"Cheating"

Purists tend to state that they have built their work exclusively out of Lego parts.  This is fine, but it should not prevent one from having fun or getting frustrated just because a certain part does not exist or needs to be modified.

I tend to start off in a purist mindset, but do occasionally use non-Lego parts or modify one.

For the clock, I needed these special items:

1. A gear wheel that could float on its axle to implement the minute hand.  I used one of the 24-tooth gears in which I had drilled a round central hole for some other model. 
   
   I could have bought the Supercar box, but (a) I did not know it contained such a wheel, and (b) it would have been somewhat expensive as a solution...
2. A quarter bushing.  There are normal and half bushings, but I needed a thinner bushing for some spacing in the meshing of the minute hand drive.  I sawed one half bushing into two quarter thickness bushings:
   These are less fragile than they seem.
3. A clock face.  I simply was not going to construct an elaborate, huge face with digits made from Lego:  it would have been rather ugly.  So I printed a computer-drawn, simple face, and mounted it in an octagonal frame made from Lego parts.

These problems could have been solved with true Lego parts at the expense of making a much larger model, and number 1 only by acquiring what I consider a very special gear wheel at considerable expense.

Lego also sometimes adds a range of parts: for my first clock attempt in 1982 I had to saw up axles to get lengths of 3 and 5 which now exist as standard lengths.  So I do not feel guilty:  maybe we will one day see quarter bushings and set of floating gears.

end of problems (for now)

Copyright R. Cailliau — robert at robertcailliau.eu

next planned revision: 2009-11