Escapement

A fair bit of internet research on the sculptor, Cartier, and variations of Dog and Clock bore some fruit. From a long ago Australian auction house offering: Note the metal decorations on the front and the minute hand appears to be missing. And from an English auction site: The dial, bezel and hands are distinctly different. I took another look at our canine example and now something I'd not noticed before. Look closely and you'll see the hole repairs from where the metal adornment had been removed. I prefer it that way. I did polish the bezel up but took a very light touch to the case and the statue. Keeping to a gentle cleaning with water, I wanted to retain what was left of the gilding of the statue and the marble was in good shape. She's been running happily for months and is a good time keeper.

Off with the plates. For the most part removing the wheels and such is very straightforward but I do like to capture each wheel removal to ensure I know the corresponding pivot hole. Guessing afterwards, what goes where on the plate, could be a long game. The Brocot suspension was in fine shape. The suspension spring itself was a little bent but I've come to understand that with gentle straightening is will not effect the functioning of the clock. That notch in the brass end on the right... classic French, Brocot suspension spring . It's designed to clear the edge of the adjustment wheel on top of the unit. Here it is installed before cleaning. Held in place by a pin going through the unit (right below the adjustment wheel) and then down through adjustable plates. The arrow is pointing to the very top of the suspension spring and the notched part is facing inwards and is under the adjustment wheel. Now to clean the parts of the movement. Base grime removed by hand. I used Dr. J...

I mentioned the care needed in disassembly. Here's another example. In our last episode , as I removed various parts of the dog clock movement, I discovered a very unusual spring. Continuing our movement disassembly I spied another. Pictured below are a couple of lifting levers for the striking mechanism. Under the shorter one is a wire, seen here protruding just above my thumb. It appears to be another example of the use of a wire spring in a way I've not seen before. It threads from a tiny hole on the top of the lifting lever, around its arbor on the right, then across the bottom of the lever and the front plate, then down through a tiny hole in the plate and is bent on the other side to hold it in place.  Wires are commonly used as springs in clocks but less commonly in French clocks and I've never seen one like this. The function is to serve as a spring, pushing the striking lever back in place after a strike of the movement. Striking referring to striking the hour: 2 s...

Disassembling a clock movement is not terribly difficult but requires a lot of patience and careful steps lest the clockmaker break or damage something. I didn't do too badly with the dog clock. I removed the hands (scraping one of them a bit... sigh), the bezel and the dial and got down to the SCAPH  movement itself. I didn't mention this earlier but S.C.A.P.H. stands for  Société Clusienne  d'Appareils de Précision et d'Horlogerie (per the company flier I had dug up and shared in  my last post ). This roughly translates into the "Clusienne company precision devices and clocks." Here's the front plate of the movement with a whole bunch of stuff on it. It's a mostly typical looking French movement with no lack of new bits for me to learn. Here's our Brocot escapement again. A close shot of one pallet between the escape wheel teeth. Here's me removing the Brocot suspension from the back plate. It's on a raised bridge (raised from the back pl...

I wondered how long it had been since our canine companion was last serviced. As noted the movement was quite dirty. It's important to point out that said movement was very much inside a case and not openly exposed to the elements. Here is the entire clockworks removed and sitting on my bench. Those two vertical metal strips (horizontal when in the case) are used to secure the movement to the back plate of the clock. They're held with screws to the back plate. When removing said screws I saw a clue on how long this clock has sat untouched in its case. Yes that clean section is where the screws met the straps to secure them. Unless the clock lived in a dust bowl this movement hasn't been serviced in many decades. Time to dive in. This is a striking clock, meaning striking the hours but not chiming like the Westminster chimes. It does not use a Rack and Snail rather a count wheel. Not unusual for earlier French clocks. Count wheels are much simpler mechanisms than R&S. T...

The Société Clusienne was a horology school and manufacturer of classic French styled " Mouvements de Paris " and were based in Cluses, France.  Clockmaking in the Cluses / Arve Valley region is believed to have begun as early as 1720. The town of Cluses is in the French alps and very close to the border of Switzerland. This whole region has a rich history in horology but by the 1950's virtually the entire industry had minimized or abandoned clockmaking and focused principally or entirely on watches. Most of the schools and horological industry moved over the border to Switzerland.  Most notable in the Cluses horological history is the École d'Horlogerie Cluses which was founded by order of the King of Sardinia (who at that time controlled that area of what just a few years later became part of France) in 1848. That school appears to have survived in one form or through today but sadly even watchmaking was dropped as a subject in 1989. The École survived through Naz...