Sternwheeler From the Susquehanna River's Hard Coal Navy by Keith Black - 1:120 Scale

[sheepsail]

On 6/15/2025 at 12:09 PM, wefalck said:

... or you can buy them down to 0.3 modular, but that would be still too coarse for your scale.

Not sure if cuckoo clock bevels are this large.  Some pocket watches use bevels in the time setting section.  Wrist watches use a sliding pinion clutch with a crown wheel.  Sometimes these are beveled.

 

I have a book called Gears for small mechanisms.  Automotive stuff changed everything according to that book.

 

My impression is that bevel  and other gears were pretty much sand cast.  Casting sands were much finer.  I suspect this may have lead like coal mining to an increased rate of silicosis and lung disease.   There is a lot of technology what has been lost.

 

Industrially they would have been hobbed or finished with a shaper.  For model work, one can do the clean up with a file.  Which is how gears were shaped before industrialization.

 

In some ways chain drive makes more sense. Lumber mills used chains to move the logs through the saws.  These were often run by donkey engines.  We think of such chain as bicycle chain.  Pretty easy to make.  Watch fuzzes used such chain that is microscopic in size.  The drive gears can be made with a simple drill press.

 

Tower clocks used both bevel gears and chain.

[Keith Black]

53 minutes ago, sheepsail said:

Not sure if cuckoo clock bevels are this large.  Some pocket watches use bevels in the time setting section.  Wrist watches use a sliding pinion clutch with a crown wheel.  Sometimes these are beveled.

 

I have a book called Gears for small mechanisms.  Automotive stuff changed everything according to that book.

 

My impression is that bevel  and other gears were pretty much sand cast.  Casting sands were much finer.  I suspect this may have lead like coal mining to an increased rate of silicosis and lung disease.   There is a lot of technology what has been lost.

 

Industrially they would have been hobbed or finished with a shaper.  For model work, one can do the clean up with a file.  Which is how gears were shaped before industrialization.

 

In some ways chain drive makes more sense. Lumber mills used chains to move the logs through the saws.  These were often run by donkey engines.  We think of such chain as bicycle chain.  Pretty easy to make.  Watch fuzzes used such chain that is microscopic in size.  The drive gears can be made with a simple drill press.

 

Tower clocks used both bevel gears and chain.

SS, the scale is going to limit how detailed I can make the gears if gears are used.  

[tmj]

eBay has miniature bevel gears. Not sure what scale size your gears would need to be, but 'maybe' eBay would have some around the right size.

[Jim Lad]

Or maybe a model engineering supplier could help.

 

John