Making a Clock Wheel for an Antique Clock - Start to Finish!

[Music] hi and welcome back uh in this video i'm going to be making a replacement wheel for an antique bracket clock the wheel that's currently fitted to the clock is a replacement already as i'll explain in the video so this video is going to cover all the processes involved start to finish from making a for making a replacement wheel in a sort of antique style so i hope you enjoy and if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe thanks very much okay so here we've got the top end of the chime train of this clock which has got a replacement wheel previously replaced wheel in it and that wheel you can see quite clearly doesn't really match very well i mean they've made an attempt at the crossings but it's not really in keeping two glaringly three glaringly obvious things are one the sort of soldered up mess of the collet here two is the shape of the teeth which are very modern curved root tooth form and three is the collet which is completely the the wrong shape i don't know where they've arrived at that shape from because it's not seen anywhere else in the clock but that's what it's got so anyway the client did want this wheel to be replaced with one that's more in keeping even though it does actually work but even so it's part of the integrity of the clock if you like to have a a wheel that looks a lot better than this one as it's already been replaced you don't have to worry about the originality of the part because it's not like we're condemning an original part uh it is actually a replacement already so what i'm going to do in this video is run through the process of making a replacement wheel i'm going to be making it using cast brass as the original wheels are so hopefully it will match in quite nicely when we finished this is the pinion that the wheel is going to mesh with it's a six leaf pinion and if we get a uh thornton's cutter you can see here these are off the shelf cutters that are commercially available or logical cutters we can present one of those cutters to the teeth and it fits very nicely so that cutter is a 0.5 module for a six tooth pinion so we'll put that to one side and go and have a look at how the maths actually works out and that will give us an idea as to which cutter we're going to use i'm just going to measure the center distances of the existing holes because obviously we want to use the original holes in the clock there's no question that we would move the holes so i'm just i've already set this up measuring a set the center distance and that center distance computes to 24.6 so we'll add that to our equations okay so we can measure the od of the pinion which comes out of about 4.6 4.6 for the od we know it's six leaves now we think it might be a 0.5 module but we'll work out what it should be i got fed up with doing the maths every single time for pinions we only use a small variety of different numbers of leaves in horology and there's a spread of of cutters module sizes so i just worked them all out in a little spreadsheet here so i've got this cheat sheet so if we have a look we are pretty sure that it's being cut with something that's somewhere near the cutter size of a module 0.5 which for a six leaf pinion theoretically works out at 3.86 so the pinion is cut quite a long way over size isn't conforming to theory it's actually cut closer to a 0.6 module if we get a 0.6 cutter it will present to it but it's way too big pinion leaves are much fatter than a 0.6 wood would give in the cut so pinion's not conforming to theory however that doesn't mean that we can't make the wheel work so back to the wheel have a look at the od of the existing wheel which was working remember so we shouldn't disregard this just because it doesn't look very nice so we're getting the od out at about 47.09 so next thing we need is the number of teeth 72. now the wheel itself is miles away from any kind of theory because it's cut with a round bottom cutter of a strange type so if we just have a look at the thornton's cutter that's a 0.6 which won't go in because of the round bottom form but he's actually not far off filling the the tooth uh 0.55 is getting really loose in there so we know that 0.5 is going to be way off so i'm suspecting that 0.6 is probably what we want on this wheel but let's carry on and see where we get to with the theory right so the theory is module equals od which we have over the number of teeth which we have plus 2.76 which is the factor for a wheel so that equals 47.09 over 74.8 72 plus 2.76 74.76 equals 0.629 0.629 so the closest module there is an 0.6 so i was guessing that a 0.6 for the wheel was probably going to be something like however the fact that the pinion has been cut essentially over size or correctly sized for a 0.6 but then a smaller module has been has been used or it wouldn't have been a module it would have been a fly cutter but a smaller size and theoretically correct has been used that means that in we could really do with some smaller teeth for it to mesh nicely so we want to use the bigger a bigger module so i'm going to suggest actually that i cut the wheel stepped up to a 0.6 sorry 0.65 cutting it with a slightly bigger cutter that will give us slightly smaller teeth which should mesh quite nicely with that pinion this is the old wheel mounted with the original pinion in the depthing tool i've set the center distance of the depthing tool to the clock plates so it's actually demonstrating pretty much what is happening inside the clock and it runs i mean the clock was working like this so the wheel does work but i was just checking it just to see where we're at in terms of engagement so that i can decide upon the od that i want to make the new wheel because this wheel again is not conforming to theory if you do the maths and looking at the engagement i don't think i could really get away with it being any deeper than that and i think the mesh is going to improve by having thinner teeth anyway so i'm going to make it to basically the same od as this but i'm going to cut it with different module cutter just one thing last thing about arriving at the size of the cutter that we're going to use uh we measured the center distance at 24.65 we can do is we can just have a look and see what the theory works out at between that wheel and pinion we've already established that the pinion is not conforming to theory so it's not going to be exact but in order to do that for the center distance to work at theoretical center distance we'd put the number of teeth at the wheel added to the number of teeth of the pinion or leaves of the pinion divide that by two and then we would times that by the module so if i times that by point six five it comes out at 25.35 so it gives us a theoretical center distance slightly bigger than uh than what we've got in reality but we can i think it's in the right ballpark uh if we have a look at point six is 23.4 so that's under so 0.65 is slightly over 0.6 is slightly under that makes sense that we're in the kind of ballpark for a non-theoretically conforming wheel and pinion in around the 0.65 module range so now that we've established what cutter we're going to use the next thing to do we know the od of the wheel is just to work out what thickness we're going to use in terms of material this one's measuring up at just under two millimeters uh however it is quite quite chunky it is on the quarter train though so maybe that's okay but the pinwheel of the strike side which is the equivalent wheel in the train is 1.25 so i think just a little bit thinner than that if we have a look at the wheel that drives the chime barrel that which is the another wheel which this has to mesh with that's measuring up at 1.78 so yeah okay 1.8 might be a yeah 1.8 might be a suitable replacement now that i pulled that wheel out let's just have a look and see what the tooth form of that looks like because these two have to mesh so the wheel of the chime barrel if we present a cutter to it this is the cutter that was proposing using which is 0.65 module slightly sloppy but it's not too bad let's just zoom in on that okay so there's a better shot for you to see it's not far off i'm sure it will certainly mesh okay but it's slightly sloppy it will give a slightly fatter tooth than that one now the if we get the next module up again which is a 0.7 that one even goes in and that one fits quite snugly but the the wider the module the bigger the size the longer the cuts and the longer the tooth will be every time and as you can see this cutter even though the width is right is really too long it's barely barely putting a curve these aren't full form teeth if you notice they haven't really got the sort of point of the bishop's hat because they're this is an old clock however the 0.65 will give the start of the curve especially if i just cut it slightly deeper than these so it'll be slightly longer teeth than these and it'll it'll will give the start of the curve and then i can just uh tidy up the tops of the teeth with a file if i need to but we'll see i think we'll see how 0.65 goes we can always put a 0.7 through it later if we need to but that's what i'm going to start off with right so material this is cast brass sheet as you can see it's just raw casting it's something different to the how you would buy brass these days as a rolled brass or however they produce what i would call modern brass this is what i would call yellow cloth makers brass and this is the quite a similar material to what would have been used by the original maker the thing about casp brass is it needs to be work hardened to an extent if i was to just make the wheel out of this it would be fine and it would work fine but it wouldn't be as strong as it perhaps could be so what i'm going to do this is not the thickest piece of brass i would like to start with actually but yeah we've got just under two and a half mil there so what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut a bit out of this and then i'm going to hammer it and work harden it and reduce it down to where perhaps well we'll see where we get to but perhaps about two millimeters something like that give me just enough room to face it off and get it down to perhaps about 1.7 something like that as our as our finished thickness of the wheel after it's after it's been faced off [Music] well this is the old table of my pantograph which as you can see has had a really hard life it had the extended table and i use it with a with a small table because that's that's all i need for for my needs and as this has already been abused i don't mind abusing it more so don't chastise me for using it as an amber you can see a dish starting up already as the metal starts to move around so i can feel that already we're starting to get [Music] that is starting to get harder you can you can actually hear it so let's just see where we're at so it's about 2.4 so we haven't actually lost too much from it yet which also means we haven't compressed it too much yet so might give it a bit more abuse and see see if we can make it a little bit thinner 2.3 now so we are making it a bit thinner what i've done is just to roughly mark the where the teeth are going to be to make sure that i can ensure that we've got a relatively hard bit of material where the teeth are [Music] definitely sounding hard now so i've got it relatively flat i've got it compressed i think work hardened enough for this for this wheel and i'm now just going to give it a bit of the old layout fluid the old blue daikum and the next stage will be to just mark out the blank so let's wait for that to dry so the od of the wheel is going to be 47.1 and uh i'm going to make the blank to 48. let's set the dividers 24 and go over and mark the wheel so [Music] [Music] wow [Music] so so so okay alright so so okay so i've machined the blank and i've i machined it in the other shorebird 102 and moved it over to this machine because this one is set up with the gear cutting equipment the concentricity between the two machines is is usually very good but i think this particular holder is not as quite as accurate as it could be so it means when changing it between machines it's actually the position of the holder in the collet rather than the difference in concentricity between the machines so i've had a little bit of a play just trying different positions of the holder in the collet and i've got it down to reasonably yeah reasonably accurate i mean it's only just over 0.01 which for this type of wheel is going to be perfectly sufficiently concentric if i do find that i need to make it even more concentric i can always bore it out in the sixth drawer after the wheel is cut but i think this is is perfectly sufficient if i want to make a really really concentric wheel then i would not swap the machines i would do all the work in the same machine so i would turn the blank it held in the collet that it's going to be cutting without moving it and then you're going to be guaranteed absolute concentricity but for this one i'm i'm happy with how it is and we'll proceed to cutting the teeth [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so as was always a possibility the teeth cut with the 0.65 module cutter are a little bit fat you'll notice that i've left a land i haven't gone to a point that's for another reason i want to have a slightly rounded top to the tooth to match him with the rest of the clock but the teeth are slightly fat it does it does work but i'd like a slightly better mesh with that pinion with fat teeth fat leaves if you look at the wheel that it engages with which gives you an idea of what the original wheel would perhaps have been like those teeth are slightly thinner so what i'm going to do next is to use the 0.7 cutter which is the next size up and i'm going to just uh pass the 0.7 cutter through as you can see it's just it won't go in it'll take a cut so that'll make all the teeth slightly thinner and i may just cut very slightly deeper as well just to put a little bit more of a radius on the top and then the final radius i'm going to touch him with a file so that it's not coming up to a complete point and that should give us a wheel which is more or less a replacement for the original okay so i've recut the wheel with the 0.7 module cutter which has given a thinner tooth which is what we wanted and it is engaging reasonably well but what i'm going to do now because i've got this set to the center distance of the plates and it is a bit deep for my liking and i've also had to cut to give the almost a full tooth form so what i'm going to do now is to just top the wheel in the lathe and then i'm just going to file the rounded top form of the of the tooth it in by hand and that should give us our final tooth form and then we can proceed to crossing out the wheel might just be able to make out that at the root of each of the teeth on this original wheel there's a little nick and there's also a ring that runs around both sides of the wheel so we're going to just introduce those little file necks and we're also going to put the ring in to make our wheel look as the original one does uh um alright so so uh so so so [Music] [Music] ah [Laughter] oh [Laughter] oh oh um we're homing in on completion of the wheel now we've got it cut we've got it crossed out we've got it basically uh finished off and the next job is to actually mount it onto the arbor so if you look at this original wheel you can see that the shape of the collet is reasonably specific okay so the next stage will be to soft solder that in place [Music] now we've established that the wheel is in the right orientation between the plates it's time to fix it onto that arbor and to do that we'll use what's known as a spin riveter a spin riveter is basically a piece of hardened steel with a hole in it and then a domed uh domed area and the domed section is basically going to fold over the material it's sort of muddling the material over which is doing the same thing as riveting but instead of hitting it with it you're applying a pressure whilst the material is turning and it's doing the same thing so that's just going to spread the material into the wheel but before we do that i'm just going to put a slight bevel on the inside or on the wheel here i'm just going to cut a slight bevel and put some little nicks file mix for the material to spread into to stop the wheel from turning it doesn't need to be much because i always add a little bit of loctite green loctite as well which is the modern way of doing it which to be perfectly honest the green knob tight alone is enough to hold it all together so you can see i've just put a very slight uh chamfer there and you might just be able to make out i've put a few little file nicks within the chamfer just on the edge of the hole and that will give the spreading material somewhere to go that will bind it all up solid uh so and that's it that's all there is to it that's spin riveting it's a little bit of graver work was the final uh step that enabled me to shape the collet to match the rest of the clock you can see an original collet and then if we zoom in there's the replacement collet so much more in keeping with the rest of the clock so there we have it between the plates and it's engaging really meshes really beautifully it meshes a lot better between the plates than it did actually in the depthing tool but i'm really happy with that as a as a finished uh finished job it matches in with the rest of the train really nicely and i think it's a much more in keeping wheel to to replace that previous replaced part okay so here we have the finished part well i'm really happy with the result we've got the correct looking teeth we've got the correct looking wheel we've got the correct looking collet it's all mounted nice and true and runs beautifully in the clock so i'm really happy that that is a uh a really nice replacement part and i'm happy with the uh with the finish there's a little bit of uh final finishing work to uh to carry out which i'll do as i clean the rest of the clock but for now i hope you'll agree that that is a much better replacement wheel okay i hope you enjoyed that um i know it's a bit of a long video but i think we covered quite a lot of ground so if you're interested in the individual processes what i'm going to do is i'm going to link the the points in the video below in the description so you can click on those individually so spin riveting cutting the teeth the maths you can click on them individually i hope you enjoyed the video uh please tell all your friends like the video share it far and wide please don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already subscribed to the channel i'm homing in on the magic 1000 subscribers mark and i'm really hoping to to get to that point in the very near future and you can help by clicking the subscribe there and click the bell icon i'd really appreciate it i'll see you on the next video thank you

Channel: Tommy Jobson

Views: 105,018

Rating: 4.892869 out of 5

Keywords: #clockmaker, #clockmaking, #clockrestoration, #restoration, #restorer, #antiques, #machines, #antiquerestoration, #clock, #workshop, #lathe, #millingmachine, #schaublin, #aciera, #tradesecrets, #brass, #manufacture, #handtool, #workwithhands, #craftsman, #clockrepair, #machining

Id: XjGQLns7VHk

Length: 46min 35sec (2795 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020