The Clock Is Ticking.........

It really is! Grace from TreeFeathers sent me a package full of watch parts that a friend had given her. I have to thank her for doing this. I needed watch parts for the Clockwork cottage. Thank you so much, Grace!

I messed around with them last night to see what I had. I tried to take them apart even more than they were. I did manage to get a few more pieces separated from the bodies of the watches. I was always one of those kids that liked to take things apart to see what made them tick....No pun intended.

This morning, I started trying to put together a wall clock for the cottage. I started by gluing a watch that I had to the back of one of the larger plates from one of the watches with E-6000 glue. The stuff stinks to high heaven, but it is great. It will glue just about anything to anything else.

First I just dry fitted the wheels at random until I found an arrangement that I liked. Then I just, by trial and error, put other pieces around the plate, in the holes.

Did I mention that I learned something new? I found out that I would be a very grouchy watchmaker! Most of those tiny parts are magnetic!!! Everything kept sticking to my tweezers and my needle nosed pliers. I had to fight to get them to stay where I wanted them on the clock. They kept hanging on for dear life. Most irritating when I wanted them on the clock and not on the tips of the tweezers.

I did finally manage to convince those nasty little parts that they didn't want to hang on to the tweezers and that they would be happier living on the face of the clock. It was a struggle. I was tempted to call Tessie for help, but then thought better of it.

I am pretty pleased with the piece. It's not bad for a first attempt . It looks very Steampunkish, even though none of the cog wheels mesh with one another and I have no idea what goes where on a real clock. At least it was fun after I got the hang of making the tiny parts stay where they belonged.

I know it's not to every one's taste, but I like it. It will probably go either in the living room or the workroom in the cottage. Probably the living room because I want at least a bit of Steampunk in every room. Yes, it is running. Yes, I can get to the back to put in a new battery. No......It isn't powered by steam!

I got the book "Steampunk" from Amazon a few days ago and I'm getting some ideas about where I want to go with this from the short stories. It's all fiction, but even the introduction was interesting. Did you know that in the "Dime Novels" from the 1860 forward they were writing about things like steam operated ROBOTS and in one story, an "Electric Horse"? I find that amazing. I didn't realize that robots went back that far. I am getting an education and having fun at the same time. What could be better than that?

Back to the watch parts.

See you tomorrow.