Escapement

 It's not like I wasn't warned. Those spots on the top of the Japy case were identified as "blemishes" by the seller but he did make clear that there were a lot of them. That's his photo above. Close inspection and extensive reading reveals that the white marks are what are called "etches" in the stone. They come from exposure to an acid (often in poor choice of cleaning solutions) that will eat away at marble. Here's a couple closer views. As you can see the etching is all over the horizontal surfaces.  I came to understand that the only way to fully remove etches is to sand the stone down to an unblemished layer.  Well that seems like overkill and I'm not that obsessed with how this looks.  What also came through on several posts is that with the right materials you can get those etches to absorb dye and wax and thus reduce their visibility dramatically. That sounds like my kind of approach. I won't bore you (I haven't already right?) w...

Ruh Roh! The Japy case was described as "black slate" by the seller. Sounds fine to me.  And then one day I'm reading the NAWCC message boards and came across a thread describing a clock very similar to mine. So similar that I had to jump in. The story is there in the thread but I'll summarize here first.  Marc from York, UK (this is an international thriller!) posted about his white  stone Japy Freres 1855 Exposition clock. Well I'll be darned. Definitely some differences, most notably that the movement is time and strike (mine being time only) but the same makers mark from 1855.  Entertaining to see one.  In the course of the thread Marc wants to identify the type of stone used for the case. Is is marble? Alabaster? Something else? I speculated on the thread that the stone looked like Alabaster but I am no expert. I was fascinated and dug into Thorpe and researched the message boards. Is my clock black slate or something else?  Well Thorpe has an extensiv...

 Here's the Japy movement out of the clock... A little dirty but very much intact. And after I removed a number of the pieces on the plate it is lifted off thusly... Revealing... That grime on the inside of the plate is old oil and crude. Then removing each wheel with great care... Backing up slightly it's worth noting that each wheel is connected to a rod, called an arbor (in clock terminology) and the arbor tapers to a fine tip that is inserted in the plate. That tip is called the pivot. Here's a generic American wheel diagramed. The arbor spins with the wheel between the two plates as seen here... With the plate off I have to very carefully remove each wheel. This is the escape wheel... Famously old French clocks used very fine metals for their clock works and notably the pivots are quite small and can break if not handled with care. Prior to this clock the smallest pivot I'd seen was on my Schatz miniature clock. Here's a Schatz clock escape wheel and the Japy e...