Repairing The Fusee Movement Of An English Dial Clock - Tick Tock!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Amateur Repair Time. Now, on the previous video, if you didn't see last week's video, we were working on this English dial clock, they call them. It's a Fusee clock. It seems to be pretty old, and at the end of the video we figured out that it needed to be cleaned. I tried to just oil it a little bit and clean it up a little bit, but no dice. So, we're going to have to completely disassemble the thing. It's wound up all the way. It may be unwound all the way, but I think it's wound up all the way, and the thing will run for a few minutes, but then it'll slowly stop. So, yeah, we're going to have to get to that. Now, our buddy Sean pointed out that he thought he saw a name scratched on it, and I think he's right. I think I can see it. So, let me pull it. Well, let me take the pendulum off so we can see it a little better, and I think I do see an engraving on it. Let's see if we can make out what it says. All right, you're going to have to help me here. What in the world does that say? We think this is from the mid-1850s, 1850, 1860, 1870, something like that, and there's no maker's mark on it. So, we think it was just an English clockmaker that made it. This angle, I can't see it. Let me see if I can change where I am. Well, I'll be. There are several engravings on it. I can't make any of them out, but maybe you can. I see P-V-E-V-E-Y, and then maybe an L, and then that may be a date, maybe. I just can't see it. Maybe that's a letter two there. It almost looks like it says Presley, but I don't think that's an F. Again, we believe this is an English clock, so it might be an English name. We're going to clean it here in a bit. I can't tell if that's carved in there or if that's just written on there. Okay, so that's that one. Now, let's run over here. I see some dates. Okay, so we got something here. Men, nim, something. Then, then. That sure looks like some kind of date, doesn't it? Looks like 059 or something. That doesn't make any sense. Okay, now here's an even better one. Up here, it looks like it says L-A or maybe L-E. I just can't quite read it. Okay, that looks like it says 10-1-19. 10-1-19, and then I think that's one too. I don't know, folks. I can't read it. I just cannot tell. It looks like there might be something there too. Basically, it was common practice back in the day, whenever you took a clock in to get it worked on, that the repairman would scratch his name and a date in the clock. Basically, so that if you brought it back, if there was any kind of warranty or if you brought it back to complain, he would have proof of whether or not he ever actually worked on it. I don't see any on the front of the clock, but I didn't see any of those other ones either. Of course, that wouldn't be a date of manufacture. That would be the date that it was repaired. One of them says it was repaired in 2000, and I would assume 1919. It's possible 1819, but probably not. It's probably not that old. In the previous video, we looked it all up and figured out that these were common in England, and a lot of them are very similar. It has a fusee cone in it that basically is used to wind it up. Now, the reason that it has that conical shape, I didn't even mention that last time, but it's because when you wind up a spring, as the spring relaxes, it's less powerful. It would actually change the time. It would change how fast the time was moving. They used this cone-shaped fusee cone or whatever it's called, fusee wheel with a chain wrapped around it. This spring inside this barrel, which I assume is in this barrel, would rewrap the spring. As the spring inside unwound, it would rewrap the chain and it would change the tempo, basically, of the clock. Theoretically, as it got down to here, it would move a lot slower than when it was up here or something like that, whatever. So it's basically to compensate for a strong spring that's fully wound, making the clock beat faster, and a loose spring that only has a little bit of power left, making the clock beat slower, that compensates for it. This is just brilliant design. So yeah. Okay. So we've got to take it apart. So the very first thing that we need to do, in the previous video, like I said, it would run and stop. And the reason is probably because the pivots are dirty. I tried to clean them without disassembling it. It's very hard to do. But we're going to have to disassemble it, take it all apart, clean everything, and then put it back together and see if she'll run better. And we don't know what's going on inside this spring canister. So it could be that that's all locked up or rusted up or got a bunch of dried up grease in it. And so it's not working properly, which is why the thing doesn't have the power that it needs. But we've got to unwind that first. So I've got to figure out how the click is held in place. I think I've heard that it's internal. So I don't know how you would wind that down, but you know what? We're going to figure out how you would wind that down. Yeah. You know, there's a boss right there. So maybe, well, he couldn't hold that and take the thing off. I don't know. Maybe you hold that. Yeah. Look, look there. See to the left of it, all the scratching there. So maybe you hold that and then loosen the screw and then you can unwind it or something. But I'm going to look it all up before I kill myself with it. And we'll go from there. Okay. So to let it down, I have completely removed the bridge and you can see that it doesn't even really want to go very well. So this thing is just going to be so gummed up. So basically you can't get to the spring to wind it down. So you kind of have to let the thing run down itself, but that's fine because it'll give us a look at how the cable winds back onto the... It's such a simple movement. It has one, two, three, four, five wheels. Is that right? Counting the spring. That's so cool. What a beautiful piece of machinery, if we ever get it to work. I don't want to go too fast in it. I don't want to cause a lot of wear. But yeah, so you can't get to the click that you wind it with because it's inside that barrel. And then it's kind of pre-tensioned too. So once we get it all the way down, I've got to take that piece off the front to let it down. But by then it should be weak enough that you can kind of hold the barrel by hand. All right. So it's going to take a while. Okay. So it is pretty much all the way on well. Okay. So now that we have done that, we have saved our escapement wheel. I'm going to turn it over on the other side and then we're going to carefully, because I can move this a little bit now, we're going to carefully remove the tension that's still on it. Okay. So there wasn't hardly any tension left on it. I held it, took that screw loose, and then just moved the plate slightly and that was it. So basically though, you're supposed to have it where it's got just a little bit of tension on it. There's some way to set it. We'll figure that out. Okay. So that's that. So I'm going to disassemble the front here and then we'll take the plate apart. Okay. So there is a little clip under here, a little spring actually. The, would that be the hour cone? Goes on top of it. Of course this holds it in place. Yeah. So we need to remember how that goes, which is why I'm showing it on video. Um, why do we have a screw there? Oh, that's what's holding in the plate or the piece there that holds that spring. Okay, cool. All right. So we're ready to take the plate apart. All right. So I was able to get the four pins out of the four columns. I don't think they would put any markings on the inside because you'd never be able to see them without completely disassembling it. And they probably didn't want to do that every time. Look how this is bent. Probably, I don't know, probably on purpose though. I mean, basically it was being used to guide this cable. Okay. I guess this would be the fourth wheel. I'm going to polish all the pivots too. The pinions. It all looks in nice shape to me, but why do I know? You see some rust and wear there. So this is the minute hand or the center wheel. Here is the fusing. I wonder if it's, it almost seemed like the top row was just stuck a little bit. And once it started unwinding, everything was fine. Look how they have twisted that. Trying to wind it more. Crazy. At the bottom of it. So I assume, you know what that means, that if you were to take this plate off the cable, okay. You know, the cable itself, I guess it doesn't rust. I don't know, but it could have just been stuck in the cone. All this just needs to be cleaned really well. Let me pop this plate off the top so we can see what the inside of that looks like and see what the spring itself looks like. I have a little anvil and a little baby anvil. Well, the spring still looks pretty good. It's a big old thick spring like is used on a phonograph. Very similar to the phonograph springs. It even has the teardrop hole in the end of it, like on a phonograph. So is it broken? Looks to me like perhaps that's been replaced at some point. Like, cause it's really nice. It doesn't look broken at all. Okay. So I have a hunch that that there's something, that spring is part of the problem. So I may go ahead and remove it and then we can clean it and then we can put it all back in there. It's a little dangerous though because they're thick enough that it can cut you pretty good. But it would be nice to have it completely redone and then you don't have to worry about it. Okay. Let me see if I can get the cable off. So here's what that looks like with the plate off. The wire goes in there. The cable is just tied in a knot. It was also tied in a knot inside the barrel. And then this click gear is on top of it. So you've got a, would that be considered a planetary gear? That it goes into those two holes and then as it turns, click, click, click. Of course that would be where it can't come off, but you get the point. So that and the spring make it where it can turn one way and can't turn back. Okay. So yeah, all of this coming apart so we can clean every little bit of it. Okay. So that wasn't too hard. You can see the little piece in there that catches the edge of the spring. Spring has the teardrop holes on the outside and the inside, whatever those are called. And yeah, it's a little sticky, like whatever they've got on here. It's not great. So I'm going to clean it up with the ultrasonic cleaner, get it nice and clean and we'll put it back in there. And then I'll research what kind of, on the photographs you put grease in it, but on a clock, the clock's a lot more precise. You might not, it might be better to have some kind of oil. Yeah. Everything actually looks to be in good shape. I think it's just filthy. That's just the whole problem, I believe. So we're going to clean it and then start putting it back together. What do you think about that? I think I'm going to go ahead and I'm pretty well documented as best I could the stamps on the back of this. I think I'm going to run these through the ultrasonic as well and see if it lightens it up to where we can read any of that. The thing with the ultrasonic cleaner is it usually makes the stuff look brand new. And so I was a little hesitant to do that, but you know, once you run into the problem where the thing's so filthy that it won't run, it's kind of time to clean it. Now you could just go and clean all of the bushings or they're not really bushings. Well, let's see if those have been rebushed. That would be interesting to see. Let's see if we can tell if they've been rebushed. Okay. So you see the little oil well, I would say no, those have not because that's just drilled straight into the brass. Yeah. So it's just all original. Okay. So I'll start cleaning some of it up and then we'll start putting her back together. Okay, folks. So here's what we ended up with after we ran it through the ultrasonic cleaner. It cleaned it up. Even the cable cleaned up pretty good. It's crazy. That always makes it look brand new and you don't really want it to look brand new, but if the thing is so filthy that it doesn't run, you kind of have to. Now the engravings, the markings are still there because there are scratches, you know, so they didn't come off. I still can't read them, but they are still there. So yeah, it looks a lot shinier now. Don't worry. The patina will come back, but we had to get all of the dirt off somehow. Okay. So I think the first thing we do is maybe we put the spring back in the spring barrel. So let me go grab that and I'll show you how it wraps up in there. It's real similar to the phonograph ones. So if you kind of strong arm it in there and slide it around, you can see what's going on. That hole hooks in that little piece on the side there. And then you just put it all the way through. You keep winding it and winding it. Whenever you get really close to the center, the whole center part will just pop in. Usually I use big heavy gloves with this. This one though, it's not sharp or anything, and it's not as long as the phonograph spring. So I'm not that worried about it. So as you get down, once you get to where there's about this much left, the whole piece wants to kind of pop in. And if you turn this and twist it, you basically take some of that tension off and it'll go back down in there flat. All right. So that's back together. So I'm going to go research what the best oil is for these. On the phonographs, you use this big heavy grease. You wouldn't want to do that on this, I don't believe. You probably want to use more of the oil that you use on regular wall clock mainsprings, like gingerbread clocks and stuff. Okay. So I researched it and just like everything else, there's 50 opinions and everybody's very passionate about it. So I use the grease that I already have. MOLLE grease seems like about maybe 30% of people do that. Other people use the grease that costs $10 a dollop. And there's every opinion in between. So I'm not going to win that one. So I just use the grease that I had. Some people were saying it needs to be very light so that it doesn't stick. Other people were saying that if it's light, it sticks. Other people were saying it needs to be very thick because it's such a strong spring. Other people were saying that if you use thick grease, you want to use thin grease since it's such a strong spring. So it's just typical crap. Everybody's got an opinion and whatever. So yeah, so I used MOLLE grease. That's what people use on the phonograph springs. And it looks a heck of a lot like phonograph spring to me. And I found a whole bunch of people that do the wall clocks. And they say not to use clock oil because you've got sliding metal, so it's better to use grease. So we'll try that. I did find many people that said they use MOLLE grease on it. And MOLLE grease, if you don't know, is basically you use it for bearings and stuff in cars so you can get it at the auto parts place. And tons of people were saying, oh yeah, that's what I use. Works great. I've been using it for years. It never sticks on me. Everything's great. So I liked that. So I went with it. I put the barrel back and I put the, that line goes inside of there and ties. So I had to put it back before I put the top back on. And then this side has a knot in there. That's actually the knot, the original knot. I left it tied and pulled it all the way through whenever I took it apart. So now I've got to put the click back together and screw that back on. So it seems to go like that and these two little things go down inside there. Got to get them lined up. I think they call that a planetary. Is that right? Planetary is the ones that orbit actually. So I guess the other ones would be planetary. This doesn't have a planetary on it. All right. This is an interesting design. So there is a screw hole there, but the screw is actually too small for the hole. So all the screw is doing is it's making it so that this plate can't slide that way. So this can't become unlocked from that. So it's just take, it's not actually screwing it down. It's just like a removable stud basically. And because of that, this fusing can't come off of the click thing for this gear. That's just, that's a wonderful bit of work right there. Okay. So I'm putting everything back in where it goes. There's very little play in the bearings. There's hardly anywhere at all in them. I don't know how the longest thing ever got ran for. I mean, you'd think there'd be somewhere with it being as old as it is, but it looks like the bushings are just fine. I polished up the pivots where they go through the bushings. Ends of them and things to clean them up. And I think everything's cool. This, I can't get wound all the way around this without the top plate on where I can actually wind it. And you can't really wind it because it's going to make the, there's a certain way you're supposed to do it with the clip on the front and all of that, where it holds it with a little bit of tension on it. So we'll have to mess with that later, but I'm ready to put the plate on and then start building up. I guess if I put the plate on and the crutch or what is this? What's this called again? Is it the crutch? I think that's right. I think this is the crutch. If I put that back on, that will stop the pallets, will stop the escape wheel from freewheeling. So we'll do that and then we can wind it up and try to get the cable positioned how it's supposed to be. So this plate is what holds the tension on this so that it can't move. So once you get it wound how it's supposed to be, you put the plate on. But one of the interesting things I found when I took it apart was all of these little pins that hold this together, I didn't put them in tight. I just slid them in just a second ago. See, they're like little slivers of brass and see how they're flat and not round. Look at the back of this plate. Now remember, we're operating under the assumption that this thing was made by some small manufacturer in like an actual clockmaker in England. Look at the back. So this plate would be mounted like that. You would never see the back of it. Look at the back of it. It kind of looks to me like he cut these out of the back of this plate. I mean, I might be wrong, but that's the vibe I get. There's a couple more too. Did those originally come from out of there? I don't know. It just looks that way to me. So yeah. Okay. So I've got a roughly the inside of it back together. I don't have the front piece on and all that. And I've got this generally round around here, how it's supposed to be. Now I believe you're supposed to wind this to preset tension on it. So I need to look up some videos and see how people do that. It's unwound off of the cone and it's wrapped around this in the proper order where it lines out. But there's some way that they do it ahead of time where it never comes completely unwound or something like that. Okay. So I've got it wrapped around kind of the way it unwraps. It's not exactly where it was. And then I turned it about almost a full turn. I basically put the plate on it and then used it to turn it about a full turn and then screwed it down. So it's preset with about one turn of spring action on it. And the reason that I did that was because that seemed about how it was whenever I took it apart. If you turn it by hand, you can let the tension off of it, which will also allow you to reposition these if they moved around a little bit or something. So I'm going to have to carefully wind this now and make sure that I get that cable to line up right with the fusee level that it's supposed to be on all the way up. Because if you screw up and you get it to go, like if it skips one or something, basically you've got to let it back down and then do it all over again. So I got to slowly go through it and wind it on the piece there. So let me get at that and we'll see what happens. So you can see what I mean. I'm making sure that it's lined up here when I go to wind it on here, because if it was like way down here, for instance, it would be going across the fusee cone and it would be real apt to wrap around here instead of there. So you got to kind of make sure it's lined up while you do that. It's a little nerve wracking too, because you're putting an incredible amount of force on this spring right now. Now, if the spring breaks, this is going to free spin. That cable is going to go wherever the hell it wants. So it's a little, I don't think the cable's going to break and I think I've got good knots in both sides, but yeah, that's interesting. Oh, and the reason that it's not freewheeling right now is because I put the pallets back on. Okay. So that weird spring in there that I didn't know what it was for, what happens with that is when you get all the way up to the top, that cable as it winds is going to push this up. And so when it pushes this up, there is a little notch in the back of it. See it? And there is a, this piece here on the top of this fusee, you can't see it right now. This hook will hit that notch if that's too far up, which will keep you from being able to wind it anymore. Now, if you notice on the front of this, this is all twisted up where somebody just freaking hammer fisted it. Once they got it to a certain spot, they just kept twisting on it and they bent the whole winding arbor, which is actually kind of common. I've seen it on other clocks. So we need to make sure that that moves up and we'll stop this cone that it's bent into the right position. It is bent in there, but I left it alone because I assumed that somebody bent it on purpose. We might bend it back on purpose, but we'll see. Okay. So we're almost all the way up and there's not a ton of cable left. And it basically is right where it's about to hit it. So you can't really, if you keep messing with it, it'll go by it. So I think it's going to be correct in that the next time around, if we've got enough for that to go all the way around, I think we will because of just the way the fusee works. It should push it up far enough that it'll stop. Okay. It needed a little bit of an adjustment because the fusee's barrel, that hook was actually hitting the bar instead of riding on top of the bar. But now it's to the point where, bam, it stops it. You can't twist anymore. And it's just before the spring runs out. See it on the bottom of the barrel. Now this might all change whenever I unwind it and it goes back. So I'm going to have to unwind it all on here and then loosen this again, and then wrap this, do my three quarter of a turn again, because of the way I had it on the barrel, it's not the same as it'll be whenever it unwinds. However, with that said, I think we're probably ready to see if the thing runs again. All right. I haven't oiled it yet, but I put the front back and it seems much happier. I mean, it's going crazy and it was fully wound before, so it liked something we did. So I'm going to oil it and then we will mount it on the test and just see if the thing will run for a while. I imagine it will. I mean, it was running without the pendulum. All right. So we're going to let it sit for a while. Isn't the amplitude better? It's swinging farther than it was. So at the beginning of the video, I had it swinging like this, but it was because I had just started it and it would stop after a couple of minutes. And I don't think the amplitude was this good, which is like how far it's swinging. It seems very happy. That looks pretty good to me. So we'll leave it for a while and then come back and see. Now, one thing that I want to say, the whole reason that they do the Fusee setup is because as a spring unwinds, it's stronger at first and then it's weaker later on. So they have wrapped that wire, that cable, and originally it was catgut or whatever, around that column that's a different circumference as it goes to compensate for that. Well, whenever you preload this, you change all of that. So the preloading that this needs to get it to run properly is a known thing. So basically I put almost a turn on it just because I saw a video and a gentleman was saying in the video, if you don't know what it's supposed to be, one turn is a good place to start. And whenever I did that, the tension that was on the barrel, if I just turned it by hand, seemed about like how it was whenever I took the tension off. So we'll just see. So we'll leave it for a while. I just put it on there. I've got it turned to where it sounds like it's in beat. So we'll just see if it keeps running. And if so, the ultimate test will be putting the hands on it, mounting it back to the plate, the face, putting the hands on it, and then putting it in the case and then putting it up on the wall and just seeing how well she runs. Okay. So it's been about an hour and she's still running good. So I think we're good. By the way, that crutch there is not hitting that plate. You can see the wear on it where it has at some point, but I don't know what that's from. Cool. If you didn't see in the previous video too, we put a new suspension spring on it. That was what was wrong with it basically. Well, that and everything needed cleaned. Okay. So I think we're ready to clean up the case and attach this back to the dial, put the dial back in the case and put the hands on it and hang it on the wall and see what she does. Okay. So I've got it mounted up here on the wall. Yes, it's 1.29 in the morning. The little hook that's soldered to the bezel is missing. I didn't notice that, but at some point that's broken off. So I need to order something for that. So I'm just going to wedge. There's a little hole right there that catches in. I've got a big old wood screw. I'm not going to actually screw into the wood, but I've got a wood screw that'll wedge in there and kind of hold it in place so that it doesn't fall. But I've got it pretty level. It sounds like it's in beat. So I need to let it run for a while and see what kind of time it keeps. It seems to be keeping pretty good time. It's just slightly slow, but I've got all kinds of adjustment on the pendulum. So I'll work on it a little bit and I've got to find some way to fix that little brass hook, but I've seen that before. It just solders on there, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Very cool. So I gave it a place of prestige in the room. That's a very cool clock. I love it. Hopefully I'll run across some more of those. I hope you enjoyed it. 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