hey it's sean from tested uh back with another show and tell of uh one of my many hobbies
today we're doing clocks um i have long been a fan of clocks and watches uh particularly mechanical
uh mechanisms and i kind of went down a rabbit hole over the last few months of the pandemic and
started collecting uh interesting clock mechanisms and so i thought we'd take a look at a few today
um and and and look at how they work and uh what i've been doing with them so
a lot of you may be familiar this is a pretty you know uh standard throwback to the 80s 70s and 80s
the flip clock uh you see him a lot you even see the the flip mechanisms like on giant like
train and bus uh depot billboards like that type of thing and i just i just feel like there's such
a neat way of working and um and what i've been doing is buying up these kind of old ones that are
kind of ugly on the outside but pretty on the inside and i've been making uh new housings for
them to show them off so so let's let's take a look at probably the one that most people are
familiar with uh the flip clock so voila the the insides we've taken this kind of homely yellowed
old clock and and my plan is to rehouse this so let's put the knob on here so i can kind of
show how it works um it's it's a neat mechanism it basically had these little flip panels that
just flipped down as the hour passes it's it's so effective and simple but such an elegant awesome
mechanism and what surprised me about this is the these came uh like became prominent in probably
the 60s japan started making a lot of these flip clocks but i i was looking into the history for
the show until today and it turns out the first flip clock is actually documented in 1890 which is
crazy because that's that's when you're thinking of like big or elaborate you know intricate scroll
work clocks with like enameled faces and that's pretty much what this clock was except it did use
a flip mechanism very similar to uh what is here and they didn't they didn't really catch on and um
so the tech was there and the and the method was there just nobody really did much with it until
uh particularly japan started really cranking these out in the uh 60s and they would all be
similar setups to this sometimes the the little tiles be a little bit different arrangement or
or bigger arrangements and they very often had a little tiny neon
lamp to light them up very similar to the nixie clock here so these are neon tubes
and this is a little neon light that would uh i'll light them up at night a lot of the times
and and just you take this like kind of ho-hum homely on the outside clock and you get in the
inside and then you you re-house them as at least what i've been doing because i really appreciate
actually seeing the mechanism work um and there are uh don't get me wrong there are some of these
clocks that are beautiful on the outside and really kitschy looking and very very collectible
and i've been trying to pick up cheap ones that are are cool on the inside so flip clock um we got
another one here very similar and often they're in that like horrible faux wood grain housing
and a lot of them are really beat up on the outside so it just makes sense to like take what's
neat on the inside and put it on the outside like i've done here and basically i've just gotten a
acrylic display case and i laser cut uh vent holes and cord holes because the one
thing with these clocks is they tend to run really hot and i was worried about them um
getting enough air circulation so i did a little laser cutting and that turned out well
um but this is a good follow-up this guy that i just picked up this is a
actually this precedes the flip clocks but you don't see these quite as often and not many people
are as familiar these these are cyclometers because they work on these spinning wheels so kind
of similar to a flip clock but but even simpler and the neat thing about these is they're all
just geared so that each wheel has a little catch that will drive the next wheel so as the hours and
minutes pass it will automatically catch on to the next one and advance it at the appropriate time
and um these guys were made like like starting in the 30s and uh they were made like from the 30s up
through at least the 70s and 80s and they're they were all in different kinds of housing so this one
came in a really ugly uh uh actually would in case it was all beat up uh so i took it out i
did a little work on it um it's interesting because they have these these fly wheels
that you can see spinning normally these have a cover on them but i've taken it off so that you
can see the mechanism and a lot of times they're seized up from years of sitting on the shelf so i
had to do a little re-lubrication a little oiling in strategic places with some sewing machine
oil um and did a little cleanup on these but otherwise this mechanism is pretty straightforward
the problem you run into with these guys is this motor here is it's sealed it actually is
it is soldered shut the whole air on the perimeter so something goes wrong in the gearbox
you're kind of in trouble but a lot of times just a little clean and lubrication will
get these guys going again and the neat thing about the cyclometers is the exact same pneumocron
which is a brand name mechanism was used in dozens of manufacturers clocks so this is from
a different manufacturer this is yet another manufacturer but all the same uh new micron
mechanism inside with the same exact motor and then the really interesting thing is to set these
a lot of times you literally just reach through the face and turn them by hand and um some of
them would have holes in the bottom that you could like reach up and and set them as well so this guy
i haven't decided if i'm gonna paint the housing or uh put it in a plastic case but um i think that
they're neat knee clocks but my favorite um out of this style like this air of clocks is this crazy
guy that i found that runs on film strips i had no idea i thought this was a flip clock when i bought
it because it's just the black and white face and when i got it it wasn't running and i took
it apart i was like whoa this is i've never seen anything this just continual plastic loops there
are actual little sprocket wheels in here that engage with the teeth and then move it around
and i the the thing that i really like about it is because i have a film and tv background and
it runs just like a film camera with the sprockets and the teeth which i think is just so cool and uh
this guy what you'll run to a lot is a lot of little tiny plastics may age and get brittle and
then snap off so this had uh the wheel mechanism that's going from the motor uh basically just
snapped off so i i just took it apart cleaned it put a little screw in place of that peg and it
started driving the whole mechanism and the neat thing is this is also backlit so you can see the
strips at night but this is one of my favorites and the the other thing that i didn't realize
is how that these often often worked is they a lot of them were alarm clocks and they have a um
basically a piezoelectric buzzer in them that would uh act as the alarm mechanism
right i think it's cool so um yeah so so these are worth picking up you can get them at like
goodwill and thrift stores and ebay and a lot of times they might need a little cleanup or work but
they can often often be made to work so um you know check them out flip clocks film strip clocks
and the numeron cyclometers and we'll come back and take a look at some of
these other oddballs that i have in the collection uh next show and tell