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How to Make a Wooden Gear Clock

Ranked #23 in Hobbies, Games & Toys, #358 overall

I Have Always Wanted to Build a Clock

One of these days I will be able to find the time and the money to sit down and cut out gears to make a wooden clock. I have done a lot of research on the subject and I'm ready when I do find those presious resources. Take a look at the following and find all the useful information I have found.

Gears are very simple in concept, but the math between them can be confusing. If you don't get the math right, you will not have a clock that tells the time accurately. I have spent pages trying to figure out how a clock movement works.

Step One: Learn About Clocks

The More You Know the Better

I know this may not need to be said, but learning as much as you can about how to build a wooden gear clock is the only way you might just be able to build one. The whole process of making a clock work just right is a little tricky and will take some trial and error to make it keep time.

You will want to take a moment to flip through some books on the subject. You can either buy books from Amazon or your local book store, or you can do what I did and go to your library and check out some of the books they have have on clock repair. Clocks have been around for several centuries. So there is plenty of information about the art of clockwork.

You can also spend some time on YouTube and watch everything possible about clocks and how they work. You will be amazed at the amount of information available on some of these websites.

Close View of the Large Gears of an Old Clock, Venice, Italy

Wooden Clocks:

31 Favorite Projects & Patterns

This might be the best book I have been able to find on building your own wooden gear clock. If you are going to attempt to build one, you may want to have it in your library.

Take a moment to visit the page on Amazon.com and look at the few of the pages it has offered to view for free. It doesn't give you any plans in the preview, but does allow you to see what the book is all about.
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Sundials

The Oldest Clocks Known to Man

Sundial

Before men knew how to make gears and tension springs and other mechanical parts, they kept their time by the sun. The sun was very predictable and as long as it wasn't cloudy or the middle of the night, you could tell the time of the day by watching the sun and the shadows that the sun cast.

I think people were very ingenious about using the sun to help them figure out when it was time to plant their gardens, when the worst storms of the year usually show up and so on. Some sundials were larger than a modern day home. Some of the ones that come to mind are Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids in Egypt.

Great Wooden Clock Designs & More

Post Links to Your Favorite Wooden Clock Designs Here

If you are interested in building your own clock, you will want to build something you know works. That is why I suggest you find some plans first. There are a lot of great plans that you can buy, but if you are just messing around with your woodworking equipment, you may not want to spend a lot of cash.

The following links are designs that are already out there and are working for people and best of all, they are free to download. Pick one of them and attempt to build it. Once you have completed one of these, you can always alter the design to make it more personal.

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Woodline Clock Instructions.

This is a great tutorial on how to cut out, sand, more...3 points

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Wooden Gear Clock

I've added video of the clock. I will be working o more...2 points

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Zen Alarm Clock

Wake up to a lovely zen alarm clock.2 points

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Wooden-Gear-Clocks.com

Wooden gear clocks, clock kits, and do-it-yourself more...1 point

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New Page 1

Great Info0 points

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Alan's wooden gear clock page

Alan's wooden gear clock0 points

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Very Easy Gardening

Learn some great gardening tips here.0 points

Making a Wooden Gear Clock

Clock Design #6 in Four Parts

I thought this series of videos was extremely helpful. This fellow woodworker is putting together a wooden clock from plans he bought on the internet. He uses these videos to work through the process step by step to show you how he put together the clock and describes what goes into putting it together.

You get to see what goes into building a wooden gear clock. Personally I find it fastening watching him cut out the gears with his scroll saw. I think from these videos, you will be able to see if this is a project you will want to do or not.
Making The #6 Part 1. A Wooden Gear clock
by jointheclubsmellypan | video info

42 ratings | 40,704 views
curated content from YouTube

Try Cardboard Gears First

It is Free to Attempt it in Cardboard First.

You can practice building your wooden clock out of cardboard. You can get free cardboard from your local supermarket or department store. They will be glad to give you their discarded boxes. Just Make sure you get there before they send them to the compactor. I find if you can get to a 24 hour store in the middle of the night, say about 2 or 3 o'clock, they you will have no problem collecting cardboard boxes.

Making your gears out of cardboard is a great way to practice making gears and seeing up close how the clock really works. You will see why the larger gear moves the smaller gear faster. you will be able to see the math at work. You will be able to design gears that will do what you want them to do.
Cardboard clock
by leemerson76 | video info

5 ratings | 3,186 views
curated content from YouTube

Let's Learn a Little About Gears

Simple But Complicated

Gears are very simple but what they do can be complicated. The ratios that work between them can be easily confused. I know I still have a hard time trying to figure out how to make sixty revolutions in a minute and another sixty revolutions in an hour. That doesn't include the need for extra gears to fix the rotation direction.

They make toy gears for kids so they can learn how they work. You can purchase them either for yourself or for you little ones. I am hoping this video will show you a little more about the complexities of the gears.
Gear Basics
by ScienceOnline | video info

390 ratings | 148,552 views
curated content from YouTube

What Do I Need My Gears To Do?

My Attempt at Explaining it

Three Gears

I need my gears to show three different units of time. I could add on several more at a later date, but right now I want these gears to turn three hands: The second hand, the minute hand and the hour hand.

Here is what I need to figure out. Every time the Second hand rotates a full revolution, the Minute hand needs to turn 12 degrees. Every time the Minute Hand Turns a full revolution, the Hour hand turns 60 degrees.

So I can have all three wheels turning in the same direction I will need two more gears in between the gears turning the hands. Now I have to go figure out how to determine the correct gear ratio.

Gear Study #01

Getting From Minutes to Seconds

Minutes

Lets look at this Example:

The Yellow, Red and Blue gears all have 60 teeth. The Green gear has ten teeth. The Cyan gear had 6 teeth. The Green gear is attached to the Red gear and the Cyan gear is attached to the Blue gear.

Every time the Yellow gear turns one full rotation, the Red gear turns a total of 6 rotations. Every time the Red gear turns one full rotation, the Blue gear turns 10 times. Look at it this way: 1 Rotation times 6 rotations times 10 rotations = 60 rotations. This means the Blue gear represents the Second Hand and the Yellow gear represents the Minute Hand. Every one rotation of the Yellow gear, the Blue gear will turn 60 times.

You can also look at the math like this:

60/10 x 60/6 = 6/1 x 10/1 = 6 x 10 = 60

Grandfather Clock Question

There Was One in My Grandmothers House

One of the greatest memories I had as a kid was winding the grandfather clock in the dining room of my grandmothers house. It is a family heirloom and maybe one day it will belong to me.... or one of my cousins. Until then I will have to enjoy winding it every time I visit her.

(Edit: I visited my grandmother on Martin Luther King Jr Day this year 2012 and she told me that the clock was no longer working. The little tinkerer inside me wanted to get inside that clock to see what was wrong. I didn't touch it, but I wanted to.)

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Gear Toys

Let Your Kids Learn About Gears.

The best time to start teaching your kids about gears is when they are really young. The following toys will come in handy if you want them to get the basic idea of how gears work. They get to learn the basics even if they are too young to understand the math.

Start with something simple. Even if they can just sit down with the toys and play with them, they will lean how the gears work and whay happens as they put them together.
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Wooden Clock Blog Posts

People Do Talk About Wooden Gear Clocks

Most people who want to build clocks are interested in giving wooden clocks as gifts to each other. Some people just want to build something interesting out of wood. Some people like to blog about it. Take a look. I doubt most of these blog posts have anything to do with wooden gears, but they may still be interesting.
Hand-made wooden pneumatic clock is one of a kind
Watching most clocks is about as interesting as eyeballing drying paint, but the video below shows an exception to that rule. It shows off an air-driven wooden clock named the Pneumachron, which will have you wondering where the time went as you stare ...
Conran White Wood Wall Clock
Another simple, but effective design for his Marks and Spencer's collection in the form of the Conran White Wood Wall Clock. The clock consists of a stark white circle measuring 59cm in diameter with a wooden centre. The minimalist design would ...
Last updated at 7:17 AM on 21st February 2012
Clearly aimed at heavy sleepers with mashochistic tendencies, the clock's manufacturers suggest placing the PIN code panel as far away as possible, such as another room. Calm before the alarm: The Ramos clock, with its retro features and wooden housing ...
This Alarm Clock Won't Shut Up Until You Crack the Code
If the conventional alarm isn't enough in the morning, you may want to check out the Ramos Alarm Clock by Paul Sammut. This alarm clock, currently a project on Kickstarter, looks like any other wooden alarm clock. You set it like a normal clock, ...
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Scroll Saw Tips

An Extremely Valuable Machine

I have wanted a scroll saw for many years. I always thought it would be something that I would buy when I was ready to retire. Now I am thinking I might actually want to build my wood shop sooner than that. I think it would be a great way to get out there and meditate, get away from the world for a while.

Making these wooden projects would be something I would like to do when I retire, to keep myself busy when I am done working for a living.
Scroll saw tips from the Scrollsaw Workshop.
by sdgood | video info

14 ratings | 8,607 views
automatically generated by YouTube

Other Scroll Saw Projects

There are All Kinds of Things You Can Do With Scroll Saws

Once you own your scroll saw, your world will be opened up to dozens, maybe even hundreds of new projects. You can make everything from wooden puzzles to kitchen utensils. I have seen people make intricate designs on their coffee tables.

One of the things I hope to learn is to make inlays
Polymer Clay Inlay Technique for Scroll Saw Projects
by sdgood | video info

15 ratings | 13,989 views
automatically generated by YouTube

More Scroll Saw Plans

I Think You Might Find One of These Interesting

There are all kinds of things you can do with your scroll saw. A wooden gear clock is just one of the wonderful things you can make with it. You can also make puzzles.

Beautiful Watch Movements

I Love Watching These Things

There is something about these perfectly designed and machined pieces of art that makes me want to collect them. I don't just want to own normal watches. I want to own automatic and manual watches that don't need batteries to run.

These things are amazing. It is hard to believe that there is someone in the world who knows how to machine all the tiny little gears and set them just right way to make a perfect mechanism that keeps nearly perfect time.
ZEITWINKEL watches, A look inside the Watch & Movement
by HouseOfRam | video info

124 ratings | 42,627 views
automatically generated by YouTube

How to Teach Children to Tell Time

They All Need to Know

It is important for everyone to know how to tell time. Clocks and watches are a daily necessity in our lives. We take time for granted and we don't realize that they are something that is learned, usually at a very young age.

It is very important to teach the little ones how time works and where they can look to find the correct time. Sure you might think this is forcing them to conform to society, but if they don't learn how time works, they will always be late. This little video will show you how to teach them how to tell time.
Help Kids Learn to Tell Time on Clocks
by About | video info

5 ratings | 1,086 views
curated content from YouTube

Do You Keep Track of This One?

The New Year Clock is one of the clocks we see every year but we tend to take it for granted. They are all synced with the atomic clock in England and the entire world is watching as the same seconds pass by at the same time. It is kind of cool. Are you ready for your New Years Party?

Countdown to New Years Day

New Years Day: January 1, 2013

What Do You Think of Wooden Gear Clocks?

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My Name is Robert. Please follow me on Amplify, Twitter, Facebook and Tumbler. I am a Haiku Poet, Artist, Writer, Gardener and Pretty Much a Jack of All... more »

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Maple's Clock TCL06-333 Moving Gear Desktop Clock 

Maple's Clock TCL06-333 Moving Gear Desktop Clock

Maple's Clock TCL06-333 Moving Gear Desktop Clock

Amazon Price: $36.57 (as of 02/22/2012)Buy Now

Until you can build your own wooden gear clock, I figured you might want a finished gear clock sitting on your desk; something to inspire you, to keep you going.

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