UGears: Aero Wall Clock with Pendulum (320pc)

The time has come! For years, we've been hearing the same question again andagain from our loyal customers: ""Can Ugears create a working clock model kit,one that actually keeps accurate time?"" A working mechanical wooden clock haslong been our #1 ""most-requested"" new design. Your dream has also been ourdream, and our team of dedicated Ugears engineers and designers has been workinghard to bring this shared dream into reality. Finally, the wait is over. Ugearsis proud to present the Aero Clock, a fully-functioning DIY wall clock withpendulum.

The Aero Clock isn't just a 3D wooden mechanical model, or a prettyshowpiece. The Ugears Clock is an actual working clock that you can buildyourself, mount to a wall, wind up, then watch as the seconds, minutes, andhours tick by. The Aero Clock is an ingenious puzzle and DIY clock mechanism,unlike any other clock. It is a lovely piece of precise engineering that revealsthe workings of a weighted pendulum clock to builders and viewers alike. Likeall Ugears models, it also has that extra touch of whimsy, to captivate andcharm our growing legion of fans.

This simple-yet-elegant Ugears clock is driven by the force of gravitypulling down a weighted bag (you can fill the bag with sand or salt). Raise thebag on its pulleys to wind the clock. As the weight slowly descends, it rotatesa drive gear, which then rotates an escape wheel through a reducer. The clockfeatures an adjustable weighted pendulum which interacts with the escape wheelthrough the steady tick-tock of the anchor mechanism. You can adjust theclock's ticking action to the second, by sliding the pendulum's top and bottomweights. The reducer also transmits rotation to an hour disc and a minute disc.One of the interesting features of our Aero Clock is that time is not read withrotating hands on a clock face, but rather a fixed pointer indicates time on theslowly-rotating, numbered hour and minute discs. Moreover, these discs rotatecounterclockwise-did you know that before standardization, some clocks movedclockwise while others moved counterclockwise? In the role of ""cuckoo"" theUgears Aero Clock features a model hot air balloon. The suspended balloonrapidly descends when the hour strikes, then slowly rises again over the courseof the next hour.

The theme of the Aero Clock is early aeronautics. Take a trip back in time tothe dawn of flight and the ""balloonomania"" that seized France and England in1783 on the occasion of the first free aerial voyage in a balloon. This wasfollowed two years later by the first aerial crossing of the English Channel byintrepid aeronauts Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries. We love this woodenmodel clock's steampunk sensibility and spirit of adventure, and we think youwill too! Imagine yourself a discoverer of new horizons and a conqueror of thefour winds. The casing and intriguing wooden clock mechanism represent an airbase located among the clouds, where zephyrs blow and filtered rays of sunlightdapple the machinery, while you, in the role of aeronaut, launch a new voyage ofexploration on the hour.

The Ugears wooden model clock kit celebrates the role of clocks inexploration. Did you know the problem of calculating longitude, critical toaccurate navigation at sea, was solved with a clock? The idea was proposed byDutch mathematician Gemma Frisius in 1530, but it wasn't until the mid-18thcentury when English clockmaker John Harrison developed a series of shipboardclocks so precise (accurate to within a * of a second per day) that shipcaptains could at last calculate their position at sea to within a few nauticalmiles. By knowing the exact time back in London (Greenwich Meridian Time, orGMT), and calculating the time at current position with celestial observation,navigators could calculate where they were on the earth's surface. Latitude hadbeen solved by the Phoenicians as early as 600 B.C. with celestialreckoning-measuring the altitude of the sun at noon, or the angle made betweenthe North Star (or other navigational stars) and the horizon. But the longitudeproblem would bedevil explorers for another 2,000 years. Harrison waseventually awarded the £20,000 first prize (roughly $1.5 million today)established in Parliament's Lon­gitude Act of 1714, after demonstrating theaccuracy of his masterful clocks at sea. Now you too can become a clockmaker,with the Ugears Aero Clock model kit!

Released at a moment when the world seems to have slowed down, the UgearsAero Clock, a wooden wall clock with pendulum that you build yourself, is bothtimeful and timeless in its simple elegance. This beautiful and functionalwooden wall clock model is for horologists, for hobbyists, for explorers, forcreatives and romantics of every stripe, anyone who is ready for new challengesand ready to take risks. If you've ever gazed up at the sky and thought,""I want to be there!"" or looked at a pendulum clock and wondered, ""How doesthat work?"" then the Ugears Aero Clock is for you.

As you build the Aero Clock, a wooden wall clock with pendulum, you willlearn the basic principles behind clockworks, how the steadying influence of aswinging pendulum operates through a rocking anchor, locking and unlocking thegears on an escapement one second at a time, thereby regulating the (slow)descent of a weight as it drives both power gears and timekeeping gears.

• Self-assembled, no glue needed
• Model size: 29.5 × 18.5 × 6­.5 in (750 × 470 × 165mm)
• Maximum size of the model: 86.6 × 18.5 × 6­.5 in(2200 × 470 × 1­65mm)
• Package size: 14.9 × 6.7 × 2 in (378 × 170 × 50mm)
• Number of components: 320
• Estimated time of assembly: 11 hours
• Level: Advanced