March 15, 2007: Wooden watch, car, gun

It's an odd bit of queue-clearing, but I have for you today... three items that are unexpectedly made of wood.

First, this watch blog features an wooden watch, carved in Russia in the year 1900.



Even the gears are wood! Which means it could not possibly have worked very well.



Then Spluch featured this wooden car, which someone also forwarded, can't remember who? The whole thing is explained in detail here. This is not the first wooden car, but it's beautiful and functional.



Lastly, this image is watermarked by its source, which means I wouldn't have picked it for a sole entry, but it's interesting. This is a gun, manufactured by hand by the Unabomber. It's one of a number of shots in these slides of evidence they collected for the case. A little less interesting, to me anyway, is this Smoking Gun slideshow of bomb-making evidence.

Coolness! That watch is so awesome I got all tingly inside! The car is a beaut.

That watch would go so well with my fountain pen & my slide rule.

I like the car. It's obvious the guy has a strong boat building background.

I wooden mind driving that car.

Following the watch link a couple of steps leads to Watchismo. He has a couple more wood watches and a watch & chain carved from bone. He also has the details on the Russian family that produced them from 1837 to the revolution, at one per month.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elspode I wooden mind driving that car.

Gettin' wood.

Redefined.

The car looks classy. It probably wouldn't perform well in the Euro NCAP crash test though.

Hate to burst your bubble but wooden gears aren't especially rare, and while they usually wear out faster than the metal gears you're more used to, some of the best time kept today is still in older wooden geared clocks, some of which are from Swiss clockmakers, others from unidentifiable sources. To be honest though this is the first fob watch I've seen made of wood, I'd love to have a good look at it first hand, the maker must have done some incredibly fine work which makes me wonder as to the woods used in the smaller gears where breakage is likely.
But all that said even as a purely ornamental piece it's beautiful.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ceri Hate to burst your bubble but wooden gears aren't especially rare

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ceri Snip~ To be honest though this is the first fob watch I've seen made of wood, I'd love to have a good look at it first hand, the maker must have done some incredibly fine work which makes me wonder as to the woods used in the smaller gears where breakage is likely. ~snip

That's kind of fast given the amount of finer work to be done. And that's an expensive piece of wood.

Some of their production was carved from bone, but I've no idea how many.