I have a rather nice 1950s alarm clock which loses about 5 minutes every day. Knowing pretty much nothing about mechanical clocks, is the reason for it losing time due to the fact that the mechanism needs to be cleaned.
How do you go about cleaning a clock mechanism?
Blow any dust out with a bike pump or similar NOT compressed air Get some proper clock oil NOT 3 in 1 and put a TINY spot on the pivots with a cocktail stick. There should be a little lever near the balance wheel to regulate the timing. Often marked with divisions and Plus and Minus signs. Move it a little bit and see what the effect is for a day and move some more if needed.
Bob
No-one seems to have pointed out that for most common 'clockwork' alarm clocks, gaining or losing only 5 minutes a day was pretty good going. Most had a 'plus minus' adjustment lever, but that usually made things much worse (one tiny nudge & a clock which had lost 5 minutes now gained
20 minutes).When I were a lad, it was routine to note how much an alarm clock gained or lost overnight & compensate for the error when setting it each night.
In message , Mr. Benn writes
With an angle grinder
I have an early 20th century wall clock. (One with the saw cut where the eagle was cut off at the start of WW1) I think I've overwound it. How do I undo that?
Nah, pressure washer. Angle grinder is _so_ last year.
I recall reading Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World" where he fixed a stopped clock by boiling it in paraffin. I think you'd have to be desperate though!
Andy
Again I'm only working on 'what I've heard' - and that is a small container of paraffin left in the base for several days. Apart from not being able to get paraffin easily now - heating oil is much the same - I do wonder if it evaporates enough to make any difference.
I went off to do search for the clock weights cord I'm looking for and came on this which might well be of use
I haven't looked at it at all - just flagging it up as a source of info. Rob
If you dont know what your doing....DONT! You can do serious damage to the cogs or serious injury to youself, dont under estimate the power in a wound up spring.
It can be done with the minimum of tools but you have to be very careful, you can of course buy tools specifically for unwinding a spring.
Try taking the weight off and see if you can get a rapid tick/tock to unwind some of it. Is the pendulum balanced so it will in fact work and wind down? Is the clock level?
Check it out on google before you attempt anything.
OK so far
Very good advice
If that's what you need to do...
I don't think you mean "weight". You may mean "pendulum". Hugh did not say whether his clock is weight- or spring- driven. I've given up mending clocks for a living, but I never came across an overwound spring-driven clock, unless you count ones where some gorilla had wound one so determinedly after it was fully wound that something broke, like the end of the spring, or one of the lugs it hooks onto. And you'll know that's happened, because there's usually quite a bang.
A weight-driven clock can be overwound by winding it so far that the pulley wedges against the underside of the movement or seatboard. That's when you can take the pendulum off and tug gently on the pulley until it runs down enough to get the pulley hanging properly again. Or keep triggering the strike or chime if it's one of those two that's jammed.
There's a lot of work in a proper overhaul, but for a minimal clean, brush off any loose muck from wheels (the big gears) and pinions (the little ones), and put the tiniest quantity possible of clock oil on the pivots, where they stick through the plates.
Don't, under any circumstances, follow the advice someone else has given and oil any gear teeth. It's a clock, not a bloody tractor gearbox. Dry
- any dust will get pushed aside; oiled, and it's like coating them with grinding paste. You can also put tiny amounts of oil on bits that slide relative to each other. Hint: gears roll, not slide.
As for standing pots of paraffin in clocks - if it makes the owner think he's taught me a new trick and if it stops him spraying a couple of cans of WD40 into the movement, then fine. I'll nod and agree what a good idea it is.
To repeat: don't separate the two plates of a spring driven clock unless you've completely let down the spring(s) and secured the "click" (ratchet) out of engagement to prove it's not wound. It hurts.
Kevin you are of course correct I should have said pendulum and not weights. I have almost always got my clocks working unless they have major damage. The reason I know of the spring danger is the first clock I got over 45 years ago when I was 14, It had 3 `trains` (terminology) for time/hour & quarterly. I dont know why as I had never knew what was inside a clock then but I took the complete thing to pieces not realising about different gearing etc. Then I wondered what else was inside the brass `cartridge` that housed the spring. I flippin well soon found out as it virtually exploded on me. I got that clock back together again and working and still have it to this day, but I can still vivedly remember the second I released that spring.
Thanks for the advice - duly noted. Perhaps not a d-i-y job.
It's a dead easy DIY job - however you do need "the gadget" to do it. You can make this.
If the spring is unwound (i.e. it wasn't overwound and jammed, and you can use the clock to let it run down) then you can strip the spring out without a spring barrel winder. However you won't get it back in during re-assembly.
If it's overwound, then you can reduce the winding tension a bit without needing the real gadget to strip the barrel completely - a small vice, a small adjustable spanner and some relevant tool to relax the pawl will do it without stripping it. Needs care, but it's no big deal.
Mostly though, working spring barrels should just be left alone - there's no useful need to mess with them.
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