Mike some of us old folks can be a little thin skinned now and again I can now see where you are coming from.
Any way clocks and gun have a lot in common in their historic roots, clock and Lock makers had the skills and know how to make fast and reliable gun locks. And sadly, I was working in Birmingham during the 1960s removing machine tools from the many closing workshops in the gun quarter hence my great interest in guns.
And on a personal note clocks are sort of living things and when they stop they are not breathing and for all intense and purposes dead.
The clock in the photograph was invented by Mattheus Hipp a Swiss in 1838 for use in observatories using a ground battery to keep the pendulum moving controlled by a toggle runs for four years on four flashlight cells all made from scrap metal and twenty pound of scrap Mercury that came my way.
And this is my reason for interest in vintage guns my 1869 bar in wood Purdey.
