Some Notes on a Transparent Wheel Skeleton Clock

The Beginnings

I would imagine a fair proportion of readers are familiar with the transparent or crystal wheel skeleton clock. The first example I came into contact with was at the Model Engineer Exhibition in London over 20 years ago, and I thought it the most impressive clock I had ever seen. The clock in question was from the workshop of John Wilding, and from this followed his book on constructing a Crystal Wheel Clock.

10 years later and on the other side of the world I came in contact with F.B. Royer Collard's book on skeleton clocks in a local library. As you may be aware this book has the origional Transparent Wheel Skeleton Clock on its cover. Up until this point in time I had not considered building clocks, my interests lay in the building of a rotary aero engine or Stirling hot air engines. I soon decided that building this clock was not only an interesting project, but the end product was an item of use and beauty. Shortly after my wife found a copy of the book by John Wilding and the solution to a Fathers Day present was solved, and a journey into horology was begun.

Shortly after buying the book we decided to embark on owner building a house, so horology was not about to take over my life. Always keen for a challenge the block we purchased was 40 acres of mountain top; where the flatest accessable area was on a 1:21/2 slope. This tends to make life a little tricky for building, very tricky in fact when it decides to rain for 40 days and 40 nights. I became rather paranoid at the sound of rain on the iron roof of our tempory home, while the mists swirled around creating an erie misty moisty gloom.

Click on the image to continue