Congreve Clock

[jc747400]

Hi All

I have just acquired a Congreve Rolling Ball Clock and by looking at it the fusee spring does not seem to have enough power to return the 30 second lever back up? Would this be correct? Fusuee movements are new to me and Im not too sure how to adjust them? Any help would be appreciated.
Many thanks Julian

[Bob Tascione]

Hi Julian,
It might be lack of spring power or might be something else. Is that a 30 second or 15 second return lever?? Just wondering.
You do need to put some pre-load on the mainspring so if there isn’t any or not much then you’ll need to adjust that. I use a homemade adjusting rod for fusee watches since no two mainsprings ever seem to be equal and require different pre-loading levels. That’s my prefered method but I know that others like to just put a random pre-load within certain limits and then check it’s performance making adjustments over several test periods if necessary. Both seem to work well. You can usually get by with a pre-load of between 1 to 2 turns though. You can try starting out with 1 1/2 turns and see how that works for you.

Bob

[jc747400]

Hi Bob

Thanks for your reply, I agree it definitely seems to be a lack of power to be able to turn the the adjustable arm coming from the great wheel which joins the rod that goes down to the ball plate. I can get it to turn (30 second turn) when the arm is adjusted short and close to the pivot, but then the ball plate is out of whack and you can’t get the ball to roll. Im still unfamiliar with fusee movements and what you suggest, do you know of any video or diagram that may be able to illustrate what you are saying?

Cheers/Julian.

[Bob Tascione]

Hi Julien,
I don’t know of any videos off the top of my head but I’ll hunt around a bit tonight to see if anything is out there. If not I’m sure we can explain the process here.
Let’s see if there’s a good video out there first.

Bob

[Bob Tascione]

Sorry for not getting back sooner Julien but had a very busy and long weekend and now playing Monday catchup.
Wasn’t able to find anything that really showed setup process for the fusee. If you’re still looking for info then let me know and I’ll try to explain how I do it here.

Bob

[jc747400]

Hi Bob

Thanks for getting back to me. I did some digging around and found this online book a novice had written and illustrated very well in the complete strip down and rebuild of a Congreve clock. Its was really helful. I am trying to add a scanned copy FYI but the pictures wont be that clear as its scanned B&W

Cheers/Julian

[Bob Tascione]

Hey that’s great Julian.
I would like to check out that book. Probably best to just put a link to the online book rather than scanning and uploading to the forum due to possible copyright issues. It might be allowed by the publisher to put it on other sites but I would first want to get permission from the author. Unless of course the permission is given within the book itself.
Thanks and glad you got it figured out.
Bob

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