Escapement

The beastie arrives. Wil's packing was top notch. Everything looked good. Zo... OK I'll keep you in suspense no longer. A guy could learn a lot about gongs. This one did. Turns out, gongs were quite a thing in the 20's.  J. A. Olson posted some excellent details about German gongs that take us well beyond simply coiled vs. straight rod. I'll quote him: " The gong sold the clock, as cited in a NAWCC bulletin article a few years ago. And indeed, many makers tried out different gong blocks throughout the years. Each maker was attempting to  out-do one another in terms of how good their clocks sounded." Take a look at the example photos Olson includes in that post . You'll see a few coiled examples but about a dozen straight rod examples, all mounted vertically.  I guess the Largo was DUFA's foot forward in the gong world. DUFA did create a single coil version for some other clocks, still using the Largo gong brand name. Regardless, I had what I wanted. T...

A DUFA. COVID was lurking. We were sheltering. Local garage sales had dried up and your clock nerd was looking for a something that had a nice striking tone. Not up for a full tall case, dime-a-dozen, Westminster chiming grandfather clock, I was nosing around at German box clocks. These clocks were very popular in the 1920's and 30's. There were probably millions made. I also didn't want just a simple striking tone of a single coiled gong. These were the most common forms of striking clocks. I wanted a more rich-sounding, hourly-counting striker, what is often referred to as a Bim Bam  or a Normandy chime (or a Ting Tang for you Brits). These were typically made in Germany from firms like Junghans, HAC, Mauthe, Gustav Becker and many others. But I was after a particular brand. A DUFA.  DUFA is an acronym for the company Deutsche Uhrenfabrik (German Clock Factory) Etzold and Popitz. DUFA clocks were very popular in their day but not as well-known as some other brands. and fi...