Escapement

What do you read in bed at night?  Me, typically mysteries/detective/crime fiction. But these day's I've been buried in  Thorpe . When was that Japy made? Does it really matter? Perhaps not but the sleuthing is a pleasure. Deep in a section about clock disassembly I discover the following: "... take a close look at the front plate, where most repairers will have left their signatures."  Precisely where this Japy is signed. Furthermore there are 4 places where Thorpe specifically discusses silk suspensions and the transition to the use of the Brocot suspension. His dating and related language wobbles ever so slightly thusly: Page 61: The Brocot suspension "became widely used around 1850." Page 77: "... after 1850, the spring suspension was gradually introduced." Page 85: "Although introduced in 1840, [the Brocot suspension] is not widely seen in clocks dated before about 1860." Page 166: Silk suspensions were "used extensively until 1...

In our last episode I told the tale of the lovely dial on our Japy Freres. But I jumped over the removal of the dial from the movement and skipped another charming and intriguing piece of its history and an instigator of quite a bit of mystery to your correspondent. [Queue the Scooby Doo music ] You may recall that in the photo below the movement is on the right (all the gears and such between those thick brass plates) and the bezel, dial and glass door are all on the larger unit on the left. That unit is held to the movement by three posts that pin to the brass plate of the movement.  When those posts are unpinned and removed from the movement the back of unit looks like this: That post is on a circular mounting plate that holds the dial in place against the bezel and the glass door. Note the blue enameled back of the dial with the hour and minute wheel still attached through the dial to the hands in the front (which you would see were we to flip over the dial).  When disass...

I was worried about shipment. Stories of slate clocks cracking in shipment abound. The seller and I traded emails about this and he did an incredible job packing the clock. The clock itself weighs about 20 pounds but arrived completely intact and super well-protected. It was triple-boxed.  Oh there's that nearly flawless dial. So often these are cracked or badly chipped. This one has no cracks and the smallest of chips right along the bottom rim of the keyhole. A very common location for chips. I did a basic disassembly of the clock just to inspect it. The "guts" of the clock, the entire movement, the whole front of the clock face, the dial, the front brass bezel and its glass door are all held in place in the case by straps of metal that go through the case front to back along the sides of the movement and connect to a rear bezel. Virtually all antique French clocks hold this complete unit in the case with bezel straps. Here's all of it removed as a single unit, slid...