The Oakes Family

Building a traditional mechanical clock from scratch has been a desire of mine for some time now. I have always built things - a house, a sports car, a hovercraft - but nothing of the level of precision and accuracy as a clock. Learning and applying the many new skills of the clock builder will hopefully provide not only a challenge, but also something of lasting value that can be enjoyed by my family and those of later generations.I have chosen fairly simple model to start with, a regulator clock designed by J.M. Huckabee. The plates are made of aluminum, with bronze inserts and it is powered by two weights through a Graham deadbeat escapement.

As of October 2006, I can find no online build diary or notes on the constuction of this model, so hopefully my errors and discoveries can help other clock builders who plan to follow this journey. I plan to document the entire process month by month - if you see something that doesn’t look right, please let me know.

I’ll keep and approximate tally of the hours used and dollars spent on materials at the end of each month. Tools, I’m not going to sum - that would be worrying, and besides, you can use them again and again.

David Oakes