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07 31st, 2009| 
CLOCKS
I once knew a cottage kitchen which boasted seven clocks. They all worked, and they all kept fairly good time, but they were not synchronised and four of them chimed. Twelve noon was a time of fantastic, explosive excitement. One by one the clocks went into action. The plaster flaked off the ceiling, the several cats scattered in all directions. The clocks went on chiming for about three minutes, and one was left in no doubt at all as to what time it was. The owner of the clocks picked them up for pennies at farm sales, and dismantled them by the light of an oil lamp, cleaned them and put them together again. Usually that was all they needed, plus a little persuasion and persistence, to get them going. I don’t think John ever actually made a new part or mended an old one; he may occasionally have used a part from another useless clock, but that was as far as it went.
The moral of all this is that as far as the movements are concerned the amateur may well succeed in making an old clock go just by careful cleaning and oiling; but if there is a broken part it must be replaced or repaired and this is specialist work. There are plenty of books in any local library about clock cleaning and repairing, and a few evenings’ study of the descriptions therein of the various types of movement, escapement etc. will help you at least to have a vague idea of what you are doing when you start dismantling clocks.
Not long ago I inherited all old Norfolk clock. It had hung on the wall in my mother’s home all my life, and for the last twenty-five years to my certain knowledge had not worked. I felt that it had ill some way ‘died’ and that it was only fair to try to resurrect it. When I inherited it, although I had never tampered with a movement before, I felt that as the thing wasn’t working anyway I couldn’t do Much harm. The case of the clock is about four feet long, and it hangs on the wall. It has a very heavy lead weight, which once, when I was a child, fell through the bottom of the clock with a cataclysmic crash when the gut broke. This accident coincided with the double pneumonia of a much loved uncle, and was taken by my family as a sign that lie had died (and presumably twanged the gut in passing). He recovered and lived for years, which destroyed my faith in Bitch omens for the rest of my life.
All this is a little beside the point. First I removed that weight by lifting the pulley off the gut. I removed the hood of the clock by sliding it forward, complete with glass door, and laid it aside very carefully. It is a pity to break a perfectly good glass, although should you do so, or should the glass be broken, a glass merchant will cut a new one, and it can be reputtied into place, or cemented in with Araldite. The round glass in my dock is puttied into the wooden front in exactly the same way as a window, except that the putty is oil the inside. Then I took out the pendulum. Having removed the hood I could see the back of the escapement and the top of the pendulum with its suspension spring (see Fig. 12), and it was simple to take out the pendulum without breaking anything. Lastly I removed the whole movement and face complete on its seatboard. Sometimes the seatboard is screwed to the body of the clock and these screws must obviously be removed first.
Don’t take the works apart just for the fun of it—only
just as much or as little as is necessary to get at them to clean them. Start with the hands, which on a long case clock are held in place by a small pin above a metal washer. Before the face can be taken off, the hands are removed. Then take out any pins or latches holding the dial plate pillars in the front plate of the movement. Clean all the parts well. Steel parts may need a little rust remover oil steel wool, or fine emery cloth. If brass parts have been lacquered and look horrible, strip off the lacquer with methylated spirit, as it is probably shellac. Clean the brass parts carefully with metal polish. Rub steel parts with black shoe polish. Replace old gut lines either with new gut or with nylon or stranded steel, so that the weight will never fall down again as nine did and frighten you half to death, smashing the bottom of the clock into the bargain.
Hands may be reblued with special fluid, or by laying them in sand and heating until they become blue all over. Mend broken hands with silver solder; soft solder is not strong enough for such tiny joints and will melt if the hands are reblued. Rusty blued hands held in the flame of a candle become black all over. Move them ii the flame all the time until they are well coated, and then paint on a thin coat of clear lacquer with a soft paintbrush so as not to disturb the colour. An Aerosol lacquer spray will do the job even better. If the hands are still warm the lacquer will flow on and blend nicely.
I discovered in my clock that sonic idiot had screwed aii ordinary coat hook onto the frame to anchor the gut, which then ran down to the weight and up to the drum. This had the effect of making the weight hang slightly to one side of the case, and I am sure was one reason why the clock did not go. Keep your eyes open for this kind of tampering. I removed the hook and anchored the gut through its original hole. Tie the gut above the hole with a knot with a loop, and slip a little Peg through the 100P so that the knot cannot slide down through the hole.
Broken or hopelessly worn parts must be remade or rebuilt, and this is expert work. Study a good book oil clock repairing if you wish to start on this metalwork.
Having made sure that there is no more dirt, old oil, damp or rust anywhere in the clock, reassembleit. Touch
each bcariuv
g first with a drop of clock oil, using a long feather or a piece of copper wire flattened at one end as a dropper. Don’t use machine oil, and be sparing with the oil. Mineral oil left on brass surfaces causes staining. Never put any oil on the teeth of any of the wheels.
Replace the hands and make sure they move freely, but not so freely that they drop by their own weight. If they are too loose on their arbour, tap the outside brass washer lightly all round, so bending it in just a little, until the hands hold on the arbour.
If the brass face of a clock with engraved lines filled with black wax has been overpolished, and the black retiloved, replace it by making a mixture of shellac, methylated spirit and lampblack, painted back into the engraved parts. Let it set and then wipe off tile surplus with a mild abrasive. Jeweller’s rouge or whiting on a soft rag taken right across the surface should do the trick. Then polish well. The resilvering or regilding of clock faces is a highly technical business, but brass faces can be polished and painted with clear lacquer such as Ercaline. If the clock is not too valuable, you might try regilding or resilvering the face with one of the modern restoration pastes or paints as described in the section on gilding.
Reassemble and set up your clock properly or it won’t go. The movement oil its seatboard is replaced in the clock and the hood put back. Check that the face of the clock is centrally positioned behind the glass door, then take off the hood again so that you can see what you are doing, and put the pendulum back. Put it through the door in the trunk, and up through the gap in the seatboard and through the crutch. Very carefully feed the suspension spring through the slit in the back cock, and pull it gently downwards oil to its seating. The pendulum swings freely with the block on the pendulum below the suspension spring, free in the crutch. Rehang the weight and wind up the clock (see Fig. 13).
Now make sure that the clock is upright. A weight on a Piece of string will give you a plumb line by which to judge. Check the fore and aft level with a spirit level. Make sure the clock stays firmly in its place, using wedges if necessary.
Then swing the pendulum and start the clock. If all is well the tick-lock will be equal and solid. If the clock is not set right the tick will be louder than the rock or vice versa, and the time interval will be noticeably unequal. Provided the clock is set level, the best way to get the pendulum swinging right is to bend tile crutch slightly. Face the clock, place the first finger of the hand on the loudest tick side at the top of the crutch. Place die first finger of the other hand at the bottom of the crutch on the other side, and then bend the crutch gently with the lower finger, towards the louder tick. When the tick is equal, the clock will keep going.
If the clock gains, unscrew the rating nut at the bottom of the pendulum, thereby lengthening the pendulum as the bob drops. If it looses, shorten the pendulum by screwing UP the nut. A pendulum length of 391″ should give a tick of exactly one second !
Longcase clocks usually have nice mahogany or oak cases. These may need repair and cleaning, and tile section on furniture should be consulted. It is a pity, unless it is unavoidable, to strip down the case of an old clock. The patina which it has acquired over the years is irreplaceable.
Any simple clock can be dismantled, and cleaned by brushing the parts with petrol or benzene, rubbing them dry and reassembling them in the reverse order. The trick is to be able to dismantle in the right order and then put it all together again. I have no room to go into the details of dismantling even half a dozen of the simplest movements, and suggest that you borrow the Cassell’s Work Handbook on clock cleaning and restoration (or buy it). Just one point that I must make—do be careful if ‘you try to dismantle a clock with a spring. If the ny
ring is wound
up—and it well may be for people usually wind up a clock that won’t go and then it is left that way—don’t loosen anything until the spring is Unwound, or it may fly out and damage the clock or you quite severely. The spring is unwound by putting the key on the winding square mid holding it firmly. Lift the ratchet pawl or `click’ and let the key turn back half a turn. Drop the click so that it re-engages and holds the spring. Take a fresh grip on the key and repeat die process until the mainspring is unwound. Then you can go ahead in safety.
Dust does clocks no good, and some clocks have a kind of fretwork panel to allow air to flow freely. These frets were originally backed with fine mesh fabric to keep dust out, and that gets filthy or torn. Replace it with clean fine meshed material. Synthetic material won’t do unless it has an open mesh for it does not allow die passage of air. Very file nylon curtain material does quite well. By the same token cracks or openings in the clock case should be sealed wherever practicable with filler or by rebuilding. Even strips of brown paper or Sellotape X inside the clock will do.
Clock Keys. Missing clock keys are not too hard to remake. I-low beautiful you make your new key is up to you, but in its simplest form a clock key usually has an open square end which fits over a square spindle. I have used copper tubing to make a key for a long case clock. Sheet brass or even a piece of tin can be made into a tube and soldered before flattening it to fit. The measurement of the spindle from corner to corner diagonally across the section, is approximately equal to the interior diameter of the tube needed (see Fig. 14). The end of the tube will flatten out to make a bow, or it can be mounted on a piece of wood, or attached to any kind of handle you may fuicy.
When cutting a piece of sheet metal to make a key, leave a flap to form a handle (sec Fig. 14).
Jul
31
