Fine work if you can get it
Here's the Japy movement out of the clock...
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...
With the plate off I have to very carefully remove each wheel. This is the escape wheel...
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...
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 escape wheel below it. Look at the size of the Japy pivot. It's so small.
All the wheels and other parts go into a special bath of water, ammonia and a few other things. There's a lot of additional scrubbing and scraping of old grease, dirt, gunk, etc.
I checked the mainspring with Scott's winder. Looks ok but I think I should replace it one day. It's a bit tired.
Movement is much cleaner (within limits) and now reassembled with the pendulum, up on my test stand...
A close up reveals my silk thread substitute recommended by several NAWCC members, dental floss.
Oh and I thought I'd show a couple of the wheel pivots from the outside of the plate. The the top red arrow points at the protruding tip of that tiny pivot on the escape wheel shown earlier, inserted back correctly between the plates with the other wheels.
She runs like a champ and the dental floss works fine.
Next I had to clean up the case.









You are a MON-Stah, now you can truly say that you floss daily.
ReplyDelete