Wooden works clock won’t continue to run

[johnrath]

another newbie question. I am working on a wooden works 30 hour shelf clock. I have cleaned the movement, polished the pivots and rebushed the pivot holes that were badly worn. i used wooden plugs as Bob suggested. I have only the time side gears in place. It still will not continue to run. Gears appear to be in good condition, but I think there must be binding taking place. The volume of the ticking increases and decreases suggesting to me that the amount of force imparted by he escapement on the pallets and pendulum changes. when it gets quiet it often stops. How do I diagnose and correct the problem. Many thanks
John

[oldtimers]

Hello John,
Could it be a bent pivot? You can remove the anchor so that the wheels spin freely and with finger pressure turn the wheels slowly to see if you can feel where the most resistance is. If the resistance repeats itself at the same point on any two wheels or actually wheel and pinion then you can be pretty sure the problem is with one of those wheels. You can verify it by removing one wheel at a time to see if you can narrow it down to those two again. Then check that pivot by running it along two elevated smooth surfaces to see if the wheel has run out. If it’s not a pivot then there could be a problem between two or more teeth.
John

[johnrath]

John. Thanks for the suggestions. It sure appears that there is some binding in the gear train. Whenever I remove the the pallet I am able to freewheel the train without resistance. I can’t seem to locate the area of resistance. I did polish the pivots and they don’t appear bent. There seems to be no consistance as to when it stops. It usually runs for a couple minutes.
John
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[Bob Tascione]

Hi John and Happy Holidays!
I think Johns suggestions were good ones. If all of that checked out ok and you still feel that the train is binding then it’s possible that you have a depthing problem between one or more of the wheels and arbors. This can happen if a hole in a bushing that you inserted is offset from it’s original location. Also check to see if there is enough clearance between the pivot and hole. A small amount of side shake (and end shake) is important. Something you may also want to check is that the pulley at the top of the case is turning freely when the strain of the weight is applied and that nothing is obstructing the line and or the fall of the weight. Also…you mentioned that the volume of the ticking increases and decreases. Does it alternate between loud and soft a few times before it comes to a stop? If so is the number of ticks between the high and low tick volume consistent or is it random? If it is repeating how many ticks would you say there are between the two levels?
Bob

[johnrath]

John and Bob,
Thanks for the suggestions. John , you were correct. It was always stopping when the one repaired tooth on the second to the last gear in the time train engaged the last pinion. Ratio is 4:1 so it happened once every 4 turns of the escapement wheel. The tooth was a beautiful old repair, they even grooved the repair to match the rest of the wheel, but on magnified examination the repaired tooth was slightly thicker than all the others. I carefully sanded just a bit off and it has been running for 6 hours. I think the other cleaning and bushing helped in that it make the stopping consistent. Many thanks. This is a great place to get help.
John

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