[Sca-cooks] Re: clockwork rotisserie

[Ron Carnegie]

At 08:24 PM 8/25/02 -0400, you wrote:

>
>
>> > >Does anybody have any information on how to build an old clockwork
>> > >rotisserie.  Drawings, pictures, anything.
>> > >> >Thanks
>> > >Connie.Aman at sait.ab.ca

        I can probably get you photos of a reproduction 18th century clock
jack, but they are incredibly complicated and not much use under the
conditions we normally cook in (unless you have  a permanant hearth that
is).  They use a weight system to drive the mechanism, rather than springs.
You have to crank the weight's rope around a winch which hopefully unwinds
slowly as the mechanism runs.  This part of the assembly therefore must be
mounted high enough to give a long enough run to make the tool useful, as
when the weight hits the floor you have to crank again.

        I mentioned hopefully.  The wieghts are in different sizes, since
the food cooked is in different weights.  This helps keep the spit turning
at the proper speed.

        I have used clock jacks and they can be annoying. (because of the
recranking, we never seem to have the correct weights!   Better to put a
child or apprentice to turning the spit by hand!

        Another sort of jack, which would be easier to make I think, would
be a smoke or chimney jack.  These rely on the rising heat to turn them,
just like those little christmas decorations with the candles.


I remain,
Ranald de Balinhard,
Ron Carnegie
r.carnegie at verizon.net
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	"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that
	 once on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground walked
	 other men and women as actual as we are today, thinking
	 their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions but now
	 all gone, vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we
	 ourselves shall be gone like ghosts at cockcrow."
				G.M. Trevelyan
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