2025

Background

This is a self-assembly steampunk-themed kitchen timer. It's fully functional - when you select the required cooking period the candle lamp flickers, the pointer advances to zero and the air horn blares for 20 seconds. Apparently this is quite loud and you may need to put a sock in it!

My kit was obtained from the SteamheadInventions shop on Etsy. The shop is owned by John Bunce and is inspired by the ingenuity of Victorian inventors. John designs a range of idiosyncratic devices that are offered either ready-made or as kits.

John Bunce came up with the idea whilst staying in the village of Nempnett Thrubwell in Somerset. It's not far from Bristol Airport, but despite having lived both in Bristol and Somerset I've never encountered the place. (I should have paid more attention to The Wurzels' song Down In Nempnett Thrubwell!)

31 December 2025

Now that Linda has gained experience in her ceramics classes, we have more bowls available for storing small parts. For more delicate pieces there is a plum wood bowl, purchased from Alan Long at this year's Oak Fair.

The kit parts differ slightly from John's website picture - the clock battery replacement bar is now plastic (not wood) and the battery connector and cut-out are to a new design.

Instructions for the kit are provided through YouTube videos. This is not ideal for me, as I do not use YouTube regularly and therefore suffer from interminable adverts. Although John's clips are well-produced, my preference is for hard copy that I can annotate and more easily navigate.

The first video covers Cleaning Engravings - using meths (by which I mean Methylated Spirit) to remove soot deposits.

Next, the body is screwed & glued and the front-facing surfaces bees-waxed. The wax is applied with a cloth, although I used a tooth brush for the first treatment, as I found it easier to spread evenly.

The wood gets darker after each coat, and all the supplied wax was used.

2026

It's a new year, and I resolve to complete the electrics. The kit uses a breadboard design for simplicity - meaning that no soldering is required. In practical terms this provides a wider potential market for the product, with less chance of failure. (In the 1970's I built an amplifier kit. It came in an attractive wooden case, but unfortunately my incompetent soldering resulted in a puff of smoke and a hole in my pocket).

An adhesive diagram is attached to the breadboard, and each component pushed in using a wooden former to bend the component arms appropriately.

The rectangular component on the right is a timer integrated circuit. More specifically it is a 555 model, which John says has been around since 1972 and is the most popular ever introduced. The designer was a certain Hans Camenzind, born in Switzerland in 1934.

The next step is to mount the clock mechanism to the rear of the front panel and the dials and gears to the front.

The two gears are secured with brass M4 pan head screws. The shorter of the two was missing and had to be sourced independently - the only shortcoming in an otherwise very comprehensive kit.

Now for the copper work - these water fittings will actually be conveying air. When the timer is activated, the light will flicker inside its acrylic tube until the timer hand reaches 0. At that point the pump will fire air towards the horn.

The fittings are attached using super glue, of which more later …

The copper work and horn are attached to the case using brass Munsen rings. It would be pleasing to relate the derivation of this term - is it the equivalent of Robert Bunsen's burner? Nobody seems to know.

The left hand ring of the pair for the horn is offset with a wooden washer. Ideally this would have been colour matched with the wax treatment, but it is not in clear view and is an ideal candidate for the felt tip pen.

It's now time to slide the bulb sleeve into the copper end piece, and slip over the flickering bulb. This is where the previously mentioned faux pas arises, as I'm rather gung ho applying the super glue. All is fine until I tilt the piece, resulting in a trickle of excess glue seeping down inside the tube. Doubling down on the problem I remove the surplus glue with a tissue, thereby smearing the inside surface.

Despite a variety of methods the tube is now permanently opaque. In a light bulb moment I decide to smoke the inside surface, to provide an atmospheric glow. A meths burner is brought to bear and I triple down on my error by melting the end of the tube. Sawing off the tube-end predictably results in a piece that's too short.

Drat!

Fortunately a Californian auction house comes to the rescue, with a replacement pipe-end and an acrylic tube sample of the required outside diameter.

It's now time for the wiring. The breadboard circuit is attached to the rear of the clock with an adhesive strip and the various connections are made. These wires are of a smaller gauge than the electrical components, and do not fit quite as snugly. A wider gauge may work better, but perhaps there's a reason John didn't do that.

This picture includes a variation from the instructions. Part of the fine tuning is to ensure that the air pump is triggered as the clock hand reaches 0. This involves repeated removal and finessing of the hand. My approach was to slacken the clock nut slightly so that the whole body could be turned, rather than just the hand. Once achieved, the wooden tool was glued on to keep the clock in position.

The replacement acrylic tube and end-piece have arrived, and fresh super glue is fetched from Abbey Decor in Sherborne. The pieces are united, this time with an excess of caution and not of glue. However there is a further complication in that the tube wall is thicker than the original, and can't slide over the bulb holder. This is resolved by joining the tube to a collar cut from the original - it's fiddly but works unexpectedly well.

Plumbers among you will have noticed that the new end-cap differs from the original, which was contoured to allow a soldered join. I decided that this small difference would not detract from the overall design aesthetic.

Time now for another digression from the plans. The kit calls for a PP3 battery snap-on connector to be glued into a recess in the frame. However I was unable to make a bond strong enough to survive the rigours of battery removal. I therefore modified the battery holder and added a (dolls-house) connector block as illustrated. A ribbon through the battery pack aids with removal through the rear access port.

17 January 2026

Now that the innards are complete, time to test that the timer counts down correctly and the air pump triggers at zero.

All works correctly, as the sped-up video below shows (you'll need to take my word for this, as the pump is barely audible on film)

Secure the back plate and fix the air horn to the side using the Munsen rings. Time now to test the air horn for effectiveness and comfort.

It's not as loud as expected, certainly not requiring a sock in it. Mind you, I am a bit deaf … .