Roland Dutoya
Designer, Builder, Clockmaker
I’ve always spent my spare time on various do-it-yourself activities in parallel to the mandatory items as mowing the lawn, change light bulbs or apply new wallpapers.
I don’t remember when and where the idea came up to design clocks using wood as base material. Thinking a bit about it I recognize it corresponds to a long established passion and hobby.
I actually transferred the skills and knowledge of shaping metal, which I studied, to wood, material that has always fascinated and also puzzled me.
Adding together the knowledge acquired during 40 years of professional activity, curiosity and the wish to create yield the required base to cover very different areas necessary to design wooden clocks :
- learning about the evolution across the centuries of techniques to measure time
- mathematical approach to understand and create functional models.
- precise realization.
- artistic creation of innovative and attractive original designs.
And finally, research to rationalize the manufacturing of the products.
A passion for gears and pinions
As a boy already, I was impressed by old Comtoise clocks. I disassembled some but never succeeded the reassembly because I did not understand their operation.
Subsequently during my first professional jobs, I was closely involved in the manufacturing of gearwheels for tractor gearboxes. I learned about “diametral pitch”, “involute”, “shaving”, carbonitriding, “MAAG & GLEASON” machinery , “hobbing”, cutting oil…
nexpectedly, I put gearwheels in the last product I developed just before my retirement nearly 40 years later.
A full life around the gears and pinions ! I therefore continue
