When we went to German a few years ago, we liked the Black Forest cuckoo clock very much. Cuckoo clock is a beautiful time keeping master piece from the marriage of arts and science. Cuckoo clock has almost 300 years of history and it is still using the same basic mechanism from hundreds years ago. Traditional cuckoo is pendulum-driven, using the weight of the iron-cast pine-cone under the clock as winding mechanism. On every hour and half hour, the small door above the clock face will open, a small cuckoo bird comes out and make cuckoo sound. Cuckoo clock is made of wood decorated with crafted birds or flower on the clock front. Some more fancy cuckoo clock have finer decoration, more moving parts in the chime and some even even play music every hour.
Too bad back then we don’t have luggage space to bring it home and it was quite expensive. Recently, we saw a cuckoo clock in a friend’s place and that brings back our memory of cuckoo clock. We think a cuckoo clock would look nice on our new home, so I start searching for one online. There are three types of cuckoo clock, 1 day, 8 days or quartz. The 8 day clock is a lot more expensive due to its size and its movement. A quartz cuckoo clock runs by battery. It is a fake cuckoo clock as it lose the charm of the mechanical cuckoo clock. With our budget constraint, I think we are happy with a 1 day cuckoo clock.
I came across a 2nd hand cuckoo clock on Craigslist. It is a Germany made, 1 day cuckoo clock with the most traditional dove and leaves decoration. The parts are in good condition and there are little doors on the side, so you can open and see the internal movement. The clock is not very accurate properly due to the transportation. I have to adjust distance of the pendulum to make it swings at exactly one second. My only complain is that I have to remember rewinding it everyday or the the clock will stop working.
