Challenging but enchanting
Based on retro-style mechanical timepiece, LK501 features a precise pendulum mechanism which requires more attention and patience. But the sense of fufillment is also doubled. After fully wound up, it can keep working for 3~4 hours maximum, prolonging the building fun as much as you want.
- a gravity-swing pendulum with precise anchor escapement
- appealing outlook of mechanical engineering
- double fun of model building & brain teasing
- perfect gift for mechanical lovers or family & friends
Bob dobbs –
Good clock, gears mesh well, I did probably put a little more time into it than need be, fine sanding all gears and waxing them. Wish there were a 30 hour spring, instead of the issued 3 hour. Thinking of trying to upgrade the spring.
Bruce C. –
A brilliantly executed clockworks! My wife and I worked on it together. It runs well for 3-4 hours, as advertised. I do not wind the spring completely, as there is no need to over stress the works and we do not need for it to runs for more hours. It is critical to make sure pendulum part D8 is installed with the longer dog on the right (there are tiny chevrons printed on the long dog). I initially had it reversed, causing the pendulum to stall after several swings. So, “take your time”!
Robert E –
Just finished the clock yesterday took me about 8 hours maybe 10 anyway it does work but I think it’s kind of problematic with respect to the gears that aren’t laying flat sometimes they don’t engage very cleanly and squarely with Each other so I can understand why it only runs about 8 hours and it really is hard to tune you can’t really shove the bushings around very easily a little tool would be helpful to do that. I also can’t figure out what some of the gears do that don’t seem to engage anything and also there seems to be a lot of extra holes at the top for I don’t know what, mysterious.
Mark H Rice –
I completed the clock April 8, 2020. I took my time, assembling only two gears per day, making sure all the gear teeth were clean and smooth. I followed the instructions, which were easy to understand except for step 15 which took several minutes to study. The patience paid off because when I inserted the pendulum assembly and wound the spring, the clock immediately began to operate. A couple of notes I will add. 1. The escape wheel only needs to be waxed on the tips of the fingers. It will transfer enough wax to the mechanism to make it work. 2. On step 1, the winding gear, if the pins designated A2 extend past the surface of gear A3 you need to sand or file them flush with the surface of the gear. Else they will catch on the clock spring. A very small amount of wax can be rubbed on the sanded ends of the pins.
Michael Hancock –
This clock is extremely well produced and gave a huge amount of satisfaction to me. I took about two evenings to properly assemble it and another hour or so to fine tune it. It will run for eight hours now and keeps amazingly good time. There are some precautions and a couple of tips. One has to be very careful not to change the position of the yellow collars when fitting the wheels to the frame and to check them after assembly. Then, if you have some mechanical aptitude you should be able to figure out how to fine-tune their position so that the shafts will turn freely and not be bound by the frame. Second thing is, problem the most important (and it has been referred to by LUUK, a previous reviewer), the pendulum assembly really needs to be glued up at the escapement end, the pallets to the hub and the pendulum rod to the other side of the hub, otherwise there is enough lost motion to cause it not to beat reliably. I only used wax on some of the upper shafts that move fairly quickly and on the escapement mechanism, the faces of the pallets.
I would also thoroughly recommend the video put together by the reviewer early on in these reviews. I am a bit of a clock nut and an engineer but I must say this is one of the most rewarding projects that I have done. I even managed to glance at the TV occasionally that my wife was watching and had a drink on hand for most of the procedure!
Lewis Sherman –
Don’t know if all those highly rated a I’ve comments are real or planted. The lock was great fun to build but runs for LESS than a few seconds. I’m an engineer as well and efforts to fix not working.