Reply To: Grandfather clock cleaning

[danacv2]

I took apart the movement and ran into a few issues. The first one occurred when I removed the front plate. I lifted the plate up and all of a sudden a small metal ball (ball bearing?) came rolling down. I have no idea where this came from. I inspected everything and there is nothing that I can think of where this would go.

There were a couple of pieces in the movement that I couldn’t separate from the front plate. Each had a cam attached and neither seemed obvious as to how to separate so I left them. I decided to leave the ratchet wheels alone so that I wouldn’t get into trouble like I did with my cuckoo clock. These seemed a bit more obvious on how to take apart but they we’re moving quite freely so I decided best not to mess with them.

Once I had everything taken apart (as much as I was planning anyway), I did a review of every piece I had and noticed a washer that I couldn’t remember where it went. Seems that I relied too much on memory!

A few notes on the movement’s condition. (BTW I had posted about this clock earlier in the year because it kept stopping at around the 45 minute mark. I hadn’t gotten around to it because of time and I wanted to take apart a few other movements before diving into this one.) First, I noticed that the pivot holes were much dirtier than I had thought. There was a lot a black gunk and it seemed like it may have been over oiled. Second, there are a few pivot holes that need repairing. I have yet to try putting on bushings so that is going to have to wait until I have at least practiced it a few times.

I cleaned the movement in cleaning solution and for the ratchet wheels and some of the sticking parts, I only cleaned the pivots. I decided to put the movement back together at this point to see how things were after just cleaning. I ended up not finding a place for the metal ball and couldn’t figure out where the washer went either though I have thought of a possible location that I can try tomorrow.

Once I put it “all” together I decided to test it out. Right of the bat I noticed that the minute hand moved much easier than it used to. Looks like all that dirt was really slowing it down and probably contributed to the wear on the pivot holes. I seem to have some synchronization issues with the striking trains. They aren’t always going into warn. I’ll play around with that tomorrow and also try to figure out where that extra washer goes.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thanks, Dan