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!.

Ive done a peice on this before so I wont go on. Its just that I finished the case and head restoration. I left most of its damage intact as it wasnt that bad. The case (not original – c1780) got a tidy up and a good coat of wax. The movement was fine so all it needed was a new pendulum spring and a service. I gave up on getting an original contemporary blued minute hand and left the broken one in place – I rather like it like that and its not as though I refer to it for the time although it keeps it nearly perfectly.

Grandfather clocks are just magnificent looking things and I like this clock because it shows us just how technically and artistically advanced we were 300 years ago. Its tempting to think we didnt really become decent engineers or merchants until the Victorian era but nothing could be further from the truth. When you look closely at a clock like this what you really see is the skills of the people who produced it from mathematics to material sciences – some of the laquer work and decoration on early clocks is breathtaking. Bear in mind these things were being produced for an export market pretty much from the time they were invented. If you want to know more about clocks from this period have a look at the Burpett article in this blog.

 

 

This is by far and away my favourite Metamec movement. It isnt a Metamec movement of course but Metamec used other clock makers movements extensively. I’ve even found a smiths stamped movement in one which was definitely an original fitting so they were buying from their main competitor at one point. Heresy but there you go. Im glad they did to be honest because as a Metamec specialist it gives me much more variation and I get to work with masterpieces like this 606e.

The reason its sooooo good is that its “electromechanical”. To explain…

A clockwork clock is driven entirely by mechanically stored energy in the form of a spring or a weight. An electric clock is driven entirely by electricity. In and electric all the energy comes from a motor that is regulated by the motors speed which is in turn governed by the frequency/phase of the mains electricity supply.

Then there are the electromechanicals. They use electric power to wind up the spring which it turn drives the clock in the tradional mechanical fashion. In the case of the 606 it doesnt use a motor; instead it uses a solenoid. If you dont know what that is then to summarise its like a mouse trap that snaps shut by magnitism when electricity is passed through it. Now if you snap the trap shut and the jaws of that trap push a flywheel then all you need is a spring attached the to the flywheel which then drives a full mechanical clock. Its real genius because it avoids the need for a motor and also means you can drive it with a low voltage battery and let the clock take care of the mechanics in the traditonal fashion.

Its a work of art to see functioning. All these movements, whatever the mounting come with a clear perspex movement case so you can see it all going on. Theres then a metal dust cover over the whole affair for some reason but I suspect a design engineer with a bit of flair specified in a clear case.

The only thing they got wrong was to factor in leaking batteries over time. 90% of the movements I see have battery damage and its heartbreaking as the acid gets right into the solenoid and the thing is really in a mess when it gets that far. I can fix and hold spares for these but they are rare and prices are high so if you have one dont put a cheap battery in it!.

I couldn’t save this one so I had to replace the entire movement inner. I maintained the old movements mounting plates with a bit of modification – the movements are largely the same in the series but each one mounts differently on each model of clock and various plates and spacers are essential. There wasnt a lot of consistency in the production of Metamecs and they did whatever it took to survive commercially including completely changing key elements in identical looking models over the years. This means you can get most clocks with at least 4 movement options all of which change over the years. Its what makes them interesting to work on.

Heres a few pics of the finished clock. Its probably one of the best Metamecs you will see – the body is a classic and the movements the best type. It even looks good from the back.

This is a restoration I’ve just completed. Rather than bang on about it ill just summarise what was done.

1. Movement stripped down and all brass chemically cleaned on a 3 stage process.
2. Refinishing the black to remove the mineral degradation of the slate over 100 years
3. Movement setup and calibration

Theres only three operations here but this stuff takes a long time so restorations of this type are quite costly. On a normal slate I would question whether it was worth it due to the flat values at the moment – a good slate is £200 to £500.

I did this clock because…it needed some love and I could see the potential, however, had it not been for the gorgeous ruby escapement paddles it might not have made the restoration que!. I am very glad I put the time in on this one as the photo doesn’t do it justice – its an absolute corker, if somewhat heavy.

If you have a slate you want done I am more than happy to do it but you will have to deliver and pick it up yourself – my back cant take it!.

 

I do a lot of work on Metamecs as they were based just down the road from me in the 80’s and Ive met people who worked there as well as seen a lot of the range over the bench.

This is the Zodiac which came with every variant of movement when it was produced. I lot of people think this means that a quartz conversion should be straight forward but in most cases it is not. This particular clock was fitted with the cabled version of the movement so the appeture is more than big enough to take a standard 57mm quartz. What did need doing however was re-boring the central spiggot hole which was 3mm too small. The face plate needed the same adjustment. Its all about the hands on an electric conversion and I am lucky enough to have found a source for these that fit on the quartz spindle size.

While electric conversions are a bit “clock heretic”, it is the right thing to do on some of these clocks. I usually stock the original parts to put a clock back to “factory” but sometimes it makes more sense to put a quartz in for one reason or another – usually accessibility and convenience for older customers.