction, and is used to wind up the clock by raising the 5 pound weight. I ended up buying a scuba diving weight as a source of the lead bbs for the weight that powers the clock.
After lots more assembly, here’s what the clock advancing through time looks like.
Next I mounted it on the wall, attached the weight and pendulum, and stepped back to witness the miracle of wood based time keeping.
That was about the best it ever worked. After that, it simply stopped moving. Probably needs more sanding. I tried everything I could think of (which mostly involved sanding), but to no avail. Casting about for something to blame other than myself, I concluded that laser cut clock parts are simply not accurate enough to make a functioning timepiece. It could not possibly be due to the fact that on further inspection I may have been overzealous in my sanding and warped some of the parts that were now just slightly out of alignment. This clock is still on my wall, and it still does not work.
In any case, with the whole thing glued together and no spare parts, and full of confidence from my recent failure, I decided the only reasonable thing to do was to build another clock, except this time, a more difficult one.
One where I made all the parts myself. One that required a workshop and tools that I did not have. And either finely honed scroll saw skills or computerized machining knowledge that I also did not have. And a computerized machining… machine? Luckily just down the street from where I live is Techshop SF, a makerspace with all the tools in the world, a full wood shop, metal shop, industrial CNC routers, as well as classes on how to use the equipment.
I signed up for a few classes, learned all about how to get started with CNC routers (essentially a robotic computer controlled wood cutting machine), and forked over $750 all told. This was becoming an expensive clock already, but it’s about the journey or fulfilling mad obsessions or something like that. So, having completed the classes, I headed over to Techshop to actually use the equipment for the first time. And that is when I found out that about ten minutes before I arrived, Techshop had declared bankruptcy and gone out of business, never to return, taking my hopes and dreams with them. As well as my $750.
And that is how I wound up setting up a workshop, buying a lot of tools, and embarking on my journey to becoming a shitty woodworker who built a clock.
It’s been six months, and I’ll tell you right now, I haven’t built any damn clocks. But I’ve been preparing. Preparing to build a clock. Building the tools to build the tools to build a clock. Learning the skills needed to learn the skills needed to build a clock that probably won’t work. And I’m going to keep on preparing, and keep on learning, even if it takes a hundred days or more. A hundred months of preparing. I’m gonna build a clock you see. It probably won’t work. A hundred clocks. Everyday I think of clocks and every night I dream only of clocks. This will work. It has to work, eventually. A thousand clocks. This will work, if only through sheer force of will, this will work. I am @THISWILLWORK and I will woodwork and this will work. It’s a blog about woodworking, written by @THISWILLWORK and this will work even when it doesn’t, because it’s about the journey and denial or something. We’re gonna build this clock together, just you wait and see.
Welcome, welcome one and all, I’m so glad you could make it, welcome, please, join me, come along and let’s do this together, it’s gonna be great, you’re all gonna love it, no wait don’t leave me here with myself, yes, yes indeed, a very warm welcome to:
