Wall clock: loud movement

Mar 15, 2005 12 Replies

My new kitchen wall clock (battery-operated) seemed a bargain at =A34.99 from PoundStretcher. But once I put it up, the "tick" was very loud!



Any way of quietening these el cheapo wall clocks? Foam round the back? Would removing the second hand make for a quieter tick?



Or should I just pay more for a clock with a quiet movement?



Bruce



removing the second hand would make the most difference i think.

Steve

I'm not sure. The central "hub" would still click round once per second. I suppose removing the second hand might help.

Bruce

I'll second that! It makes a surprising difference.

Dave wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Me too; I had a nice lynge clock that removing the second hand made nice and quiet, also a bedside alarm clock.

I flogged them to the second hand shop

mike

I would remove the clock unit and replace with a known quiet one from an old clock. The hands and central bush fittings will probably be the same.

john

Any way of quietening these el cheapo wall clocks? Foam round the back? Would removing the second hand make for a quieter tick?

Or should I just pay more for a clock with a quiet movement?

Bruce

Take the Battery out. Baz

yes it will, but most of the noise would be coming from the secondhand shaking in its new position every second.

steve

I found taking the batteries out of the wife's Swiss cuckoo clock worked wonders. It's still right twice a day :-)

One more option: remove clock mecha and replace, refit it using rubber washers. The clock face acts as a sounding board, isolate it with rubber and the tick is much quieter. Also the ruber absorbs resonance in the mecha. Did this successfully.

One Ive not done, but should also help, is to run lines of hot melt or silicone across the back of the face, again it kills resonance, and most of any tick type noise is resonance. Also you could put a strip or

2 across the mecha casing, if you can do it without damaging anything.

NT

The things that some people worry about!! It will be amazing, i bet the next time you have something 'proper' to worry about you dont hear the clock tick at all!!! :o)

That was the reason for my question, which wasn't answered.

I remember that when I was a child there was a pendulum driven wall clock with a very loud tick in our only living room. It's tick-tock was part of my life, I'm not sentimental about it though.But one day I realised that I couldn't hear it. I looked, the pendulum was still swinging, the clock was still working. I worked out that it was so much part of my life that I wasn't conscious of it any more (I must have been about nine at the time). I asked my mother about it, she could hear it. An hour or so later so could I.

Odd things, perceptions.

Mary

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