How long will it take? "I don't know," is the simple reply.Īs far as Kevin is aware, this first time a wooden clock this size has been created. That means lugging components up into the tower, the weights, bearings, shafts and hooking them all together. Now there's only the job of installing it. "An awful lot of prototypes that didn't work." Kevin has spent about the last two years building the clock and has fond memories of keeping warm by the pot belly fire, consuming all the stuff ups. The clock and tower will be part of a new main street development which has just received substantial funding from the federal government. At four metres long, the pendulum will beat once every two seconds and the hour wheel will take one turn every 12 hours.īecause everything happens so slowly, parts don't wear out so Kevin is not too worried about having to take bits out for maintenance and repair. The pendulum is fashioned in one piece so the back wall of the mezzanine will be open to the last to allow it to go in. Then there's the birds which use them to perch. For instance, the Westminster clock minute hand is over 13 feet long, so the wind can impede progress. That increase is designed to compensate for all the things which affect clock mechanisms.
"Put in enough to make it go and then add 20 per cent." What determines a clock's accuracy is the pendulum. The drive weight is nearly 200 kilos it's a lot to make it go." Not that Kevin has to worry about lugging that weight up the stairs, The piece will go up as a hollow shell, he explains and the weight poured into it probably lead shot or something similar.Īnything can be used as a weight and the amount doesn't have to be accurate, says Kevin. "So we have actually got to build the clock into the tower, to support it all to make it rigid. It's huge." The largest gear is 1.05m or nearly 42" in diameter, he says, with 22 gears made of sheoak. "It's too heavy and it's so big it's nearly six metres tall.
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So big that Kevin has had to shift from his original plan to install the clock in the tower. Indeed, perhaps the biggest ever built, believes its creator, Kevin Bird. The biggest all wood clock in the world will adorn the new Timewood centre in the main street of Nannup in south west Western Australia.
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