Thread: My Bird of Paradise

After almost 9 months my Clayton Boyer design Bird of Paradise clock is finally finished, on the wall and ticking reliably.

Video here

Apart from the obvious issue of questionable accuracy on my part the biggest problem was the quality of the ply I was using which made it almost impossible to cut the cogs without major chipping.
Baltic Birch ply is not readily available here in southern Tasmania. In the end I got some Gaboon marine ply from Andrew at Denman Marine (I believe he is a member of this forum). I can strongly recommend this product. To date I have replaced 5 of the cogs/pinions and have not yet come across any voids. Even pushing the speed of cutting and bluntness of the scroll saw blade there has been no chipping.

The clock is running on 3.8kg of weight (8.4lbs) slightly more than suggested in the plans. I am hoping that as everything beds in the friction will reduce and allow a reduction in the weight. So far the accuracy seems to be pretty good - within a minute or two a day.

Next project - Galileo's Bicycle.


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Philip.