Elbow grease
With our Italian friend I was concerned about the reassembly and tuning of the balance wheel and hairspring. I took my time making notations and boning up on rebuilding such a beastie.
There are many new parts for me to learn about with this movement. Here's a well illuminated example of a similar one.
Getting the hairspring, balance wheel, pallet and lever to all be correctly aligned and balance post-surgery was causing me to perhaps over-cram for the test.
Finally I screwed up my courage and decided to do the disassembly and give this girl a bath.
I worked slowly and took a lot of pictures. Many springs, levers, wheels, pallets and more to be realigned later.
Finally got it all laid out.
A visual inspection revealed a bent hour hand wheel. Careful application of flat pliers remedied that.
The strike train mainspring slipped continuously when winding.
Here's why. The mainspring had slipped off it's arbor hook. Might have been an earlier, sloppy repair job as it appeared bent. Bent it back with pliers so it would engage properly when wound.
Other miscellaneous tweaks but overall our girl looked intact.
And here is the pin pallet and lever assembly.
On to a good cleaning. Some long plunges in a degreaser, a cleaner and then a finishing solution. That and a long time scrubbing and rinsing yielded good results.
Yep. Much better.
That time train mainspring (above left) was a little tired, probably from being coiled up too long. I stretched it out in an effort to refresh it. Along with some mainspring grease that might just be enough to revive it.
A few more tweaks and I tried to reassemble the dingus back into a whole. It was a non-trivial effort.
Getting the hairspring back in place was tricky. I marked it with a sharpie and that helped me guess where along the coil to pin it to the attachment lug.
About here I think:
Reassembled and pretty:
A thorough oiling and wound her up and...
It runs!! Yay!!
Great to see that balance wheel running correctly. The engineer in me just tried really hard to put it back exactly as it was. Don't mess with success.
She ran well for about 5 mins and...
It stopped.
Pushed the balance wheel and it ran some more.
And stopped again.
Friction is the enemy of a well running clock and often the most bedeviling part of clock repair. There are so many points where pivots meet plates, gears to gears to springs and more.
I took a closer look.
The escape wheel pivot on our Italian friend has worn a groove into the brass plate. This is a very common problem. When this divots grow beyond about 30% of the original hole they can become very consider sources of friction.
To test my theory that this is a culprit in stopping the clock I turned it upside down so the pivot would not fall into the divot.
The clock ran for hours.
Ergo:
Repair of worn pivot holes requires bushing. Bushing entails cutting the plate and inserting a bush (or small, flat and round brass piece) and recutting the hole exactly to the right size and where it should be.
This is the next level of clock repair and a first for your correspondent.
Time to break out the books.
Fun!
There are many new parts for me to learn about with this movement. Here's a well illuminated example of a similar one.
Getting the hairspring, balance wheel, pallet and lever to all be correctly aligned and balance post-surgery was causing me to perhaps over-cram for the test.
Finally I screwed up my courage and decided to do the disassembly and give this girl a bath.
I worked slowly and took a lot of pictures. Many springs, levers, wheels, pallets and more to be realigned later.
Finally got it all laid out.
A visual inspection revealed a bent hour hand wheel. Careful application of flat pliers remedied that.
The strike train mainspring slipped continuously when winding.
Here's why. The mainspring had slipped off it's arbor hook. Might have been an earlier, sloppy repair job as it appeared bent. Bent it back with pliers so it would engage properly when wound.
Other miscellaneous tweaks but overall our girl looked intact.
And here is the pin pallet and lever assembly.
On to a good cleaning. Some long plunges in a degreaser, a cleaner and then a finishing solution. That and a long time scrubbing and rinsing yielded good results.
Yep. Much better.
That time train mainspring (above left) was a little tired, probably from being coiled up too long. I stretched it out in an effort to refresh it. Along with some mainspring grease that might just be enough to revive it.
A few more tweaks and I tried to reassemble the dingus back into a whole. It was a non-trivial effort.
Getting the hairspring back in place was tricky. I marked it with a sharpie and that helped me guess where along the coil to pin it to the attachment lug.
About here I think:
Reassembled and pretty:
A thorough oiling and wound her up and...
It runs!! Yay!!
Great to see that balance wheel running correctly. The engineer in me just tried really hard to put it back exactly as it was. Don't mess with success.
She ran well for about 5 mins and...
It stopped.
Pushed the balance wheel and it ran some more.
And stopped again.
Friction is the enemy of a well running clock and often the most bedeviling part of clock repair. There are so many points where pivots meet plates, gears to gears to springs and more.
I took a closer look.
The escape wheel pivot on our Italian friend has worn a groove into the brass plate. This is a very common problem. When this divots grow beyond about 30% of the original hole they can become very consider sources of friction.
To test my theory that this is a culprit in stopping the clock I turned it upside down so the pivot would not fall into the divot.
The clock ran for hours.
Ergo:
Repair of worn pivot holes requires bushing. Bushing entails cutting the plate and inserting a bush (or small, flat and round brass piece) and recutting the hole exactly to the right size and where it should be.
This is the next level of clock repair and a first for your correspondent.
Time to break out the books.
Fun!
It is not exactly like space travel, but entering The Unknown is both gut-clenching and exhilarating. Even when the adventure does not go as we had expected - another reminder that expectations ought be quelled.
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