Christmas 2015 build of a Grandfather Clock
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Intro:
The first Christmas in our new home brought with it a nice large Meccano room as I’d never had before. On top of that I had a storage area behind the room which afforded me an uncluttered work area with all my building stock close by. I had always admired in my grandfather those stories of him every winter on the outskirts of Lethbridge building a model from the ‘50’s Ten Set manual. I have pictures of some of those masterpieces from the late 50’s through to the 70’s when he began to slow down some.
Inspired by this and my new found model room, I had considered for a few months how I might continue in some small part that heritage he had started. Previously I simply didn’t have the room, as many likely find. Lots of Meccano but little left over space to actually build anything substantial.
I had successfully won an auction a couple of years ago for all of the pieces to an early 50’s Ten Set and once I had catalogued it realized by deduction that what I had was in fact a ~1949 9 Set and a ~1951 9a Set. There were even some pieces still attached to their 9a set stringing cards (Flat Girders) and the boxes containing the small bits were of course the dead giveaway. All these parts however had long lost their cartons and I had separated and put both sets together waiting to one day find some of these prized boxes and remarry it all. (Seriously, I was thinking that might happen…) Of course this hadn’t occurred yet, and therefore with my new found building space and an epiphany while reading a fellow Meccanoman’s offer on Spanner to sell some model plans he had acquired, it came to me. Among his offerings were the plans for Bert Love’s No.10 Grandfather Clock.
The first Christmas in our new home brought with it a nice large Meccano room as I’d never had before. On top of that I had a storage area behind the room which afforded me an uncluttered work area with all my building stock close by. I had always admired in my grandfather those stories of him every winter on the outskirts of Lethbridge building a model from the ‘50’s Ten Set manual. I have pictures of some of those masterpieces from the late 50’s through to the 70’s when he began to slow down some.
Inspired by this and my new found model room, I had considered for a few months how I might continue in some small part that heritage he had started. Previously I simply didn’t have the room, as many likely find. Lots of Meccano but little left over space to actually build anything substantial.
I had successfully won an auction a couple of years ago for all of the pieces to an early 50’s Ten Set and once I had catalogued it realized by deduction that what I had was in fact a ~1949 9 Set and a ~1951 9a Set. There were even some pieces still attached to their 9a set stringing cards (Flat Girders) and the boxes containing the small bits were of course the dead giveaway. All these parts however had long lost their cartons and I had separated and put both sets together waiting to one day find some of these prized boxes and remarry it all. (Seriously, I was thinking that might happen…) Of course this hadn’t occurred yet, and therefore with my new found building space and an epiphany while reading a fellow Meccanoman’s offer on Spanner to sell some model plans he had acquired, it came to me. Among his offerings were the plans for Bert Love’s No.10 Grandfather Clock.
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The original Version of the No.10 Grandfather Clock by Bert Love
If you have ever read the articles from the MM’s of the ‘70’s before the demise of Binn’s road by Bert Love, as well as many other publications he was involved in, including the Meccano System Compendium (the Meccano Bible!) By Bert and Jim Gamble, you will know that Mr. Love was a talented modeller. His No. 10 Grandfather Clock came from a challenge to put together a clock using every single piece that was in a No.10 set of the day. Now, the first thing of note is ‘of the day’, obviously most of us know the parts list in 1973 for a Ten Set was different than in the 60’s or 50’s. Certain adjustments would have to be made in my case to achieve the best results considering my choice of canvas. This was not all that hard to do; generally I only had to add the necessary components where they were absolutely required as a function of the mechanism. Now I had all I needed, I was on 3 weeks holiday for Christmas 2015 with family coming for the holidays nearer the actual event and had decided on a model and knew I had every required piece (thanks Bert, no figuring out a parts list) This is about the time I’d mentioned to my wife that I had plans to build a No 10 model during my holiday and I wanted to have it running in the dining room for Christmas dinner. The first question was of course, “How long will that take?” I assured her it would be 6 or 7 days tops (knowing I meant 8-10 hour days in the model room) She reminded me of all the other duties I had in the coming couple of weeks with decorating, putting up the tree, and a million other things, but gave me the go ahead on my word. Now you might be thinking that a crash is around the corner but you would actually be wrong in this case. Yes, I am as surprised as you, usually I would have had some insurmountable problem throw me off track with the build or pull me away from it so I couldn’t complete it in time. Somehow I managed to pull this one off, I think in no small part because there wasn’t the parts’ locating challenge and I could just proceed with the build. |
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My version of Bert Love's Grandfather Clock
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The build:
The MP120 plans are really an assemblage of most of what was written up in the articles in the MM by Mr. Love and therefore between you and me, you could actually build this model with all the articles and not have the complete plans. I would however not advise that as the plans are laid out in an orderly way which might not be apparent with a collection of articles and I might add, an addendum regarding the lunar phase mechanism. I won’t go through the build other than to point out a couple of key points to my experience. The clock is really broken into a few distinct accomplishments, the long case, the mechanism and the tinkering.. The long case is a no brainer, keep it straight, prevent ‘racking’ and sturdy up the area which you will be bolting the mechanism to. The face of this clock is also a well built up structure; I was especially impressed with the use of the Curved plates (199) along the sides to give the face depth. I think this is an example of what made this modeller so admired, ‘art meets mechanics’. |
Curved Plates
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If you noticed that I took the photo a few minutes past 9 o’clock you are on the right track, I was originally taking a video of the clock just moments before and the mechanism went past 9 while I was filming and most obviously did ‘not’ strike the hour as it should have. The reason for this insufficiency was that the instructions (MP120), as I had previously stated, are a compilation of the articles Bert had published in the Meccano Magazine all those years ago. These pages were snipped together and if you look to the advertisement for the sale of these plans from Howard Somerville you will note reference is made to the ‘missing photos’ of Bert’s original. If you read further you will note they had been lent them by John Evans to compile the plans and all is apparently complete.
Well try as I might to interpret the most complete instruction manual I could not understand the references made to certain numbered pinions and rods for the ‘Half-Hour Strike Mechanism’ described within. I made my best guesses but could not decipher the text satisfactorily.
This is where it gets interesting and in the end rather ‘obvious’ after the fact. I have had the honour of being able to converse with Jim Gamble from time to time as we have had occasional transactions over the years. I emailed him explaining my problem with Bert’s clock. He responded in his most courteous manner that he wasn’t sure he knew the direct answer but ‘would I possibly be interested in the original photos, articles, notes and letters which he has in his collection from his friend Bert!’
Well try as I might to interpret the most complete instruction manual I could not understand the references made to certain numbered pinions and rods for the ‘Half-Hour Strike Mechanism’ described within. I made my best guesses but could not decipher the text satisfactorily.
This is where it gets interesting and in the end rather ‘obvious’ after the fact. I have had the honour of being able to converse with Jim Gamble from time to time as we have had occasional transactions over the years. I emailed him explaining my problem with Bert’s clock. He responded in his most courteous manner that he wasn’t sure he knew the direct answer but ‘would I possibly be interested in the original photos, articles, notes and letters which he has in his collection from his friend Bert!’
The mechanism is a basic clock movement; other clocks I’ve built and looked at in Meccano have had quite similar design. This one has a simple escapement, nothing fancy there. Therefore this clock is likely not as dependable as others of a more advanced design.
That being said, I was more than impressed with the ease of aligning the pallets, escape wheel and impulse system. Once the clock was plumb (and I had the mechanism out about 5 times making each free), the clock just wanted to run. There was just one issue that I couldn’t resolve in the plans I had in front of me… can you tell from this?
Main Mechanism
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Chain Drive to Lunar Phase
and Hour Hand
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