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     Photo Submitted by, and Copyright of :- J P Zajac.

I am wondering if someone can supply me with some
information on this magnificent structure.

Although this website is primarily about follies and monuments, I do have a soft spot for a good clock tower, as I am always drawn to looking at any tower, be it folly or clock. The mechanism inside these towers is very often a work of art, but they are seen by very few people, take a look at this  where you will see many a good example.

Some time back I found myself with a large collection of gear wheels from motorbikes, and used these to build a turrent clock [ to give it the correct name ] It used a pin wheel escapement, see here   as these are relatively easy to construct, and I made individual axis [ correctly called arbors ] for each of the gear wheels.
The lathe I used was a massive old belt driven thing, last used to make shells in the Crimean war I would imagine. Due to excessive wear, accuracy was not a strong point with it.

Normally when building a clock you machine the wheels to have the correct number of teeth for the length of pendulum you are using, but instead I had to create the pendulum to the correct length to suit the gear ratios that the wheels gave me.
Did it run, - yes - but with atrocious timekeeping though, the best you could hope for was an accuracy of within about 5 mins a day. This was caused by the high amount of friction between the individual wheels, which remember were designed for a motorbike, and the arbors which were running in tiny inefficient ball bearings.
It also rewound itself electrically about every hour, which I never noticed during the day or through-out the night, but other family members did. Also instead of a tick tock, you had more of a clunk click every 1.25 seconds, so it was obvious its days were numbered.

     Photo Submitted by, and Copyright of :- J P Zajac.

Co-Ords: 520700 160700 / TQ 207607   

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