She's a little dirty!

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 and it is typically regulated by a pendulum. Pendulum's are extremely reliable and can be tuned with great precision.

Here's a pendulum mid-swing on an old Ansonia gingerbread style kitchen clock that Kelsey bought for me recently.

But there's just one thing about pendulums. They rely on the clock being carefully and stably leveled. They work for a clock on a shelf or a wall. Tilt the clock and the pendulum beats differently or stops entirely.

What if I wanted to have a clock on a ship or say, my wrist?

Well friends then that escapement needs something other than a pendulum to regulate it. Something that will work regardless of its physical orientation.

It needs a balance wheel and hairspring.

Balance wheels were first developed for timekeeping in the 14th century but came into much greater adoption as part of the improvements to ship navigation in the last couple centuries.

A pendulum is pushed by the power from a spring or weights in an escapement and gravity pulls it back to center. That creates the cadence of a clock beat.

A balance wheel is also pushed and pulled by a coiled hairspring and spins on an arbor (rod). The hairspring creates tension on the wheel and that centers it back for the next push from the spring. A pallet fork transfers energy from the escape wheel to the fork to the wheel. Quiz later.

Click here and jump to 6:11 to see how a balance wheel works. 

Here is a video of a pin lever escapement almost identical to that found in our mystery Italian job.

In the case of our Italian clock the pallets run along the side of the lever somewhat like this:

And that is what is known as an English lever, seen to better effect here about halfway down the page.

Balance wheels have become the de facto standard for time regulation on mechanical watches. From Seiko to Patek Phillipe, they all use balance wheels and hairsprings.

Clocks are another story.

There was a surge of use of balance wheels in clocks on ships and those innovations made their way to many a shelf and wall clock. Some manufacturers built balance wheel escapements in their traditional shelf and wall clocks through the mid-20th century. But over the years clock makers realized that balance wheel escapements are more complex (than needed) and finally not as accurate as pendulum clocks. So over the last 50 years, while becoming the gold standard in watches, they have fallen out of favor and no longer used in what little remains of modern mechanical clock production. 

Our Italian friend is the first balance wheel clock movement to grace my shop. And it doesn't not appear to be from a ships clock.

Jumping ahead a bit on the repair, here's the balance wheel and hairspring from this clock:

And here's the hairspring, balance wheel, pallet fork, pin pallet and escape wheel all back in place after I "cleaned" the clock (more on that in another post).

Fun!