How's it hanging

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In our last episode your local horologist was trying to get the Thomas Adams Astro Regulator English Bell Strike to just run. 

Rather to get the necessary repairs, adjustments and various tweaks done so we can see if the clock will function. This in service of YLH's first principle: first get the thing to run.

Your correspondent needs to apologize as he realized that he had jumped ahead rather rapidly in the last episode. Going from the installation of the cords directly to ready to test, he left out some of the good stuff.

Specifically all the reassembly, tweaking, aligning, checking, testing and then the final installment of the weights, cords, etc.

So summarily, with all those prior repairs in place, reassembly of the movement commenced.


One item in particular that YLH was watching carefully was the formerly bent hammer spring and how it would operate in action.


Lots of parts for the motion works (wheels that operate the hands) and the strike components to be installed on the front plate.


Get those aligned correctly is a bit of a science and YLH is still very much the student.

Suffice it to say reassembly went smoothly overall and YLH put the movement up on Scott's marvelous clock stand (check out the new Johnson Arts web site).


Note how the movement was raised on the stand to accommodate that unusually low hanging hour wheel. 

And the pendulum hung nicely.

Your clock doc did do a bunch of basic checks on the movement and it sure seemed like it would run.

But there was an additional step.

The weights needed to be added and the attentive reader might recall from our last missive that their cords connect to the seatboard.

Zo.

The movement was taken off the stand and anchored to the seatboard. Which again the reader might recall was not, in and of itself, exactly level.


Ahem.

Let's get those pulleys in place and cords attached.


Details of that effort are in the last installment.

How to level the whole thing now that it was attached to its wonky seatboard?

The great flexibility afforded by Scott's stand allow this boy to play with blocks (and beer coasters) to create a secure, level platform.


And finally we could attached the pendulum and the weights.


Those weights are 12 and 16 pounds. Bruisers.

More tinkering ensued.

Checks.

A lot of beat adjustments with our ersatz friction fit on the crutch but it did eventually get in beat.

And...


Woo hoo!!

Ticking and striking!

Nice.

And... 

After about 10 minutes...

It stopped.

Well we did get it to run so the first principle was met.

Now we have to get it to run well AKA keep running.

More to come!

Comments

  1. SaknussemAugust 8, 2026 at 7:11 AM

    Those close-in shots of the movement are lush with the beauty of clockwork mechanism.

    ReplyDelete

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