Debugging completed, wood sub base surround finished, final photography and videography finished, NAWCC Zoom presentation.             October 2021

In recognition of the completion of the project two detailed video montages as well as photos for future articles in the NAWCC Bulletin are included in this installment. The front and rear cover issue of the September Horological Journal featured an eight page article, and an additional three-part series is being published in the Bulletin beginning with the current November/December issue and explores what has been documented since the last article that appeared in the March/April 2017 issue.

Here we see an example of Buchananization for the transfer of power from the central axis of the orrery out to Saturn to drive its rotation and moons. Instead of a straight armature using a set of identical idler wheels or a long arbor with pinions on each end, Buchanan uses a curvilinear armature with large and other wheels of varying diameters to achieve the same thing. 

Jupiter is shown using banded agate to replicate its surface, unfortunately we could not find one that also had the eye-storm!

Saturn has five functioning moons, is shown at the correct tilt to the ecliptic and has an upper dial showing where the moons are around Saturn in degrees, as well as a lower dial that shows its eccentric orbit in millions of kilometers (Mkm) and astronomical units (AU) at it aphelion and perihelion to the Sun. This same information is given for Jupiter with four moons. Mercury, and Mars do not show moons so the upper dial is absent, but the lower one is present. The lower orbital dial showing the size of the obit is present for Venus. Earth instead has a Moon phase dial. Both Venus and Earth have a fairly circular orbits. Each planet has its name designation.

The Earth is made of turquoise with the continents outlined in gold leaf. The sun is made from quartz with rutile inclusions, also known as rutilated quartz. The rutile is titanium dioxide, TiO2 and scintillates as one looks at it from different positions giving it a sun-like look. It also acts as a convex lens showing the moving pendulums and planets as they cross behind the the globe.