Welcome time traveler

Recently Ted dropped off a clock from his grandfathermother, Nana.

I had previously offered to take a look at it for him. I'm so glad he bought it by.

It's a handsome Seth Thomas Adamantine. 

Spitballing, I'd say it's a turn of the century example.

Seth Thomas was a major clock maker. They produced hundreds of models of clocks and manufactured many millions of of them. 

A few years back I posted about a Seth Thomas tambour model that I acquired in Carmel Valley Village.

The dial and label underneath our Adamantine's gilded plate is in remarkably good condition.

Looks all original to me.

Here's one of my favorite features. The lions heads on each side.

Happily it all appears to be in fine shape and all original.

Oh and its label is 90% intact.

As you can see from the patent information Adamantine clocks became popular in the late 19th century. Seth Thomas started making them in 1892.

Let's take a look inside.

Removing that back panel we see the movement and the gong which is mounted, in a typical fashion, on a pedestal. 

The interior looks good, unmodified and, despite some dust, etc., clean.

Let's get the movement out and inspect it a bit.

Here's the back plate (back meaning facing the back of the clock).

It's dirty and definitely gummed up a bit with very old, dry oil but...

I looks completely intact, original and in good shape.

Note the ST trademark stamp on the right.

These particular movements are known as the "hip" model because of the pretty curve on both sides of the top of the plates.

Flipping to the front plate.

Very similar condition but I will highlight something very abundant on this plate but not on the back plate.

Bushings. A lot of them.

First things first. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a clock having bushings. Bushing a clock is a very, very common repair and in fact it means that the clock had been serviced by someone who knew what they were doing.

A clock bushing is a circular piece of brass (or sometimes bronze) that has been inserted in the plate to fix a worn pivot hole. Pivot holes often become worn with many years of use. I went into more detail about bushing on a post from a couple years back. Take a look at that post to understand more about why clocks need bushings, how they are installed, etc.

Here's a view of some of the bushings on this clock. Front plate on the left. Back plate on the right.

From what I can see, every pivot hole on the front plate has been bushed. And there are no bushings on the back plate.

Bushing all the pivot holes on a plate... not unusual. 

Bushing all on pivot holes on one plate and no bushings at all on the other plate... not seen that before. 

However, my early inspection of the pivot holes on the back plate says they look mostly fine. No bushing needed on most of them. But my eye did catch some wiggle on the pivot hole of the 4th wheel back plate (it is the one circled in blue on the upper right corner above). I think it will need bushing.

So my guess is the clock was serviced years ago, then run for a while more, and is now in need of further service and repairs and, in this case, a bushing or two on the back plate.

If that's the most serious repair needed then I'm feeling good about getting our friend running again.

Overall, all the gearing and the rest of the movement looks in good shape.

I'll know more once I do a full disassembly.

A couple more tidbits about the history and dating of this clock.

The mainsprings on this clock appear to be original. 

Can you see? Look closely.

They both have that same, original factory mark stamped on them. Mainsprings are often replaced and replacement springs are typically generic (no marks).

Those original springs might be "tired" meaning that they are so old that they no longer have the tensile power required to run the clock. I'll know more when I disassemble them.

I also had forgotten some of the details of a bit of research that I had done years back but in my scan for this clock I came up with this useful article on Seth Thomas Adamantine clocks and it quickly reminded me to take a look at our friend in hand.

First of all the "hip" movement has its escapement sitting outside the back plate (not inside/between the two plates with the rest of the wheels/gears). 

This is a close up view of that escapement which includes the escape wheel with the very pointy teeth and that flat, bent-on-both-ends steel strip, is the anchor, which engages with the teeth of the escape wheel. The anchor has two pallet faces, the slanted surfaces at both ends of the bent anchor strip, those faces both engage with the teeth.

This whole unit sits outside of the back plate.

As summarized in the useful article above and confirmed by yours truly with a few other sources, in about 1901-1902 Seth Thomas started a switch over for their Adamantine clocks from this back escapement model to one of their "89" series of movements.

Seth Thomas made a few variations of the 89 movement. My Seth Thomas Tambour that I mentioned above has an 89AD version which you can see clearly stamped on the lower right leg of that clock's back plate.

So based on this alone our Adamantine friend is almost certainly a pre-1902 version.

But as our useful article also reminded me... look at the case more closely.

Yep... barely still visible is the stencil of a date.

Seth Thomas was infamous for stenciling the manufacturing dates backwards but each of the individual numbers are presented non-reversed. Odd.

And there's an example of an Adamantine date stamp in that useful article.

In the case of our friend on the bench today the stencil is really hard to read. I took photos in different lighting and angles and I dialed up the contrast of this snap so you can make just enough of it out...

Left to right. The furthest left numeral is really obscured... something (maybe a 0 or a 1) then  0  9  1

Given that the clock has the hip / back escapement movement, I'm virtually positive that this is a 1900 or 1901 manufacture date.

One of the very last of the exterior movement models!

Fun!

More to come as we do a fully disassembly.