Machinations: gears n' things -faux mosaic

My hope is that when people look at this they see a gear driven machine with a white/black tile exterior.  The reality is that it is one piece of Ash wood.  The "tiles" were relief-carved into the surface of the wood and later painted.  The gears and other machine parts do not actually move (except for the chains, the links of  which I separated during carving so that they would be moveable), and the
"on / off switch" does not actually function.  The tubes at the top (the far right) were inspired by the tubes of the French horn.  It took about seven months to complete the entire piece, working sporadically over that period, several hours at a time.  

Carving the chains to be free-moving was time consuming.  However, for the effort it definitely was worth adding them because people seem to enjoy puzzling out how you carve a chain from one piece of wood.  I considered using the chains to hang the piece, but decided against it.  

If I have one regret about this piece, it is the type of wood that I used.  Ash wood was not the best choice.  First of all, it is extremely hard to carve and doesn't hold detail extremely well.  This is my largest and most time consuming project to date, and the hardness of the wood was a contributing factor.
 Secondly, like oak, Ash has a large, very pronounced and porous grain (you can see it well in the tubes above).  The nature of machines, constructed from manufactured materials that are man made calls for a smoothness and uniformity of color in the material that was difficult to obtain with Ash (impossible perhaps).  Something smoother and more uniform would have been better.

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You can see under the gears covered by the grate that I've sketched out some ideas of how to proceed, but if you compare these to the final product you can see much of this changed.  I considered a mixture of organic with machine-like elements here but decided to resist the urge (much of my work includes very organic elements that flow naturally).  The straight lines and hard angles are a step away from what I usually attempt.  

Will Worsnopp, Dickinson College, Bronx High School of Science, Sidney Central School, carving, powercarver, MATSL, Bennington College,