Thread: G'Day from Sydney

G'day all, Happy New Year,

By way of introduction I expect I am among a certain type of aspiring woodworker who must introduce themselves here regularly enough from time to time. My ambition far exceeds both my skill and tools but there is rather more determination and patience than I had in my younger days so I am going to go right ahead and get involved in the discussion around my interest without fear of failure - because to me the only failure in this project would be to not make any attempt to finally go ahead.

I have always had a fascination for watches and clocks. My grandfather on my father's side was a genuine man of science and engineering - a senior Navy officer schooled in the oldest and proudest traditions of navigation, astronomy and horology.

He had steadier hands than I and worked on pocket watches some of which I have inherited.

My grandfather on my mother's side was a marvelous craftsman in wood and metal doing astonishing inlays, dovetails and complicated secret boxes as well as the all important billy carts, rocking horses and block sets that fit into a box like a cnc machined puzzle.

Anyway, I started to learn things from both these men but ended up with a life more toward computing and the academic.

For some time I have however wanted to make a clock from wood and reading the story of Harrison's navigational H series clocks in Longitude was an inspiration and I set about finding plans and, having a basic understanding of the movements and mechanics of gears and clockwork I can see that a simple wood gear clock is far from impossible in this age of machinery available to the home handyman.

I have a very well setup workspace and quite a lot of woodworking tools but never developed any fine skills - probably a sawhorse was the most complicated thing I have made beyond a gate I built after deriving the angles with trig - something that delighted me more than I can readily convey - the fact that it functioned and still does perfectly to this day is a source of still more delight.

Anyway I want to get the basic minimum tools required to cut the gears for a simple clock and then take the time and have the patience to make them well enough for them to work.

I have also experience in building and setting up model helicopters where the gear train and backlash, mesh and shimming of everything along with dialing in to thousandth's is required for a good machine so in time I should be able to develop the skills.

So, there it is. I will now go about reading and researching but I guess I need to start with some basic tools for this kind of job - I have a very good drill press but no scroll saw... So that may well be where I start.

Thanks for the community resource here guys and thanks in advance for any and all feedback or advice.

Will