Unfortunately it would only be approximate. As the temperature and the humidity in the air change, the friction in the device would change. Thus our second hand would not keep very good time. So, back in the 1600s people who wanted to create accurate clocks were trying to solve the problem of how to cause the second hand to make exactly one revolution per minute. The Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens is credited with first suggesting the use of a pendulum.
Pendulums are useful because they have an extremely interesting property.
Since gravity is constant at any given spot on the planet, the only thing that affects the period of a pendulum is the length of the pendulum. The amount of weight does not matter. Nor does the length of the arc that the pedulum swings through. Only the length of the pendulum matters.