Maker on Wheels

You know Roger Woods and Klockwerks, right?  He was steampunk before steampunk even was...  Here's a great video his assistant Bryan Belanger made of Roger making one of his klocks on wheels.  (I *love* the soundtrack.)

Clayton Boyer Clock Designs

If you're not the sort of person who can design clockworks and build them in metal (say, Eric Freitas), there may still be hope for you. Clayton Boyer will sell you woodworking plans for building your own clock.


And if you're really hard core, there's the masochist's corner. These plans, you have prove yourself worthy in order to buy.



Thanks, Koen, for pointing these out.

Goods from One Kings Lane

One Kings Lane is a site with "invitation only" 3 day long home decor sales. I subscribed, not expecting much that would be appropriate for The Steampunk Home. Surprisingly, right now -- through the 28th -- they are running two sales I think would appeal to Steampunk Home readers.

First, quotes by Natural Curiosities, $69 each:


Each letter was manually created on a 1924 vintage Underwood typewriter, silkscreened on delicate Bhutanese paper by Fernando Bohr, Natural Curiosities' resident silkscreen artist, then beautifully framed in walnut.

Second, Timeworks Vintage style clocks, $49-$129:
Timeworks clocks are made individually, by hand, most of them at the company's factory in Berkeley, California. All are made of the finest components available - solid, hand-antiqued brass for cases and pendulums, die-cut steel hands with time-worn patinas, beautifully finished frames and high-quality quartz clock movements.



You'll have to sign up to browse the wares, but you may find it worthwhile.

Brooklyn Clock Loft

Brian pointed out another clock face living space (it rhymes!). I wonder how many more of these are out there? (and you'll help me figure it out, won't you?) This pushes so many of my buttons -- Turkish rugs, wood floors, old brick, and not a bit of modern furniture in the place.

From architect Michael R Davis' website: The The Clock on Old Fulton Street in Brooklyn Heights is a 1,200 square foot loft located in an Italianate storage building built in 1892 on the site of the Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper once edited by Walt Whitman. The most obviously striking feature in the apartment is the 10-foot glass and iron clock face, which serves as the living room window.

From a Time Out NY article: With the original scale and proportions restored, the sprinkler pipes, valves, and clockface, along with it's motor and steel strapping, fully exposed, the result was a return to a true loft space.

Clock Tower Apartment

Laurie sent me this NY Times slideshow about an apartment at the top of a clock tower. Yes, those are working clocks.



Don't you wish you had an extra $25 million lying around?

More Nixie Tube Clocks

A great post about nixie tube clocks, with a very discerning eye for fabulous designs.

Thanks, Tangelia!

Eric Freitas Quartz #8

Eric Freitas has a new quartz clock.

More of his work.

Gonzalo Álvarez -- Mueblos Raros

Gonzalo Álvarez is an artist that works in a variety of mediums, but I was taken with his clocks and furniture. (Have I mentioned my philosophy on clocks in a steampunk home? Clocks -- along with lights -- are where you should indulge in the steamiest creation you can make or find -- there are plenty of options out there, and they will make a statement.)



The interior gears are cut from wood.



Oh so airship pirate, no?


He uses this clever hinged drawer in other pieces as well.

Thanks to Juanan for pointing this out.

Four Foot Wide "Time Eater" Clock

Our friend Rafael Fabre, who blogs often about the steampunk happenings in Second Life, recently pointed out this wonderful clock. From BBC News:

Designed by John Taylor, and unveiled by Stephen Hawking, its Dubbed the strangest clock in the world, and features a giant grasshopper and has 60 slits cut into its face which light up to show the time.

Dr Taylor told the Daily Mail newspaper he decided "to turn the clock inside out... so you can see the seconds being eaten up".

"Conventional clocks with hands are boring," he said. "I wanted to make timekeeping interesting.

"I also wanted to depict that time is a destroyer - once a minute is gone you can't get it back.

"That's why my grasshopper is not a Disney character. He is a ferocious beast that over the seconds has his tongue lolling out, his jaws opening, then on the 59th second he gulps down time." Ferocious and grasshopper are not words you often hear in the same sentence, but this one looks mean enough to eat up all my spare time...

It's gold plated and battery powered -- I would have preferred they saved his money (all million pounds of it) by using brass, and designed gear based movements for it. Oh well!

Eric Freitas' New Blog

If you enjoyed my earlier post on Eric Freitas' clocks, I wanted to point out that he has a new blog where he talks about how he creates the clocks and includes us in the process of building his 6th mechanical clock. If you're of the decidedly amateur maker category I find myself in, you'll enjoy looking over a master's shoulder as he works.

Eric's INCESSANT RAMBLINGS blog.

Thanks to Alrededor del Mundo for sending me to Eric's new website.

Nixie Tube Clocks

West Dave is a maker of Nixie Tube Clocks. What's a Nixie Tube, you might ask?

Wikipedia, as always, gives up their secrets: Introduced by Burroughs in 1954, Nixies were used as numeric displays in early digital voltmeters, multimeters, frequency counters and many other types of technical equipment. They also appeared in costly digital time displays used in research and military establishments, and in many early electronic desktop calculators. Nixie was derived by Burroughs from "NIX I", an abbreviation of "Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1".



Above: LEDs indicate the hour around the perimeter of the clock, with Nixie tubes indicating the minute and second. Below: An Art Deco clock case refitted with Nixie tube numbers.



The clocks shown here are all by West Dave, but you can easily find Nixie Tube Clock kits online and on eBay to make your own.

Art Donovan's Steampunk Pieces

Art Donovan is a regular reader and commenter here at The Steampunk Home. He's also, as the proprietor of Donovan Design, a designer and craftsman of lamps, lighting, and the occasional home accessory. Art was kind enough to mention his newest steampunk inspired pieces to me, and, of course, I want to share them with you.



His early steampunk efforts are online at HomePorfolio. First a steampunk clock in distressed brass (who even knew you could distress brass? I assumed you antiqued brass, but this is a very different look than antiquing.) Second is a steampunk style table lamp, with 4(!) different adjustment points.



Art's pièce de résistance, however, is his Siddhartha Pod Lamp, pictured at the beginning of this post. At 52" tall x 30" wide, it's an impressive, piece of work. It's entirely hand crafted of solid mahogany, solid copper and brass. Without a doubt, the most labor-intensive lamp I've ever created. Personally, I see it in the home of a evil mastermind -- something about the curlicue wood at the top reminds me of a mustache twirled by such a dastardly fellow.




Art is known to hang around here at the SPH, so if you have questions for him, feel free to post in the comments. (Mine: What are the vertical glowing light-bulb style tubes? Why name it Siddhartha -- I'm not quite sure I see the link between steampunk style and the Buddha?)

UPDATE! Art sent me answers to my questions:

To answer your questions- Easy! The tall light bulbs are called "Showcase bulbs" and they are really bright- 75 watts each. (#75T8) Add some "Baby Slinkys" around the bulbs and you're ready to go!

I have a dimmer switch for them located at the top of the lamp, (it's that little cone-shaped piece, pointing downward.) When the bulbs are turned all the way up (which I never do) they are massive, ridiculous bright.

All of our lamps are named by my wife and partner, Leslie. She also designs lamps and won't name them until they're completely finished. The "Siddhartha Pod" lantern has design elements of the British Raj Period of India, so that was her inspiration for the name. The "Pod" refers to the strange, vertical shape- (vaguely bio-mechanical like, I suppose).

Eric Freitas' Clocks

Growing relentlessly in the mind of Eric Freitas lies a realm of dark mechanical curiosities and horological contradictions. In this world gears are harvested and mechanisms are alive with the organic repetitions of nature's machine. Balancing carefully between creative conception and logical execution, this world would slowly be brought to life.

So starts Eric Freitas' biography on Etsy. The work, incredibly, outshines the statement.

Beautiful, wierd, hand-machined -- this not just art attached to an existing quartz movement, but a fully realized working pendulum clock out of brass and rice paper. The particular clock's inspiration is based on the calligraphy of the numbers:

This is my fifth fully mechanical clock. All of the parts were machined by hand, and many of them carry a design congruent with the calligraphy used for the numbers. In addition, a strange and uncontrolled style is introduced to offset the structured nature of the gears. No.5 has a one second pulse and a 'dead beat-style' escapement. The seven swivels out of the way to expose the winder, which needs to be employed about once a week ( 8 days ). Adjusting the timing of the pendulum is easy, and if done correctly this clock will be accurate within a minute or two a week.

Another one (quartz rather than mechanical) I'm not sure I'd ever want to see strike midnight:


Eric has 2 clocks for sale on Etsy -- the first one above and a more economical one based on a quartz movement. For a full history of his work -- many are no longer available -- you'll want to view Eric's flickr stream.


Isn't it clever and elegant how the numbers become the decorative elements here?

His workmanship is utterly amazing.

Thanks to the blog at Coilhouse for pointing these out.

Clock.

May I present an old fashioned pendulm clock made of recycled bicycle gears? Ideal hung in an office or a library.

Bicycle Chainring and Cog Clock.

70% Steam
70% Punk