Double three-legged gravity escapement
Now that is a mouth full !
The more I learn about tower clocks, the more I think they make up longs winded mixed-language labels just to mess with people and make them feel dumb. The whole thing is a mish-mash of colonial English, French, and German. I haven’t found any Italian parts yet but I may just not have looked far enough !
Anyway, In trying to document my next project, I needed some diagrams. I didn’t find anything on the Internet so I spend way too much time with my various graphic tools and created a working model. You can click on the picture to see an animation of the model.
Before anyone chimes in, it is not to scale, it is not complete, and it I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes. As I learn more I’ll be able to improve on the model.
Mark Frank has a very good video clip showing the escapement in action on a 1927 Seth Thomas clock !
The “blue” parts depict the escapement with the pendulum. I’ve separated out just the escapement to make it easier to see.
The escapement has two three-legged “gears”- hence the name. The small paddle-looking piece is an air brake and the gray object is a gear. All of the center parts are layered one on top of the next. The left and right parts of the escapement are offset front-to-back so that the catch of one aligns with one of the three-legged gears, and the same goes for the other. You can click on the picture to see an animation of the exploded escapement.
