Escapement

Behold what I believe is a hybrid English lever pin pallet clock escapement. A mouthful. It's in there. I checked. Just hard to see from all the sawdust. While not in exchange for services, Yeoman Johnson, master woodworker (and sawdust creator), did ask me to bring his mystery clock back to life. The clock has little history but several intriguing clues: The movement was attached to a wooden faceplate: And yes that is Italian. Forward and Back.  Pretty sure that's not Ed Ricketts on the bottom. In many ways clocks are rather simple things.  A power source turns some gears. Power on older clocks is usually provided either by weights on pulleys or springs wound by hand.  Now the gears of a clock would just spin until the weights fall to the bottom or the springs would just rapidly unwind if they didn't have a regulating device that controls the power and sets the beat of the clock. That device is the clocks escapement...

The cuckoo came backless. If I'm hanging the thing then who'd notice right? Well the back also should have a coiled gong for striking the hour. The sequence of a cuckoo clock striking is: gong, cuckoo, gong, cuckoo, gong... etc. The cuckoo bellows I fixed but this thing needs a gong and therefore a back plate. I suppose I could jury-rig something... but I have a better idea.  I can fix things. I know another guy who knows how to make things. Wooden things. JohnsonArts to the rescue! From plank      To bank! He even beveled the bottom edges to fit the curve of the case slot. 20 minutes top to bottom. Timesavers had the gong: This might just work!

I have spent far too much time researching cuckoos. There are approximately 1 zillion cuckoo's out there made by scores of companies and many of them, especially earlier cuckoo's have little to no identifying manufacturers markings. They're still in production for tourists far and wide and while there are still some made with incredibly high quality many were and are cheap knock offs. I think I've looked at every photo of a cuckoo ever published. Still don't know who made my cuckoo but zeroed in on a date range from the 1890's to about 1915. Probably on the early side of that range. Interesting post to come on the dating effort. Cuckoo's have a few different principle styles. The classic is a typically a brown wooden case with carved birds and leaves. There are chalet styles with figures around a house and hunter styles with a dear heads, rifles and, typically, some draped dead animals. Best examples of the styles come from the Black Forest region of...