Antikythera mechanism

I'm sure that most of you good folks here will be familiar with the Antikythera Mechanism - the 2100 year old gear driven orrery like machine found in a ship wreck off Greece.
For those that only have vague recollections of this incredible device, it was a machine the size of a shoe box that could accurately predict where in the heavens to look for all the major heavenly bodies known at the time. It included retrograde motion for all the planets (the machine represents what can be seen looking out from Earth, rather than being a birds eye view of the galaxy like a traditional orrery), and it even went as far as showing the apparent speeding up and slowing down of the Moon's orbit. It's predictions were depicted on both sides of the box by pointers for the five known planets of the time (and of course the Sun and moon), and with time being measured on the opposite side with a spiral scale that spanned 235 months, after which time the pointer on this scale would have to be reset to month one again. Other pointers predicted likely eclipses, moon phases and measures of time. All this pre-dated the first gear driven clock by over 1000 years. Put simply, it was an incredible feat of engineering for it's time.
So why am I rambling on about it you may ask? Well after building many orreries over the past few years - all with wooden gearing - I've finally got around to having a go at building one of these amazing machines myself, and again, it will be built with wooden gears. All the gearing has been worked out by minds far greater than mine, so with a little luck I shouldn't encounter too many problems.
I'm not sure if anybody here will be particularly interested - it's not exactly astronomy after all - but I thought I'd share my efforts anyhow, just in case. The machine has been built before, but not recently, and not including the latest thinking on driving the superior planets, so mine will be a first if I can pull it off.
I've attached a photo of the first few gears that will drive the pointers for Mercury, Venus and the Sun, all sat on their carrier gear.
I'll post the odd update as time goes on.
Dave.
For those that only have vague recollections of this incredible device, it was a machine the size of a shoe box that could accurately predict where in the heavens to look for all the major heavenly bodies known at the time. It included retrograde motion for all the planets (the machine represents what can be seen looking out from Earth, rather than being a birds eye view of the galaxy like a traditional orrery), and it even went as far as showing the apparent speeding up and slowing down of the Moon's orbit. It's predictions were depicted on both sides of the box by pointers for the five known planets of the time (and of course the Sun and moon), and with time being measured on the opposite side with a spiral scale that spanned 235 months, after which time the pointer on this scale would have to be reset to month one again. Other pointers predicted likely eclipses, moon phases and measures of time. All this pre-dated the first gear driven clock by over 1000 years. Put simply, it was an incredible feat of engineering for it's time.
So why am I rambling on about it you may ask? Well after building many orreries over the past few years - all with wooden gearing - I've finally got around to having a go at building one of these amazing machines myself, and again, it will be built with wooden gears. All the gearing has been worked out by minds far greater than mine, so with a little luck I shouldn't encounter too many problems.
I'm not sure if anybody here will be particularly interested - it's not exactly astronomy after all - but I thought I'd share my efforts anyhow, just in case. The machine has been built before, but not recently, and not including the latest thinking on driving the superior planets, so mine will be a first if I can pull it off.
I've attached a photo of the first few gears that will drive the pointers for Mercury, Venus and the Sun, all sat on their carrier gear.
I'll post the odd update as time goes on.
Dave.