The points you rise, combined with Francis Vaughan’s idea that it could be an indicator for machine settings could suggest that this thing was custom made in a workshop for that purpose.
There’s a running joke in archaeology that if you don’t know what the function of an artifact is, then it must be cultic (i.e., religious).
It’s a Mechanical Rosary. Case closed!
Am I imagining it or do the numbers on the left side look worn down?
Hard to day because of the lighting. There is irregular spacing on the inner set of numbers, another indication this was a one off. If not a practice piece certainly not part of production run of machinery.
There does appear to be wear towards the center on the front of the disk. That’s something I wouldn’t expect in a display piece or a practice piece that was set aside and forgotten. Wear indicates use.
Seems related to a timing device.
The major divisions are 12 in number.
Then if you begin with 0 as an omitted number. The inner ring might be quarters of an hour.
The outer ring, omitting 0, being 10 minute intervals.
As to the odd ordering of the numbers. They may only make sense in relation to a gear that is indexed to this gear. Some time pieces keep track of date and even moon phase and such. To assemble the time piece correctly you would need to refer to a manual that told you what gear teeth to engage.
This piece could have been a one off item. Maybe from a large time piece in a clock tower. An astrolabe or such.
It’s a conversation piece.
It appears to be working properly.
Yea, I noticed that too.
I don’t think it’s simply a device for “indicating” numbers. If it was, why not print the numbers on paper? Why go to all the trouble and expense of making a casting? I think it’s a tool of some sort, and I think something goes through the holes.
If it was for use someplace with sparks or fire, like in a foundry or smithy, a piece of paper lying around might not last so long, but then you’d think this would show more signs of wear.
Don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, given the 12 segments and the 5 digit numbers, I wonder if this is, for some odd reason, based on a Base 6 number system.
If they were simply base 6 numbers, then I would think some of the digits would repeat. That is unless someone purposely chose base 6 numbers with no duplicate digits, and that seems like an odd thing to do.
That’s a good point.
Oh well, I got nuthin.
I can’t help feeling that the two rings of numbers are to be used in conjunction to create a two-digit output - so you read the digit from each ring that is closest to the pointer, yielding outputs in the ranges:
11 to 15
21 to 25
31 to 35
or possibly:
11 to 13
21 to 23
31 to 33
41 to 43
51 to 53
I can’t think of a context in which these would be useful, however.
I found some pictures of it on imgur. It appears that the images in this thread are cropped versions of some of them and there are some that I haven’t seen before. This makes me think that then poster may be the owner, or at least may be one step closer to the owner.
He says:
I tried to contact him on imgur but I’m unable to send him a message for some reason.
A guy with the same name posted a picture of it on Reddit.
Who here has a Reddit account and is willing to try to contact this guy? Maybe he can give us some context.
Well the numbers are just read out to the people on the ropes, so there doesn’t have to be more than the sequence to read out… So he can read out a 3 bell sequence, or a five bell sequence. The teeth of the outside of the wheel are so that an external mechanism can drive the thing, and thus set the tempo.
Although it might be useful for manual use, and the reader would just click it over the 9 clicks during his break, and read out the new sequence.
It seems the aim of bell ringing sequences is make it sound melodic, but by not playing an actual melody , or repeating a short sequence, it keeps the listener trying to discern the melody … so pays attention to it.
That the wheel isn’t attached to a bell tower indicating what sequence its about to play, might be because it isn’t a really nice sequence… It might have intended to be for a bell tower, but made improperly somehow … so I don’t see how numerical analysis can disprove it… the only way is to prove it is one thing.
As it is, it could also be a chocolate wheel… a random number generator, eg for choosing random numbers between 1 to 5, or 1 to 3. But there’s no real easy way to choose 1 to three, and that suggests its choosing the sequence of 1 to 3…
Such as what a clock maker , or bell tower mechanism maker, would make ??? 
Everybody, please read the entire thread before posting. Someone who knows about change ringing posted and said that this was unlikely to be related.
We came to a standstill on this two years ago. I posted again because of a possible new lead.
Note: Re-resurrecting a zombie with new suggestion.
Today I stumbled across a picture of a Union cipher ring from the Civil War, and I remembered this thread. The Union cipher disk had the same four numbers repeated in different combinations around the outer edge, similar to how this disk has the same five numbers in repeated in different combinations around the outside. I haven’t seen a cipher disk with that second row of fixed numbers, and I haven’t seen any with only 12 sections on the outer ring, but I’m thinking this may just be someone’s innovation of the basic concept. There are 12 sections on the outer ring, and each section has three numbers on that inside row… 12x3 is 36, which could give you a way to encode 26 letters and 10 digits. A moveable disk, which would have the letters and digits, is missing. But you’d turn the inner disk, aligning three characters with each section of the outer disk, and the 1/2/3 inner numbers would give you some information on how to use the outer ring to encode each of those characters with the outer ring. Like if the source character aligns with the 2 on the inner ring, you encode it with the middle 2 digits from the outer ring or something like that.
Possible?