A well know author, teacher, scholar, furniture maker, rake, bon vivant, man-about-town, scoundrel and rapscallion has a fondness for clocked screws, that is slots in the screws heads all share a common alignment. This is not a view shared by all those who work in wood. There aren’t that many screws in the furniture I see to form an opinion or make any generalizations.
That’s why when I see a clocked piece, I take note. Often it is in campaign furniture. With all its hardware, campaign furniture has more screws than is typical. I saw such a piece on Saturday. Not exactly campaign, but it is English, folds and has lots of hardware.
It is this English writing desk:
It’s English and it folds up.
Unfolded, it looks like this:
Requires a bit of space to use.
Although I failed to get a picture, there is storage under the upper writing area. It has a most attractive pull:
Similar to campaign hardware.
And the screws are clocked.
Then there is this most interesting hinge:
Again, screws are clocked. Mostly.
Upper portion of the hinge give access to the storage area below the upper writing surface. The lower hinge folds the lower onto the upper writing surfaces. The horizontal channels at either end of the hinge contain the hinge barrel when folded.
There is the gallery with its slots, drawers and pigeon holes:
A place for your stationery.
The gallery lifts out and there seems to be some storage or secret compartment below:
I’m not sure what’s in here.
This box was sitting at the shop’s front counter. My exploration was terminated by the slightly hostile look the register lady shot me when I lifted out the gallery and parts started falling off. I put the gallery back and moved on.
A nice desk but not $795 nice.
There are some clips at the front of the gallery that might hold postcards or some other commonly used items. I bring them up because their screws are clocked.
All things clocked.
The only place where clocking seems to be optional is the handles:
Almost has a nautical feel to it.
And the screws are not clocked. But pretty close.
I have no objections to clocking. Back in my early electronics days, we built a panel with nearly 80 pan head screws. They were all clocked including the four with no purpose. After the panel was punched, we changed power supplies. The four screws to mount the older style power supply existed but had no purpose and needed to be plugged. I made sure the screws were properly clocked when I epoxied them in.
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