Clockworks

[Pomf]

I'm at day 90 right now and I still haven't gotten any gears, I've sailed across a large portion of the map to find them but no luck so far, there really should be some clockworks at multiple locations. 

Right now it seems to me that you either find them and have enough gears for the rest of your game, or you don't have any at all. I know you can get them from sandpiles but I have dug up like 160 sand and no gears.

 

They could also add more ways to use the gears, like steam engines, as the ice-fling-o-matics are rather useless right now, you don't want to use your farms while there are volcanic rocks falings out of the sky.

[jacklul]

I believe currently guaranteed gears are spawning around wooden thing portal, clockwork boats thingies. Small coral reef biome.

I got a lot of gears from the slot machine and treasure chests, you should uncover more of the sea area and find more treasure bottles and floating chests. You might wanna trade with octoking and get a lot of dubloons then prepare some sanity restoring food and go for the slot machine and gamble!

[Pomf]

I know they spawn around the wooden thing, I've been looking for it for ages but haven't found it. 

I have found the slot machine, so I will take your advice and see if I can get gears from that, the chances of finding the slot machine are just as small as finding the wooden thing though, which may be trouble in future games.

Treasure chests seem just as luck based, I have found around 6 of them this game and there were no gears in them.

 

Overall, I think there should be easier ways to get guaranteed gears

[jacklul]

Also, I'm not sure but I think you can occasionally catch gears with Trawl Net! (most likely deep sea area only)