Thursday, February 14, 2013

Test Stand (Video)

I just shot a video of the current clocks on my test stand and I thought I'd share it on YouTube (since I have quite a few clockies on it), and with my Clockmaking Blog buddies (that's you guys!)



I will probably go over more details about the custom built clock test stand in the future, but here's a quick breakdown:

The main part of the stand is two rectangular frames that are glued together in each corner with a lap joint. The rest of the stand is simply two bottom legs (each made of two pieces glued together), and two upper braces. The entire thing is designed with the use of knock-down hex key bolts, and can be stored away fairly easily. The stand is also equipped with adjustable feet on the bottom. I made a set of 6 notched cleats that sit on the top, and can be used to hold seatboards or to support loose longcase type movements. In addition, movements that are back-mounted can be set up on boards (as in the case of the Vienna movement on the right) and clamped to the vertical rails.

At maximum capacity, you could probably have as much as 4 clocks on top, and up to two smaller movements per vertical rail, so 12 movements? I probably wouldn't ever need to set up that many at a time, though.

The main frames are 36" x 48" which is a decent size for general use. It could easily be made wider. The wood I used is unfinished White Ash that was barely milled from 4/4 stock (so the pieces are between 7/8" and 15/16" thick). Ash was used because it's an incredibly strong yet incredibly cheap hardwood. You could easily put about 300 Lbs on this stand with no issues.

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