Well are you sitting comfortably, as many of you know, I'm a volunteer at our the local watermill, most of our team are retired peeps, one is ex dentist, harley street don't cha know! anyway he has a cellar full of engineering gear, lathes, mechanical hacksaw etc, oh and his old dentists chair!
He said he had always been interested in clocks and had made a closing device for his chicken run door using an old alarm clock, to save him visiting twice a day to let them out and lock them in again, I was interested and went to see it, simple but clever, my interest in clockwork things started here, or should I say was rekindled from when we were kids and pulled clockwork toys apart.
Anyway I was telling the other mill lads about this device and one of the oldest chaps, said, "I got rid of all my old clocks after I got arthritis and couldn't fix em anymore, but clocks and old machines and old engines was my main interest", then one of the other old chaps who is good with wood said, "I'm fascinated by clockwork stuff like automata and have you seen these novelty clocks that run on water like at Southwold" after he described it I remembered it and I said yes I had seen it.
And then the thought hit me, we have plenty of water, we have the skills between us to fabricate things from wood or metal, we have three peeps already with knowledge of clockworkings, maybe we could make a novelty water clock at the watermill, might even bring in a few more visitors, so I posed the idea to them and they said lets research it and think of some basic ideas and see where it goes.
But the old boys already know a bit about clocks so I'm swotting up on stuff so I can try and push the idea along a bit as they usually forget things, then if they do remember sometimes they can be a bit slow.
