New Gear Sets! Rack Shapes and Encyclopedic 2: 31-90

There are several exciting mid-year announcements:

1. Rack Shapes new gear set
2. Encyclopedic 2: 31-90 new gear set
3. Octuple dense 112 gear; free for the next month
4. Shipping Update (Europe and UK)

Rack Hoops gear set

An example of the triangle shape in the Rack Shapes gear set

The Rack Shapes gear set (product listing here) is three pages of non-circular hoops, and some gears.  There are nested hoop sets of triangles, squares, pentagons, and octagons all made with straight gear segments for the sides.  These open up a bunch of interesting spaces to explore.  The one I am currently diving into is using the rack segments to position and shift smaller hoops accurately and repeatably.

The three pages of the gear set can be purchased individually, or as a bundle for a discount.

Encyclopedic 2: 31-90 gear set

Layout image of all three pages of the Encyclopedic 2: 31-90 gear set

The Encyclopedic 2: 31-90 gear set (product listing here) is a continuation of the original Encyclopedic gear set.  Its main focus is making each gear in the series have two identical sets of pen holes; one set aligned with the gear teeth and the other aligned with the gaps in the gear teeth.

This is primarily needed if you are making a design that has elements in a ring and other elements around a gear; for proper alignment of the different elements some of them will need to be made with pen holes aligned with the gaps instead of the teeth. 

For example if you use a 24 gear in a 72 ring and make a design, then take out the 24 gear and put a 72 gear in the 72 ring and make the 72 gear stationary (with a magnet perhaps, or some putty) and remove the 72 ring then to continue the design with a 24 gear around the stationary 72 ring you'd need a 24 gear with pen holes aligned with the gaps in the gear teeth.

These two sets of pen holes (tooth and gap) can also be used to make designs with 1/2 tooth step offset designs, which is otherwise not possible.

This gear set has several options.  It is available as a whole bundle of all three pages, as individual pages for smaller number ranges, or as one page of "No Primes" which has removed all the gears that are prime, or close to* prime from the gear set to fit the remaining ones on one page.

*close to prime: all gears with only two prime factors and one of them being >13 were removed, some of the gears like that with a prime factor of 13 were removed too.  For a full list of gears in the No Primes gear set see the product listing.

Octuple Dense 112 gear

Packing so many columns of pen holes into gears in the Encyclopedic 2 gear set inspired me to see if I could make an octuple dense gear.  I think that for almost all uses this density of pen holes is overkill but there's only one way to find out.   This gear has 112 teeth and 8 full columns (A-H) of small pen holes and 8 columns of medium pen holes fit into the gaps. 12 pen holes per column for the small pen holes and 5 pen holes per column for the medium pen holes.

My plan is to include this gear (and diminutive frame) as a free gift with each order until August 20th (one month).  After that I'll look at pricing making a listing for it; it'll probably be CAD$10 at that point.

Shipping Update (Europe and UK)

Shipping rates and options have been simplified:

• Small gear sets will ship for CAD$15
• Large gear sets will ship for CAD$45
• Any order over $350 will ship for free

All packages will be shipped with tracking numbers via air.

I hope that this brings some more consistency to ordering Wild Gears into Europe.  I know that the dynamic shipping rate calculator got some funny ideas sometimes.  I continue to strive to provide the most reliable and least expensive shipping options to all Wild Gears fans world wide.

Note that if you are buying several small gear sets in one order the shipping quote generator might get confused and ask for $45, if that happens please email me at [email protected] and I can help sort that out for you.

​Thank-you for taking the time to read this update.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers,
​Aaron Bleackley