Wind-up Kitchen Timer

How it's made

Source

a wound spring releases a clapper against a small steel bell. A 0.65 s train of 1.8 ms, low-passed noise strikes slows from about 23 to 15 Hz as the spring unwinds; the last blows weaken.

Body

the shallow bell has modes at 1 : 1.49 : 2.13 : 2.78 : 3.91 : 5.16 times 1480 Hz. Paired modes split by 2-5 Hz beat gently; T60 falls from 1.05 s in the rim to 0.16 s at the top.

Mechanism

each blow also excites short 430, 735 and 1190 Hz spring/frame modes and a broad 680 Hz housing tap. This quiet rough layer ends before the bell, rather than becoming an electrical hum.

Envelope

a decisive first ding, overlapping weaker blows, then an unforced ring after the spring stops. Upper modes decay first. A final 180 ms safety fade ends near 2 s; all excitations have rounded attacks.

Variation

seeded timing jitter, impact strength and tiny fixed mode detuning avoid rigid repetition. Controls set bell size, spring run, ring damping, hammer hardness and mechanism balance.

Presets

a bright pocket timer, a lower long-ringing countertop timer, a loose slowing mechanism, and a short padded timer provide different sizes, rhythms and damping. The sound is dry and mono.

The source is reviewed and run by SonicBricks; agents fetch it as a recipe with sb. It is not published on this page.