New Haven Clock

[c.kelly]

Hi All,
I know I’ve said this before but I’m a watch guy but it seems lately I’m getting a lot of clock in to repair. The other day one of my accutron customers brought in an old New Haven 31 day calendar wall clock. It is very old, he said it either belonged to his grandfather or great grandfather. Anyway it wasn’t running and he wanted me to get it going. There were a lot of issues. First I saw that the case had been refinished and the holes for winding arbors lo longer lined up well with the holes in the dial making it almost impossible to get the key on them. It would only tick if the case was at about a 20 degree angle from plumb. It also had a chime issue in that at 11:00 it would chime about 23 o’clock.
Got movement out of the case, cleaned and oiled it. Fixed pendulum so it would run in beat when clock was straight on wall. By the way the clock was a count wheel and was chiming wrong at 11 was because the lever would not hit that slot on the wheel so it basically counted 11 and 12. Of course that meant at 12 it would chime 1 and it would also gain an hour on its chime each time it hit the 11 time to chime. Hope you can understand what I mean here. Anyway I was able to fix that by bending the lever just a tiny bit so it would hit all the slots on the count wheel properly.
The one question I have is this. Once I got everything going and the dial back on ( I centered the movement so the arbors now lined up with dial holes) the clock would chime about 3-4 minutes before the hour. The minute hand has a square hole about 3.3 mm. Trying to think of a solution to get the hand to 12 when it chimes. So far the best easiest solution I’ve come up with is to fit it with a minute hand bushing which would allow me to set the hand where it needs to go. Is there a better or easier solution here? I looked over the rods and levers that control the strike but the doesn’t seem to be much adjustment there.
Thanks,
Charles K

[willofiam]

Hey Charles, without a photo I cannot be certain BUT there should be an adjustment there. Take a look at Bobs video animations of the time and strike clock movement, that may help. The American time and strike movements usually have some sort of a cam on the center arbor which while turning lifts a lever to put the strike train into warning and drop the lever to allow it to strike, the adjustment is there. Be careful making that adjustment as it is possible to break the piece. small adjustments then testing the release point with the hands and dial. Have fun.

[c.kelly]

Hi,
I went back through some pictures I took of the clock before working on it. I did find one of the J hook and the rod that moves it. In this case a rod comes out of the center arbor that acts as a cam. This rod goes all the way through the arbor so the only adjustment might be to attempt to bend it. Not going to even try that cause it will break. Have you all seen this sort of thing before? Anyway I have gotten in a bushing for the minute hand which is too thick but I’m also working on that now.
You can see clock was pretty dirty but right now it’s on my wall keeping pretty good time waiting for me to get minute hand adjusted so it can go home.

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