Another noob, west midlands

Hi all,

I'm just getting gear together before launching into a few projects I've got lined. The stuff I'm planning is clock-making adjacent and involves a certain amount of (whisper it) woodwork alongside the wheel cutting and brass shaping.

The garage is attached to the house and insulated all round apart from the gaps in the garage doors which are definitely on the list. I've divided off the back for the machine tools, that bit contains the boiler and is noticeably warmer.

Tools wise apart from the usual rag-tag collection of hand tools, I've got a modest amount of Makita woodworking stuff, tracksaw, small router, multi tool, and a good solid rolling workbench with an mft top. also well as an aging cheap pillar drill, not great for real accuracy but good enough for wood.

Metal wise I've just acquired a Hegner scrollsaw, and I'm looking for a small lathe. There's one in the classifieds here which I'm going to jump on as soon as I've posted enough to see contact details. Something in the linisher line might be useful as well for shaping.

The first project is the "Dark Lady" beginners clock, as much as a skills /tools building exercise as anything, then onto the main event.

Hi welcome to the forum. Good luck getting or finding a lathe & mill etc. Dont forget to allow a chunk of your budget to go towards all the extra tooling & metrology you will need. One thing to note if you are into wood and metal is to try and keep all the saw dust off of the metal working tooling. Wood holds moisture and can soon make machinery go rusty. Answer a post or two and you will be able to contact sellers on the forum.

regards

Edited By Oldiron on 18/01/2023 09:53:51

Hi John, welcome to the forum (I'm a midlander also). Plenty of expertise here + friendly advice & comment. That clock looks interesting - I've just watched a short youtube vid about it. What arrangements are you thinking of for cutting the gear wheels? Can be a tricky process and you need some fairly accurate method of indexing. Let us know how you get on.

All the best. Mike

Welcome and good luck, there are many on here who will be able to answer any questions that you may have. Best wishes .Noel

I've started on the metrology, a set of Starret squares, a small M&W micrometer, a Mitutoyo dial indicator, and an older vernier caliper. That's a good point about the sawdust. I was thinking that the front part of the garage is for wood and any grinding (henceforth known as the dirty end) and the back will be for metal. There's a sliding door between the two which should keep the dust out.

The really cool thing about the clock build is that it just assumes you're starting with a lathe, a pillar drill, and some hand tools. Going through the instructions it will pause occasionally and say "go to appendix n and build that tool to use in the next section". That includes an arbour setup for gear cutting and a jig to index using a spare change gear on the back of the spindle. By the time you've finished you've got a handful of generally useful jigs and tools.
Mind you if an indexing head came up for not to much I wouldn't say no

Welcome aboard!

ALL sorts on here, clock makers included.

Try to find a local, M E club and join. You will mingle with folk with similar mindsets, experience, from which you can benefit.,

Remember that there is NO perfect lathe. Some are better for some jobs than others. The skill is in getting the machine to do what you want, to the standard that you want.

Learn how to provide a steady hand feed. There will be times when you need that skill, even if the machine has power feeds..

If in doubt, get a lathe which is a bit larger than you first thought. Your horizons will expand, and you can do small work on a big lathe. The converse is not as easy!

Before launching into machining expensive metal, get to know the lathe, and what it, and you, can do..

Learn by making a few tools that you will find useful in the future. These may well include a Centre Height Gauge (For rapidly setting tools to centre height son that they cut as intended. ) You may find the time spent in making a sliding Tailstock Die Holder, and sliding Tap Holder. You will almost certainly find a use for a Tap Wrench. You can buy just the Die Holders from Arc Euro and make a suitable body to carry them.

If you are cutting threads upto a shoulder, or down a blond hole, making a Mandrel Handle will be time well spent. Chances are that whatever lathe you buy, evn in Back Gear, is bit fast for such jobs. (and getting a broken tap out of a hole is not easy. Usually means staring all over again with new metal.

If you are clock making, you will ,not be looking to remove lots of metal in one fell swoop, so think in terms of HSS rather than carbide. A HSS toolbit will cost about the same as one carbide tip, but can be ground MANY times (Eve at 9:00 pm on a Saturday evening when everyone is shut. ) You will also learn how to grind tools. A sharp, properly ground tool can solve a lot of problems.

Buy one or two books on lathe operation and study them (lots to choose from, by former editors of M E W(Stan Bray, Harold Hall, David Clark, Dave Fenner, Neilk Wyatt. ) L H Sparey tends to concentrate more on the Myford ML7; but the basic principles;es are the same; just the detail that differs some time.

As they say in Suffolk,"Make haste slowly".

Time spent learning the basic principles and techniques will make life a lot easier in the future

HTH

Howard

Lots of really great advice there thanks Howard, and thanks for all the recommendations. It's very much appreciated.

Interesting. I've made all manner of stuff over the years but never a clock - always had one in the back of my mind but cautious about how to get started. Cooincidently I've just finished fitting my Universal Dividing head into my mill (an old unit I inherited and has been sat in a box for years) so maybe I'll now look into this clock build as my next project as it sounds as if this particular set up will lead you step by step? Majority of my kit is Metric based, do you forsee any issues? ( I'm well used to doing imperial to metric conversions, but its still a pain sometimes)

Regards Mike

Hello John,

Clockmaking is a great pass time but can be quite frustrating and challenging. A lathe, pillar drill and some method for dividing and cutting wheels is essential. There are quite a few specific small tools you will also need but these are all easy to make yourself. I found John Wilding's books and plans to be an excellent starting point which cover pretty much every aspect of clockmaking in a home workshop. Another good book is Making an Eight Day Longcase Clock by Alan Timmins. I've now made half a dozen clocks over the years and am currently working on an English bracket clock with double fusees. I'm in Birmingham so if you need any advice or assistance do get in touch.

I've had a skim through the book and it's all metric and uses module 1 toothform. It's a PDF available from the creator's website. #notsponsored
http://briansworkshop.weebly.com/dark-lady.html

It's an http site so will show a warning going there but it's fine, just not been updated. It took a little while to arrive as it's not an automated system I think.

Thanks, I'll certainly keep that in mind, I'm thinking I may need all the help I can get .
The projects I'm planning are clockwork rather than clocks as such, but it is an almost total overlap really so I'll stick some of those books on the wishlist.

Hi John and welcome to the forum from another in the West Mids

H