March was pretty much taken up with fixing some things that I had been putting off for a while.
I knew it would require a fair amount of disassembly to get to the areas that needed attention and then the arduous task of cleaning and putting it all back together.
I wasn’t satisfied with a couple of the parts that I had made early on in the project and wanted to replace them.
It is like anything else you do where after getting familiar with processes and developing a technique, it then becomes easier to see how they can be better and gaining the skill to do it.
My silver soldering has gotten better after two years of working on the clock along with realizing that a different approach to an issue will produce a better product.
I needed to drill and tap some holes for the next stage and couldn’t do it with parts in the way.
This also gave me the opportunity to correct some issues that had reared their ugly head every now and then.
I’m not an engineer or purport to be one. So many of the things I do on this clock are from theory and then verifying it works by making the pieces.
Now and then I discover a situation that I had not planned on.
Things like a ball stopping on the track say maybe once every other Tuesday. Trying to figure out why that happens can be perplexing. Is it just a dirty ball, dirty track or some harmonic causing the hesitation enough to stop the ball. Usually it is dirt of some sort. The dome will be important to keep things clean. Once finished I will replace all the balls with new and only handle them with white gloves to keep the salt and acid for skin from etching their surface.
Also a part that worked fine in the beginning, was possibly bent from other work and is now causing an issue.
Anyway, a number of things were waiting to be addressed and it was a good opportunity to address them.
The photos show how far I had to disassemble the clock to get to the section that needed the holes.
Taking it apart and re-assembly, which that ability was planned from the beginning, then making the changes, took me the better part of March.
The upside here is the photos will give you a chance to see a little deeper into the clock and maybe if you have been following the blog, answer a question or two.
Regardless, the project is now better for the time spent and changes made.
Now it is time to get those 12 o’clock balls released so they get out of the way of the 1 o’clock ball arrival.