This is due for a major repair kick off this week. Its a really good example of a mid Victorian cuckoo clock with dual automaters and an exquisite music box. More on this when its underway, however, take a look at the cylinder! I dont know how many notes per sequence there are probably between one and two thousand at a broad estimate. Ive run it manually to have a listen and it sounds like an orchestra playing one instrument.

What doesnt really come over from the photographs is the size of this thing. Its a good 2ft x 1ft if not more which gives a lot of scope for carving as you can see. This is a big job as the mechanism is shot pretty much with all the cams worn and no longer doing their job. In addition there is damage to the roof and structure so the whole case will need sorting out before each section of independently mounted mechanics can by synchronised. Love it!.

This is the second article on a rather large and advanced restoration I have been asked to undertake.

This part deals with the chapter ring repair. London style granfather faces are always a plate, a set of spandrels and a chapter ring. Sometimes there are other adornments but for the most part its just the aforementioned. To restore a face you need to get the chapter ring off and grind back any old silvering. You also need to remove the wax. Im not suggesting you do this yourself unless you have an old clock where its really a case or repair it or bin it. Its a genuinely difficult thing to do and takes a good deal of experience. Its not that the process is hard or complicated its just that you have to know the tollerances of the materials and have a set of jiggs you know the behaviour of. The reason I say this is that errors cannot be corrected. If you overgrind the engraving you ruin the clock. If you try and get the wax out with a needle and slip, you ruin the clock. If you blah blah blah you ruin the clock. You get the idea.

When I restore a chapter ring there are four stages. Firstly you need to thoroughly clean the face. This is a degrease, and amonia clean and a polish. Then a solvent wipe to create a completely clean surface. Once you have done this you are ready to apply the wax. This is what is used to fill the engraved numerals and markings on the dial. I use a shellac based wax that has an excellent lifetime and beautiful high gloss finish.  Applying the wax invoves gently heating the cleaned face and then using the heat of the metal to melt the wax. As you can see from the picture below you dont take any prisoners with this as you really want 100% coverage and every micro groove carved into the face to be filled.

After the wax has set then its time to remove the excess to reveal the filled engraving. This invovles a spinning jig so that you can create and even circular “grain” in the metal. I use a 400 grit and hours of elbow grease to get it exactly right. Power tools are far to aggressive and a recipe for disaster so its all by hand. Doing it this way you get it exactly how you want to see it.

Heres the ring after a days grinding away on jig showing the un-silvered brass face with the excess wax ground away. As you can see the engraving is perfectly presented and filled to the edges of every cut. The engraving depth remains consistent because….well because I did it that way and took care!. This took 3 attempts as on the first two the final stage of heating the wax to a sheen resulted in seepage and the whole process had to be started from scratch. Thats just the way it is sometimes – every clock is different although they all look the same. Metal guage, alloy composition, engraving depth and complexity of engraving design all effect the way you approach a job so you learn on every single clock to a degree.

The following picture shows the finished dial fully slivered. This is not sliver plating – its ion silvering done cold by hand as it would have been when the clock was made. It relys on a chemical reaction that uses a sliver salt with water as a catalyst – great fun to watch and apply.

Im hoping the next article, part III, will be the finished clock in a few days time.

This is a Gough I am working on among other things and this article is well worth a read if you want a decent quick backgound in early long case manufacture.

This clock is the one I referred to in my last post that I was fizzing with exitement about working on and Ive not been dissapointed. Its a really early clock as I suspected and is both rare and very interesting. Its says a great deal about early long case clock making and would sit well in a museum.

A bit of background about early grandfathers thats relevant to this clock and understanding it…..

The longcase evolved from the use of a pendulum as a regulator in 1658. Huygens the astronomer invented it ironically. This changed clockmaking from something very difficult to do, to something a bit easier and basic. A pendulum regulator means simpler mechanics and a cheaper design. Thats not to say the clocks were “everyman” but it meant the price of one came down from Porche type money to mercedes pricing. The knowledge of the engineering skills and the industrial organisation was in place to build the clocks so, even early on, parts like dials, chapter rings, the movement, and the engraving were separate skills carried out by separate guilds of craftsmen in separate locations. Knowledge was passed on via rather long apprenticeships – specially on the movement side of things so….. we can say this Gough clock was probably made by a third generation of clockmakers at a time when there were not that many.

Style was instructed and controlled by the apprenticeship system. Innovation and change were not part of the apprenticeship, quite the opposite. It was market economics and aesthetics that evolved style within these tight and norrow guidelines, specially in London which led the country in defining the fashion of the day. This means you can date a London clock from nuances in the style as it changed over time quite accurately. The style of this clock is consistent with 1700 or earlier in the London style, but, this clock is from Devizies in Cornwall which is odd in itself. Having said this the movement is entirely different from any London clock Ive seen with a single chain drive and cage. Anyway, all knowledge spread from London where style was strictly controlled and the further you go away from London at any particular period, the more deviation from the standard you tend to see in the design. I can only assume this chap emigrated from London down to the West country having served his apprenticeship at a London maker or, more likely was buying in the whole face from a London maker which is not unheard of by any means – guilds and demarcation made this style of manufacture and sourcing popular and acceptable. On balance is probably the latter bearing in mind the exotic movement design which I will cover in the second article that will follow completion of the restoration.

I’ve not researched Gough beyond some basics that he traded as a clock ans watchmaker up until 1730. The dial size and square face (no arch) tells me, within 10 years when this clock was made so Im reasonably confident at 1700 or a little earlier. The other major give always on the date are the lack of the seconds hand. Early long case clocks were thought to be unbelievably accurate already and the idea of “seconds” was just alien to people. It wasn’t a unit of time in every day use.  Further dating evidence comes from the quarter hour markings on the inner chapter ring that were included so people could read the clock one handed. One handed clocks preceded two handed from about 1660 to 1690. After that two handers were the norm but needed to have the old one handed legacy markings so people unfamiliar with two hands could still read them. For them hours were measured and referred to in quarters, not minutes which meant maths and education. All this, in conjunction with the larger dial plate and (they increased in size from 8″ in 1660 to 12″ in 1700 at 1″ per year”) nails it to about 1700.

At the moment it looks like a dull monotone boring clock. It isn’t. Its a thing of massive beauty underneath which I intend to show. So to the restoration…

I am guessing the silvering wore off in patches and the wax fell out of the numerals to such a degree that somebody just gave up and wiped it all off in order to maintain some level of neatness. I’ve considered the possibility that the chapter ring was not originally silvered or filled with wax as I know there were some brass chapter ring clocks out there at this time. I’ve seen a few and they are just a clock face carved into brass really, single plate and engraved outside the parameters of the London style.  I checked for old wax in the dial grooves at their deepest point but there is none, annoyingly. There should be some there. In addition to this there is absolutely no remnant of chapter ring silvering.

The thing is that this clock is so typical of the London face design that it is almost certainly a standard design clock where the wax and silvering has been steam cleaned (or the equivalent) as opposed to a naked all brass facsimile. Apart from this it has to be considered that there is absolutely no advantage commercially in the maker not finishing it off 100% London, having gone to the trouble and expense of getting to the point where its a couple of simple last stages. The clock would have been worth more in the London style that always led the fashion with its conservative values and quality; so he would have finished it a such.

This clock therefore needs re-silvering and waxing by hand. There isn’t any other way to achieve the intended result so you have to use the original processes and materials. Its very basic stuff that shares little with modern production processes. The chapter ring picture below shows the easy bit of the waxing process. Taking back the wax level with the engraving is the next bit.

You cant use the processes or power tools you might think as the shellac is glass like and to compound things the sheet metal production of the era wasn’t up to much. The thickness and relief of the sheet varies. If you grind it with the straight edges on power tools you will end up taking the top of the relief off and inevitably wearing away the engraving in some places more than others. This means hand tools and judgement and no second chances because there are no spares or routes back other than re-engraving. If you have to re-engrave for any reason you might as well scrap the clock because it looses the authenticity. Wear off the engraving and what you have is a sheet of brass on which you can, at best, make a copy of what was there before.

I hope this has been enlightening and if you have a clock like this you want restored you know who to call!.

 

 

I love cuckoo clocks. Its as simple as that. I have a menagerie of the things. I repair anything from a wooden cage victorian to a 20th century electric Conran.

Electric cuckoo clocks sound like a step to far into cuckoo insanity but this is not the case and all the customers I have who own them actually prefer them to the purely mechanical equivalents.. They are great fun, often have features impossible on a mechanicals, and are reliable.

That said they do fail from time to time and need components replacing. I hold spares for most of the popular electric movements and mechanics so there really isnt any cuckoo clock I cant get back to singing condition.

Common problems on the electric cuckoos are:

1. Electrical connection failure due to corrosion at contact points.
2. Worn plastic gearing.
3. leaked battery damage.

FIX IT YOURSELF ADVICE: Before you decide you need a fix have a quick look at whats going on inside yourself and do a connector check. This involves removing the back panel of the clock and making sure everything looks like its connected. If it all is still connected then disconnect the logic board connectors and re-plug them back into the sockets. This is often enough to remove light corrosion at the contact points and get the clock working again.

If all else fails then pack up your clock and send it to me (give me a call first so I know what and when to expect). Ill find out whats failed and quote you for whatever component needs replacing.

The only caveat here is that I might not be able to match the sound of the cuckoo as different logic boards have different sounds and you cant get them “by sound type”, as it were!. If its just a mechanical failure and the cuckoo still works then I should be able to return it to its original configuration and settings.

Oh and heres a picture of my 1860 black forest wooden cage with a fusee movement and delightful Dresden styling. Both do the same job and deliver the same joy.

The Dresden clock is up for sale at £3000 which is about £1500 overpriced to ensure absolutely nobody buys it. It belongs to me and all the people who come in here to gawp at interesting clocks – and thats the way its staying!.

 

 

Some customers like to have their clock serviced every couple of years. Its a reasonable idea but its not necessary unless you have a very fine old clock (movement) and wish to extend its life by many decades in the future. I tell people this but they just say “I want it done get on with it” – I’m not complaining and fair enough.

The point here is that there are two reasons to service a grandfather.

1. Its so filthy that it wont run
2. The dirt accrued on the clock is acting as an abrasive compound and accelerating component wear.

You might think that a dirty clock will not keep good time. This is not the case. Most will run accurately until they stop. This is because a pendulum swings at the same rate no matter how dirty the clock is. If the gear train has enough power to keep it running then thats exactly what happens and it can ONLY really run accurately. It might be that you get some degradation as the clock finally grinds to a halt but, well, not really. So whens the right time to get it serviced and is it worth the cost?.

If your grandfather clock is running and has a shiny (ish) movement its unlikely it needs a service or clean. Just give it an oil using clock oil.

If the clock is black and matt coloured then it needs a clean and you can bring or send it to me.

The following pictures show one Im working on at the moment. This is the first of two clocks I am restoring for a customer and Ill be publishing an article on the next one which will include dial silvering and wax numeral restoration (I am literally fizzing with excitement about that one – see you Tuesday John).

Anyway this is John first clock and its a Nottingham from about 1820, so quite late, and I think this might be its first clean in about 100 years. As you can see the build up of dirt is quite horrendous and this clock has not run for 15 years. Ill post a picture of the finished article in a few days so you can see what it should look like.

Note a couple of things here. Firstly there is a LOT of tarnish. This oxide gets into the connecting faces of the components and will stop the clock from running. Secondly the clock has been standing for a long time and rust has actually formed and collected on the spiggots- you can see the rust stain around the spiggot hole. This means that on this occassion the spiggot will need some attention, and subject to testing, may even need re-bushing. Cleaning a clock in this condition also therefore means a bit of re-finishing of the parts on most occasions.

I have completed this work and the clock is now running perfectly on the test rig. Its always nice when you get to that stage as the rest tends to be fine tuning and cosmetics as opposed to getting the basics working in unison.

So.. as simple as it sounds…if its shiny its probably just good for an oil, if its black then give me a call!.

Its worth mentioning here that the majority of clocks I repair are exactly that – repairs and not “servicing”. Peoples first instinct is to assume a clock “needs a service” if its stopped running. Sometimes that is the case but further invetigation usually throws up some calibration or parts replacement that needs sorting out. Things wear out on grandfather clocks because they operate under quite large forces and they usually have a bit of age so wear is to be expected.

As always, I hope this article gives you a bit of insight into your clock and how to manage ownership of it.You are unlikely to be the last keeper of your clock so its all a bit philanthropic on the servicing side and… well actually that feels pretty good for most people.

Good luck on your diagnostics and feel free to give me an email for advice if you need any – I try and get back to everyone regardless of whether its leading to work or just somebody trying to work something out for themselves.

Keep on clocking – I’ve got your back!.

 

Ok so Im doing another “how to” article to rob myself of work for some reason. Frankly, I like doing them and I get emails from people mid project seeking advice on these articles which often leads to good reviews or work so its all good fun.

To demo Im using a movement from the turn of the 19th century are quite robustly engineered. They have barrel pinion gears comprising of bars set between two disks. On a cast or cut pinion gear damage is pretty terminal dead parrot, however, these barrel pinion gears can be remade – Ive done quite a few. Its a good thing because these clocks are the sure fire stars of the future. Their art nouvau influenced modernism reflects Edwardian britian beatifully and they will only increase in value from a rissible low at the time of this article. Anyway thats what we are dealing with for this explanation on setting up the back of the clock and replacing the leaf spring.

Heres the clock in all its glory. For sale at the moment as it happens!. Sorry thats a bit Quentin Wilson…back to James May delivery…

 

 

So what Ive done here is numbered each of the areas you need to pay attention to if your clock has stopped and what each thing does in the process.

1. The pallet mounting assembly and fixing. You can only see the butterfly fixing bit in the photo but thats all you will be playing with. Each of the screws you can see can be loosened. When you do this the play in the fixing allows the butterfly to move a bit. This is to allow the distance between the pallets and the escapement cog teeth to to set finely at just the right height. As pallets wear the distance increases and the setting of the butterfly needs to be adjusted. See? easy!.
2. The pendulum spring. Right you have to know what this does. It twangs the pendulum. I cant be **rsed to explain the recoil physics, almost frictionless carbon iron steel lattices, and the laws of Newtonian motion. As far as you are concerned it “twangs” the pendulum making its passage slightly more abrupt at each end of its swing. If twang has been lost the effect of this is that the spring starts to give the swing more friction and it wont stay in perpetual motion on the power input it gets from the paddles that push the pendulum sorry the crutch rod. In english this means they need changing from time to time. If the spring is kinked its knackered and get a new one. If the pendulum snakes when it swings check for a physical break in one side or a fracture in the spring – any of that at all and then its a replacement job.
3. The pendulum crutch. For some reason clocks end up with poorly fitting pendulum crutches. The fit between the crutch legs and the pendulum rod should be just right. If you can hear a physical click as the crutch pushes the pendulum on each stroke then its not tight enough. A little bit of noise is ok but not a clack sound where the crutch is moving 20% of the pendulum rods diameter each side. You want it to be snug enough so that the rod is connecting for the longest time possible through the swing BUT MUST NOT RUB. If you need oil on it to make it work its wrong – it should work dry.

Any questions email me. Once youve done all this you might find the clock runs fine but only if you put a wedge on one side to take it off the horizontal. Theres a way of setting the beat on a clock I will cover in a later article that shows you how to simply adjust the pendulum assembly to allow for proper operation on an uneven / angled surface.

If its any more than these things to get your clock going then I operate a repair by post service that is very popular on all types of clocks. This is with the exception grandfather clocks although I do those if you are prepared to take off and send me the head, pendulum and weights.

I hope this article helped you understand your clock a little bit more and maybe even revived a recent acquisition of yours.

Yes it finally happened. Somebody walked into the Antiques centre with the gizzards of a turret clock. It has the weight system and gearing as well as the escapement system. It doesn’t work because its been badly adjusted but I can see exactly what needs doing. Basicly this is like Christmas.

Now all I need is a Big Ben style cast iron face and a turret. Then I will have most of what I need for a parliament and its a short step to taking power and sorting this country out. Clockwork cars wont make it past the Lords but Ill have your bins being picked up by spring loaded catapults within my first term as monarach having abolished democracy as a first order of business. It will be better – you will see, and it all started here.

 

 

I love auctions. The main reaons for this is that I can look at a clock and give it a once over health check. This avoids buying clocks that look great but are mechanical write offs. So – what can you do as an amateur to reduce your risk buying a three legged donkey that looks like a racehorse?!. There are a few basics.

Is the main spring broken?

If a clock has a broken mainspring then run away. Clocks at auctions, specially those with broken springs, wont have a key included with them. This is deliberate so that you cant test the clock.

The solutions is to go any buy a set of “uiversal clock spider keys” from ebay. They are £7 including postage and have every key size on a cartwheel type of arrangement. Wind all the springs. If they are jammed then thats probably fine – you cant overwind a clock, thats a myth, and the clock is just fully wound. “Broken” clocks are just often clocks that have been assumed to be overwound but have simply been fully wound. They dont work because they are simply suffering from a completely different problem – usually an incorrectly mounted pendulum.

If the clock can be wound up a little and then you hear a gronking scraping sound, thats the broken spring slipping round inside the barrel. Add £300 to get this fixed on top of whater you pay. It can get a lot worse than that if the mainspring took out other cogs when it snapped – they go with quite a bang.

Has the clock sustained internal damage

The the first thing to check after the springs is if the escapement cog is turning as the pedlumum is set back and forth. You can see the esacepement cogs on all clocks through a gap at the top of the back plate. Look through the gap and move the pendulum back and forth. If the cog moves one tooth forward on each swing of the pedulum you know power is getting through and the clock is basicly mechanically sound. If it doesnt move add at least £200 for a clean and/or be prpared to discover cog problems or wear that is many hundreds to sort out.

Is there a chiming problem?

Make sure the chime spring is wound up and then turn the hands past the hour. Do this for three hours in sequence to ensure it strikes progresively each hour. If it doesnt do this then add £200 to £400 on top of what you pay. Or dont buy it might be better advice.

Does the clock need a service clean?

Is it cleanworse inside so budget £120 for a basic clean and service on pretty much any clock bought at auction. You might be lucky but in my experience one out of two clocks need work of some sort with the majority of those jobs being service cleans.

Thats the basics and should get you a much safter buying experience. Go and buy a clock!.

A Smiths Bakelite I have in at the moment (a plug, not advice – shame on me).

Ive got quite a few clocks at the antiques centre if you fancy a browse. I sell mine with 3 month guaratees and they are of the mid range £60 – £120. Ive got a nice Bakelite Smiths in at the moment in very good condition for £80 – all original including the pendum bob – and Ive relaquered it (bargain!).

Good clocking – I try and answer all emails if I can so do feel free to ask questions on follow up to the clock buying advice here.

Justin

I have for some years been interested in, and serviced Metamec clocks. This is because you can work with Metamecs and get a bit of everything from a movement perspective. Metamec bought in movements for a good proportion of their clocks over the companies lifetime. Suppliers changed with price point and technology which means that covering Metamec for all the spares I ideally need is challenging!.

It takes some time to source and refurbish good quality components so I tend to use my entire stock myself and do not sell the parts outside of service calls / jobs. I cover all of the following for clocks that are now turning up from all over the UK and in one instance recently, Australia.

Series 1 cabled

Series 1 cabled with base mounted external starting spiggot (becoming rare)

Series 1 Cabled Alarm

Series 2 cabled – wall and mantle clocks

30 hour mechanical

8 day mechanical

Keinzle 606 electro-mechanical (two derivatives shown below)

I also repair or replace all quartz and balance wheel based battery movements. These are not pictured but are fairly easy to identify in that they are oblong with a battery horizontally at the bottom on the shortest edge of the oblong. About 2.5 inches by 3.5. Im out of unit stock for these at the moment but have components so they are not pictured below. They tend to be the least requested units for fixes and are very reliable.

The older sieries 1 and 2 cabled movements are not the same story at all – constant problems with coils, tensioners and wear – often all 3 on any given movement.

I am all for people having a go themselves and publish articles on this blog about how to do quite complex things, however, I have yet to hear back from anybody who has managed a cabled movement fix on their own. Ive tried to help several people via email but all fail. The problem is the series 1 and 2 movements are actually quite finely balanced and require putting together quite carefully once you’ve gutted and cleaned it. All the components themselves look brutal and crudely manufactured but the truth of it is that they are all within quite fine tollerances in terms of their positioning and placement. Wear in quite obscure areas causes problems not least because everything is so cramped you simply cant see “in” to witness the physical symptoms and diagnose the issue.

On the other side of things the Metamec mechanical movements are very good generally speaking although I say that in light of the fact that they were not made to last. When they do fail its normally quite catastrophic as they tend to go around the plates and fixings where things warp or wear. The main plates on the 30 hour movements go all the time and once bent out of shape cannot be returned to the perfect flat surface all the spiggots are expecting.  The 30 hour goes more because the act of winding puts pressure on the plates via leverage when you turn the winder. The 30 hour therefore gets 8 times more wear than its 8 day equivalent so I mostly swap or convert those to an alternative movement – an 8 day if available.

The keinzle 606 is an epic movement and I am quite precious about my stock of them (to my surpise!). If you have one of these keep hold of it – a future classic with a good deal of kudos already; prices are high.

I also do full restorations.

For the brassy Metamec clocks (and there are many!) I a do 3 stage chemical clean that gets the brushed or textured finish back to factory condition. Doing it any other way either doesn’t remove the oxidation deep in brushed texture or takes the brushed finish down by smoothing off the microscopic ridges that give the glowing brushed /textured effect.

In terms of woodwork I can restore most of the Metamec finishes although replacement is often the route for things like sun damaged and crackled acrylic in some of the metallic finishes.

I can replace most glass although this can get expensive for the rarer stuff. Metamec glass faces are particularly convex to accomodate the long spindle clearance that Metamec probably designed in so that they could keep movement variants to a minimum in a range where face depth and material varied greatly.  This means modern replacement glass doesn’t usually fit and vintage spares must be bought specifically, often on sale as one off items.

I really enjoy the Metamec work as its become somewhat of a specialisation for me so pictures of your Metamec are always appreciated. The long term plan is for an indexed gallery somewhere on this site for public reference, however, due to the astonishing time commitments of this job its about as likely to happen as the garden 2m reflecting telescope observatory that is definitely definitely maybe going to happen. Eventually.

If you would like me to fix your Metamec please email me with a description of the problem, and what you would like done. A few pictures of the clock are really helpful if you want restoration work done but not essentail if all you need is to get the clock working again.

Finally, I recently did a job for a client on a retirement clock they wanted completely restored. I liked it so much I went and bought the identical model which I have just brought back to life with the chemical clean, laquer and silicone UV resistant polish (car polish is good on paint finishes they used). Yes it does have a 606e. Ive never paid too much attention to this model but its really grown on me – the sort of 60’s – 70’s transitional design is very cool. Its come to something when your parents wedding presents come round in fashion again but I cant help liking it!.