[stan_rogers]

That series still isn't over. It just got interrupted a couple of times. The first interruption was explained in Episode 10 - that was the discovery that the way one of the wheels was divided in the remaining teeth likely indicated that the mechanism was based on a lunar rather than a solar calendar, and that part needed to wait for the peer review and publication of a paper before the series could continue. The next interruption had more to do with Chris's real passion of watch and clock making - he had access to a couple of decorative engines (a straight-line engine and a rose engine), probably temporarily, since they would in no way both fit into the little closet he has for a shop, and he did some rather impressive guilloché and enamel work with those. When the series picks up (if it does), the hard parts are yet to come, like the planetary dial and its crapload of pointers.

One thing Chris has done that people like Michael Wright didn't was to assume that anyone who was building something like that, with its obvious signs of not being a rough prototype, would have made some sort of jig for some of the parts rather than, say, laboriously walking off tooth spacing for every single gear, and that some sort of lathe, which was known to exist and be used for wood from illustrations both contemporary with and far preceding the device, would have likely been used to make round things out of soft metal.