Toucan by Zach Woods, Age 13

Zach Woods (Age 13!) emails:  "Dear Dr. Boyer, I am pleased to send you these two pictures of the Toucan clock my I just completed with some occasional help from my dad. I am 13 years old and a middle school student in Wichita, Kansas.

I was really inspired by your wooden clock designs and felt I just had to make one or two of them. This one is for my dad's office (if my mom lets him take it out of the house!) and I'm also making a Simplicity design with my Grandpa. Me and my dad are plannning to build many more clocks, like Solaris for my mom and others for my dad's friends.

Thank you for making such cool clock designs, everybody that sees them are very impressed.

Zach Woods"

Clayton answers:  "Thank you for your kind words about my designs, and thank you also for the pictures, Zach. I am very impressed.

You did a wonderful job on your Toucan. I'm also glad to hear you let your dad help a little. I love hearing stories like yours where the family works together to build these wonderful projects. I live in my own Norman Rockwell world in my head, and hearing stories like yours brings me a lot of joy, and wonderful memories of building projects with my own son. Great times.

I hope that you and your grandfather enjoy building the Simplicity, too. You have chosen two very different mechanisms, so you are really getting a great education in wooden clock building, and I am sure your father and grandfather appreciate you letting them be a part of that joy.

Thank you again for the pictures. When my webmaster gets back from vacation we will be posting them to my Flickr' link.

Enjoy the Simplicity build and I'll be looking forward to pictures of that one, too.

Great job on your Toucan!

Aloha. Clayton"