Repair and Restoration of a Pendulum Clock c1910

Hello again. I'm back this time with something different. I have here a pendulum clock that I believe I have overwhelmed. I just can't get it to go. And I went on to YouTube, of course, to fit some instructions on how to fix something like this, and I have some ideas. So I'll get this into the workshop and see about taking it apart. The story behind this clock is I picked it up several years ago at a flea market, and it ran fine until one day it didn't because I had overwhelmed it. We have the two holes for winding here, which means it's only for a chime and for the time. And the way that I fixed it then was I removed the pendulum, which was hanging here, and gave the little bar that hangs the pendulum from a hit, and it would oscillate back and forth. And it actually did that very rapidly for a couple of days, two or three days, until the spring was totally unwound. I was able to then wind it, and it worked fine. This time, I seem to have overwhelmed it again, except I was able to get it to unwind for a day or so, and then it stopped. And even though it stopped, when I tried to turn, it's very tight, so it's not unwound yet, which means the only way to fix this is to release the spring tension. And to do that, I have to remove the mechanism from inside the clock. But before I can do that, I have to take off the hands so that the mechanism will come out without pulling on the hands, obviously. So let me get set to do that first. I can't stress enough that I've never taken apart a clock like this before, so it's really uncharted territory for me. But we'll see how it goes. I do know that what's holding the minute hand on is a little metal bar through a hole in the middle here. I have to push this out to remove the hands. I don't know how long that's going to take me to do, so I'll work on that and come back once I've removed it. I'll try to show how I did it. There's a pin in the center here, and it was bent. I had to straighten it out with a pair of pliers and then kind of tease it out, which I think I did. So we don't want to lose this. And now I think the hand, which is loose, the washer holding it in, it looks like. Let me get some of the tools to help me with this, and I'll come back. I think I should be able to pry it off with the screwdriver. There we go. Got it. There's the minute hand, and the hour hand. Very good. Now I can flip the clock over. I'll work on taking the back off next. There are several screws holding it in. Let me get all those out, and then I'll come back. I've removed the screws, and we'll take off the back and see what this looks like. There's the chime. So here's the mechanism that I want to try to remove. This is what I was talking about, that if you can get it to go, it'll just keep going, and that'll loosen up this tension on the spring, but it's stopping. I do see some labels in here. This has been repaired previously. It looks like 1983. It's interesting, and I'll take a closer look to figure out just how to get this out of here. A bit more history on it is when I did purchase this clock, which was quite a few years ago, it wasn't working. I brought it to a clock repair guy, and as he was trying to fix the spring that controls the chime, that broke. I didn't bother getting that replaced because it didn't bother me if it didn't chime every hour. The other spring he was able to free up, and it has been working ever since. I do recall at the time, I don't know how much it cost, but it was rather expensive. So I would rather try to do it myself, and I'd have to bring it back to someone else to fix. In taking a closer look at it, and I'll try to show you, it appears that the mechanism is attached to this one piece of wood here, and there's a screw here or a nut here, and I think if I do undo both of these, this whole thing might just slip right out. So I'll undo those and see what happens. I removed those two nuts, and I put them back in because what I've seen is that once I removed this, it did not slip out because there seems to be a pin or a nail. There's one here, and over here. So I can't lift it out, but I definitely know that it's supposed to come out this way. So my plan is to somehow figure out a way to pick out these little pins or nails, but what I want to do next is I'm manipulating this too much, and all this heavy weight is on the glass here. So I'm going to remove the whole front of this so that I don't have a risk of breaking any of the glass on it. So once I get the front of the case off, I'll come back and work more on getting the mechanism out. I flipped it over, and there's a hinge over here and here, two screws on each side. I'm going to remove those four and get the door off, and then I'll come back. The screws are out. I can remove this, and I'll put this on the side. I'll go back to trying to get the mechanism out. So I'll take a closer look to figure out how to get those pins out, and come back. I was able to tease out these little pins, which turn out to be just little nails, like bread nails. Now I'll undo the screws here, and as it dropped down, now it's running. Let's see if I can lift it out. Anyway, something's binding. I'll have to look more closely at it, and then we'll come back. Now it stopped running, and what was binding was this screw wasn't out of the way, I think. Something's still holding it up, so I'll have to look more closely, and we'll come back. I figured it out. Instead of pulling this out this way, the case comes off this way. Now I have to figure out how to get this face off of here, so I can access the screw that tightens up the spring and figure out how to release the tension. So let me take a look at that, and we'll come back. I'll try to show you what I've noticed. The face is actually two pieces of metal, and they're attached with these little pieces of wire that are sort of bent, securing it. Can you see that? There's four like that at each corner, and I think if I just bend that up, I can then slip off the face. Also, I'm noticing here's a sort of a stem, and there's two on the bottom here, and I think when I get this face off, there'll probably be screws lining up with that. That'll take this part of the plate off as well. So the next step is going to be undoing these little metal clips here, and hopefully I don't break them. And if you're noticing, these are a couple of labels from when it was repaired. The place is called the Tiny Clock Shop on Northern Boulevard in Roslyn, New York, and it's 8-27-83. And it was repaired before that 7-22-83, so maybe the guy didn't do such a good job. Anyway, let me try to get these off, or open rather. I'll show you what happened here with the first one. I carefully bent it up, not fully straight because I didn't want to break it, and then just tried to tease it out of the hole. However, as soon as it started to work its way out, it broke. There you can see it. I'm assuming all four are going to break like this, which means I have to come up with a different way to secure these two plates together. I think I can come up with a small screw to go in each one which should hold it. And it makes me wonder how old this really is. I was told when I first had it repaired, when I first purchased it, that it was from about 1910. And why they didn't use a screw back then and use this type of a system to secure it, I don't know. But I'll continue to take the other three out and we'll see where we're at after that. I got three of them out without breaking them, but I'm pretty sure if I try to put them back in and bend them back down to re-secure it, they'll break anyway. So I'll still have to come up with some screws to secure the face to this other plate. The other thing I'm noticing is that it's not really coming off yet. It rotates a bit. And what I'm seeing is there's sort of a grommet or a clip, a ring, around this wind-up, but it's missing from here. This one can float. When I look on the inside, I see little metal tabs here that are bent. You can almost see them. So I have to try to bend those out to get this little ring off. Then the faces will come apart. So I'll work on that. I was able to remove a little ring or grommet. You can see the little tabs that I bent relatively straight up to slide it off. Now the face should separate from this back plate. So I'll put this aside. And unfortunately, these are not screws. So I have to figure out how to separate this plate from the mechanism. And what I'm seeing is these little stems, instead of being screwed in, there's what I would call a cotter pin through the hole here. There's one here. I see another one over here. And the third one on this side here. So if I can pull these pins out, I should be able to separate this plate from the mechanism, which I have to do in order to get to the spring to free up the tension that's in it. So let me work on that and we'll come back. I was able to remove the three pins actually quite easily. And I've been reading up a little bit about these pendulum clocks. And there are those who say that you cannot overwind one of these clocks. If it's not running, it's because the mechanism, the gears, they've gotten gunked up with oil and everything needs to be cleaned properly to make it run. And what I've noticed is when I took these pins out, they're really covered in oil, and I'm starting to see a lot of oil throughout the mechanism. So I may end up having to do that as well. But now this plate should come off. There we go. Now, from what I've read, this little arm, which is in the gear here, and that's what stops it from unwinding. And when you lift up one of these, the tension in this will be broken really suddenly, and it gives it a lot of power, a lot of force. So there's a special tool that will hold the stem so that you can gently unwind it. And I have to look into getting one of those. So that's what I'm going to work on next, either making a tool or getting one. After watching a few videos on YouTube, I came up with a way to make a tool that can hopefully safely unwind the spring. This is what I ended up with. It's a wooden file handle. And I took one of these keys, drilled up a little pin that holds it together. So I ended up with just one of these, which is drilled into a hole in the handle. This gets inserted, hammered in, and I drill a hole through it and put a pin so this does not spin now. And what this does is, if you put this key over here and try to release that spring, this thing is going to spin around so fast, if it slips out of your hand, you could break a finger with it. But with this tool, you put it over, all you have to do is kind of hold it snug, and it can just rotate in your hand as it gradually unwinds the tension. So that's what I'm going to try to do. I don't know if I'll be able to show you how I do it. It's too difficult to do it and aim the camera at the same time, I believe, but I'll see what I can do. As I hoped, I was able to unwind the spring, but I couldn't really show you how. My hands covered the whole thing. You wouldn't have seen it. But basically, it was a combination of placing a screwdriver into this little tab here and bending it away from this tooth on the gear while holding this secure with this tool that I made. And as soon as I released it from the tooth, it began to want to unwind. And I just held the hand and it just spun in my hand and it's free now. However, after doing that, when I hit the pendulum, it's still not going. And it should really be going freely at this point. So the next thing I did is what most of you here do, which is I put back onto YouTube to see how else to get one of these working. And one of the suggestions was how to clean and lubricate all the pivot points, which is where the stems of the gears attach. So I went and cleaned as best I could, lubricated it with some oil, a little bit on the inside as well, but it's still not working. So again, I checked other methods to get these working. And what I'm seeing is it's recommended to soak the whole movement. One video actually has it being soaked in gasoline, which I'm not doing. But another one which seems that it might work is to soak it in a solution of water and ammonia. So that's what I'm going to do. They even suggest to do it in an ultrasonic cleaner if you have one, which I do. So that's what I'm going to set up next. I just have to remove the wood platform from this. And once I have that ready to go, I'll show you how it looks. Two of the things that I want to mention is that after I had the spring totally unwound, I did give it a couple of turns to get some tension in it to see if the pendulum would start to go. And it's not. And the other thing is that looking closely on the inside, there is a lot of sludgy oil buildup. And I'm hoping that some of that is what is inhibiting this thing from moving. So I'm going to set this up now. We'll get some ammonia solution working, and I'll get the ultrasonic, get this off of the wood platform. And once that's all set up, I'll come back. I've set up the ultrasonic. I've set up some ammonia and water solution. It's warm water. I'm going to place the movement in it. And I have to add a bit more water because it's not covering. And we're going to run this for 20 minutes. I'm just going to add a bit more water to it. OK. After 20 minutes, I end up giving it a good rinse with a toothbrush. I'll try to clean the inside where the gears are. And we'll see how it looks already. I see a lot of debris coming off in the water here. It's been 20 minutes. You can see how dirty this ammonia solution has gotten. I'm going to remove the movement and replace this water with some fresh water and then just ultrasonic it in plain, clean water, as well as getting in there with a toothbrush. OK. It's just fresh water now. Give this a few minutes, and then I'll hit it with a toothbrush. I've removed it from the water. And what we do now is I'm going to sit on this paper towel and just let it drain. Let's see. There we go. And then after as much water has drained out of it, I then have a sort of a blow dryer that I use to blow out more of the water that might still be in it. It's been draining now for a few minutes. And what I'm going to do now is I have a pump, the kind that you get when you have an air mattress. And I'm going to use it to blow out as much of the water as I can. It's rather noisy. I'll show you. It'll take a few minutes to really get all the water out. So I'll do that and then we'll come back. OK. I've thoroughly dried it. And what I want to do next is I'm going to lubricate using some synthetic clock oil all the pivot points where the stems from the gears fit into the brass plate on both sides, front and back, and just a little drop of oil, very little, as well as inside, just where the gears mesh, just a little bit as best as I can. Then I'll let that soak in for a few hours and see if it starts to work again. So here's what's happening after cleaning it thoroughly, drying it, lubricating it. I still couldn't get it to work. But I happen to know a guy who's been fixing these pendulum clocks for about 35 years. So I gave him a call and I brought the movement over to him and he tweaks it a little bit, adjusts the part, bends something here and there, and it's working. And he told me just put it back in the case, hang on the wall, let it run for a day to make sure it's working. And that was about maybe 10 hours ago. So I'll give it the rest of the night. And if it's still running by morning, I'll put the whole thing back together. I'm happy to say that the clock is still running when I got up this morning. So now I'm reversing the steps that I took to take it apart to reassemble it. The first thing was reattaching the movement to this black plate using the little pins that held onto here. So this is secured. And then as I anticipated, those little metal clips when I tried to reattach the face to it, those broke. So I just had to drill a couple of larger holes here and found some small screws and I was able to reattach the face. Next, I'm going to put the hands on. There's also the grommet I have to put back. Anyway, the point is I'm going to totally put everything back together, clean up the case, the glass, and when it's fully restored and back on the wall, I'll come back. I can show a couple of the steps along the way. I've placed the movement and the face, the dial, the whole thing back into the case. I'm going to clean up the wood with products I've used before here. I always restore a finish and with feed and wax, it'll give it a nice color and a shine. I'll also use those same two materials on the door and I think at the end it's going to look pretty good and hopefully it will work. Everything has been stained, polished, and cleaned at least as best as I can on something that's about 110 years old. I reattached the door and now I get to put it back up on the wall, hang the pendulum, and we'll see if it continues to work. There it is, back up on the wall and running. I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I did making it. Feel free to check out some of my others. That's it for now.