Bit off topic - clock rebuild but interesting

Back to this after a bit of a break. I think that the concerns over cleaning are well founded so, have been careful. The results are a bit variable but these never had much of a finish from new, I suspect. There's lacquer on the plates so even more gentle cleaning there. All these parts are now clean but some are still marked. Anyway, some trial fitting.

This is the train (barrel just resting in place) so, great wheel (barrel), 2nd, 3rd, 4th and escape wheel (at the top). The third is at the centre of the movement and goes through to the dial side.

The gear on the third wheel slips to allow hand setting and that's the purpose of the star shaped spring. So, no cannon pinion on this. Used a piece of locking wire (from car/aircraft) to hold that spring on and it's a nice snug fit in the hole.


This side with five wheels, runs the chimes and is entirely separate from the main train. It has it's own barrel going into the slot and the reason it's slotted on this side is so you can take the barrels out without stripping the movement. The drive comes out to the rear of the movement on the second gear up and it's all controlled at the upper wheel (not sure what this is called - when it turns the wings spread out a bit like a regulator on a steam engine).

I know these wheels seem even more stained but, I don't think it's worth trying for a better finish.

Then the right side which runs the hourly 'dongs'. As you'd expect, they are synchronised to the hour so, one dong for 1 O'clock, 2 for 2 O'clock and so on. Again completely separate with it's own barrel at the bottom right.

I was looking at this wondering what it's end result was when I realised I'm missing the bar and paddle driven by the star shaped wheel at the top right. You can see it in the original photos and that transfers the drive to the back of the movement.

So, all shakes are good and will do a little light polishing on some pivots but really very little as most are fine. There's surprisingly little plate wear at the pivots and I think the reason it would only run for a few hours at full wind was purely down to solidified oil and grease.

Back plate takes ten minutes to wiggle on with all these wheels to align but everything moves smoothly now and (I think) the slippage of the third wheel is about right - bit difficult to judge as I'm more used to the cannon pinion tightness on watches.

Bit more next week.

Cheers, Chris

Loaded the mainspring by hand after a bit of de-coning - these big springs do make me nervous so safety glasses, thick gloves covered with large plastic gloves and most importantly a many folded thick towel in the lap - I know which part of me I'm most concerned about😉

With the mainspring in, used the blower on the escape wheel and all ran freely so, time to fit the pallet and other parts. Here are the parts that make up the assembly.


All these parts have special clock names.... Anyway, the double hook shaped thing is the pallet and mounts on the shaft and is secured by a screw. The shaft pivot at the dial side mounts in a hole in the plate but the rear side mounts in the lower left piece which attaches to the rear plate with two screws in slotted holes for adjustment.

Well, am not sure what sort of escapement I have - I thought it was a half deadbeat but it's unusual for the escape wheel teeth to slope away from the direction of rotation. Here the entry pallet is coming up to a tooth.


The wheel is rotating anti clockwise here and only the outside curved part of the fork will work. It slides down to lock and when the pendulum swings it rocks back up and the wheel gives an impulse to the end of the fork to give energy to the pendulum. As it rocks over, the exit pallet comes on to a tooth further around but, this is the same face again (the leading face of the tooth.

As shown, it's locked but this side doesn't give an impulse to the pendulum hence the "half" deadbeat. Still think the teeth should slope in the opposite direction but, it works so, it is probably a variation on half deadbeat.

Assembled the parts - the pendulum hooks into the lower slot of the upper piece. The slot above takes the cranked arm from the lower piece which is clamped to the pallet shaft.


Put the pallet in earlier this week and it hardly ran as it had low amplitude (pendulum swing) and stopped after 18 hours. Fiddled with it and eventually went back to first principles and loosened everything off. Set the drops to be equal and eventually got it in beat and was still running after 48 hours from half wind with much better amplitude.😀 It's a 1.44 Hz, 10368 A/H movement (by counting the wheel teeth) which seems a bit of an odd number but, what do I know. You adjust the rate by changing the effective length of the pendulum and here it is timed after 48 hours on my phone.

The blue is a 5 second average, the green 20, I think and the red is 60 seconds. It's clear there is some variation but, you don't time these like this. Better to let them run for a week as that averages out the variation. On that note, I have another Smiths, in my car, which I rebuilt here and after two months running, it's averaging 3 seconds loss per day. Really pleased with that! 😀

Next is to let it run for a week to test the power reserve, which should be 8 days. Have mounted the hour gear and pipe so I could put the hands on. Will find out in a week and then add the chimes etc.

Cheers, Chris

Brilliant, thanks. I have to admit that I don't have that general clock lust at the moment so am just feeling my way with little research as this may be my only clock. Am trying to work out how these things work as I go but the escapement used is not like any watches I've studied.

There are a few possible adjustments on these and I've just been looking to see what they do. After it ran for two days, I didn't mark it and disassembled these pieces for the photos. It's quite a neat setup but the adjustment is a bit coarse for a first timer🙄 Am sure the experienced clock repairer would set this up in five minutes and not an hour...

Now, I think I understand the chiming mechanism so, will try that next weekend, all being well.

Cheers, Chris

Thanks to @laughing_cavlier I now know what the escapement is so, worked out I was too steep on the exit pallet restricting it's impulse. Made another small tweak and it ran with a little more amplitude so left it running for the week. After 5 days still running so fitted the chiming mechanism.

This is very clever and far too complex to explain easily but after some adjustments, here it is working. The parts spinning at the top, with wings, are the speed regulators. The gears at the back on the right are those that will drive the hammers to lift. On the hour, it makes 16 chimes as a melody and then the left side takes over (with it's own barrel) and lifts three hammers to count the hour (lifting part not installed yet).

Yes, the front plate still looks a mess as do many pieces but they are clean. When I do this again, I will use a more aggressive cleaning agent. Have been through a lot of pegwood as the grease is often caked on...

You may gather I'm not much of a YouTube person by the quality of this offering.🙄

Next is install the hammers and lift mechanism and case again. Coming along slowly as I'm pretty busy and it takes an age to test!

Cheers, Chris

And now it works! Has been running all week and was still going after six days (it should run for 8 so you only wind it once per week after church, I suppose) when I stopped it to add the final parts of the chiming mechanism.

Accuracy was excellent for five days. Without a second hand it's hard to be exact but you can tell variations of 10 seconds or so. First five days it ran zero or near as makes no odds - after the fifth day it was still within 10 seconds of the start point. However on the sixth it lost nearly a minute so am suspecting my mainspring de-coning was not as successful as I thought. That's a small issue though.

It rings 4 chimes on the quarter hour, 8 on the half and 12 on the three quarter. On the hour you get 16 and the hour counter. Here it is at 4 O'clock.


It's a lot better sound from the front with the door closed. Luckily, there's a lever on the front to turn all the chiming off😉

I think this is a quite brilliant piece of kit for a cheap fifties clock. Out of interest, this has a lot of what we have in our watches and to strip, clean and adjust, you don't really need any special tools, just those from the garage plus a burnisher and oiler. For anyone interested in mechanical movements, this a great way to start as the pieces are all big so there's less time with magnification. On the other hand, I don't need lots of these so can't see me doing another🙄

Cheers, Chris

Great job - congrats! 👍