Now we have our new wheel we need another new lantern pinion to engage with it and that pinion needs to be mounted on another new arbour. The position of the arbour needs to be chosen carefully to ensure a good mesh between wheel and pinion. Our horizontal position is fixed – it needs to sit central to the rest of the escapement position. However, we can choose the vertical position, up to a point, to ensure the correct mesh. The vertical position of the remaining escapement parts (still to be made) will then follow.

To aid the positioning of the arbour Dad made a little tool which can have the wheel and pinion mounted on it allowing the mesh to be perfected, before scribing the arbour position (where it crosses the horizontal midline). I’ve attached pictures showing the tool for this clock and a smaller version he used previously when making a couple of long case clock movements. The new tool (that’s the bigger one, in case you hadn’t guessed) isn’t quite finished as you can see compared to the original. From the pictures you can see how the mesh is adjusted with the wheel and pinion mounted on the tool. Then the tool’s wheel arbour can be placed in the bearing on the clock and the tool rotated to see where the pinion’s arbour crosses the horizontal midline and the position scribed.