North Coast Imports, Inc.

Let's take a quick look at some of the terms that have been mentioned in recent posts.  To do that, we'll start at the basics of how mechanical clocks are usually powered. The clocks featured in recent posts are built before the general use of electricity.   Steam engines would normally be too large and inefficient to power such small devices, plus you would have continually stoke it to keep the clock running over night.  So what powers these clocks? We've discussed examples of the very earliest clocks that run on water power, but the tried and true method of running an accurate timepiece is to harness the power of gravity.  This is the original GREEN power.  Gravity is constantly renewable and reliable.  As long as we have a planet, we have gravity.  Weight-driven clocks also have the advantage of being very accurate.  The force of gravity is always constant in any particular location, so the clock won't speed up or slow down at any point because of an increase or ...

Below you can watch a movie ( visit our YouTube channel! ) with a cuckoo music box functioning properly. Sometimes minor adjustments need to be made to the two arms connecting the clock mechanism to the music mechanism. As you watch the video, pay attention to the two black arms that reach in from the left side. One on top and one in the middle (touching the spinning fan-fly or governor). In the first part of the video you see one cuckoo call and music right away. The second part shows how the music mechanism is first started by the cuckoo mechanism, held while the cuckoo calls, and then released to allow it to play. The thicker, black metal arm on top unlatches the music drum and the music mechanism so that the drum starts to turn. It is abruptly stopped however by the second, thinner wire that touches the brass fan-fly. This stopping wire remains in place until the cuckoo bird has finished its call. If this second wire didn't stop the fan-fly from spinning, the music would play ...