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Our Clockwinder’s Job

Every once and a while I get a bee in my bonnet and start looking things up. Today my bee was clock towers.  Ever pondered how much work your Clockwinder is doing any given night in the city? 

Exhibit A: 

Fabulous words learned from this video as applied to clocks: reflector and snail. Amount of Winding: 90 turns for time and 330 turns for the striker (gasp!). And note winding lasts a full seven days. Unlike say

Exhibit B: 

This one doesn’t say how many turns of the barrel it would take to wind it full, but it does say that a full wind at Westminster apparently only lasts a few days and is still manually engaged three days a week. Part of the westminster mechanism (much to the joy of its winders, I’m sure) is auto-wound, but another part must be wound by hand and all of it needs to be engaged by actual people walking up there to do it. Do notice all the pulling and pushing it takes just to prepare the clock for winding. In fact, just watch it a few times, because clockwork is sexy. 

Still, these guys make it look so easy to wind. So, how hard can it be?

Exhibit C: 

Just go ahead and skip to about 36 seconds on that one and watch the guy’s face as he pushes the mechanism around. That looks hard. Reaaallly hard. And that mechanism is tiny compared to Ben’s. Imagine having to wind Ben, by yourself, three days a week.

What was the point of this again? Oh! There wasn’t one. I just wanted to share a few clock links.  Also, build more clocks and build them BIGGER! Tenk obviously isn’t working hard enough. 

Just because I can, here’s one last link (caution, escapement pron): 

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4 Comments

  1. Yang Moreau Yang Moreau May 5, 2011

    C looks like part of the difficulty may come from the height you have to wind it at. If it were lower, you could put more of your weight into the push and pull.

  2. Victor1st Mornington Victor1st Mornington May 5, 2011

    *decides to make a multi bell tower for the hotel….just to make Tenks job that little bit longer…*

    *grins*

  3. Orpheus Angkarn Orpheus Angkarn May 5, 2011

    *Looks up and wonders why the clock hands seem to be moving the wrong direction…* “Mr. Tenk, Someone has been messing with your clock…. I bet that infernal reptile had something to do with it….”

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