Check, Service & Minor Repair of a 1930s Garrard English Mantel Clock. Someone's been Fiddling!!

Hey guys, Chris from The Ultimate Recycler. Welcome back to the channel. I'm in my small workshop tonight and I have a clock to look at. It's uh, I think it's a repair job and it's not mine, it belongs to a lady in town and whilst it's not a favoured job, I guess it's kind of a payment job because she gave us some stuff when she moved house and she didn't want any money for it and we kind of ended up saying, well I kind of ended up saying, I'll see if you can, I can fix your clock in exchange for the stuff we got and she was most happy with that. She wasn't going to take any money and we felt like we wanted to give her something so now I've got a repair job. Now, she told me that it wasn't working. Let's have another look at it. It's quite a nice little clock. It's a little smaller than the average Mandel clocks. It is English made. It's possibly an Enfield. The case is in very good condition but she told me that it wouldn't keep running. It had been looked at by someone but it won't keep running. There is actually is a tag on the back here which is a 12 month clock warranty, date of warranty 2013. So that's probably when she last had it fixed, whether it's just been sitting for a long time and she hasn't tried to get it going. I do find with older people that time gets away from them and they'll say, oh it was only last year but it might have been five years ago. This was 10 years ago. So there's the pendulum. The key should be in here. Oh and there's a bag of parts and she told me, and get this, she told me that she didn't want it chiming. She didn't like the noise of the chime. It's only a striker. It doesn't play Westminster chimes or anything. It just counts the hours and you can tell by that because it's only got the two wind holes, one for the clock and one for the striker. So a family relative of hers said, I'll be able to stop it from chiming for you and he took some parts out of the back. Now whilst he did actually succeed in stopping it chiming, it's not necessary. If you don't want your clock to chime, you simply do not wind the chime spring. So it feels like there's other parts in there. So hopefully we can get that back together because I don't want to have loose parts. And as for it not running, well we'll pull the mechanism out. There's a chance that it just wasn't level so it might still be fine but we'll pull the movement out of the case and we'll have a good look at it. Okay it's lying on its back now on my bench. I'm just experimenting with my new camera mount that's mounted from the ceiling and it's working quite well. So to get the movement out of the back we have to take the hands off for a start. There's just a little knurled nut on the top here. Usually you can undo them with your fingers. Yep it's fairly firm but I was able to undo it and now I can hear the clock ticking so that's a good sign. It might need any major repairs and if it did stop working fairly soon after it was repaired last time, maybe it was serviced, then there's a pretty good chance that it's just going to need to be leveled up and maybe just a bit adjustment altered and it might be a good goer. Now the hands just, sorry, the minute hand was just on a square so that once you get the nut off the top that just lifts straight off. The hour hand presses on and it usually comes off pretty easily. It's just basically a cylinder with two splits down either side so it presses on. So that's all we have to do for the movement. We don't have to take the face off or anything. I'm going to leave that all intact. We'll turn it over now and we'll have a look at how many screws are holding the movement in. They're normally missing a few screws. Now I can still hear other parts flopping around in there. The case is in nice condition actually. All right let's open the door and you can see the jeweller's details here. It doesn't actually say what was done. It just called it a shelf clock and adjusted so I don't know what the repair was. All right so we need to get the screws out. It's a bit hard to see in there. It's a big movement for a little case. First thing we'll do is take the the gong part out. This wire coil which is what the striker hits. There's the hammer there if you can see that which of course now doesn't do anything because part of the mechanism has been removed. So we'll undo the nut from underneath and that will allow the post to come out that supports the gong or the chiming mechanism, striking mechanism. Oh actually the thing that gets struck. So it's the not the striker it's the strike e and if we get there we go. So that's in pretty good condition. I'm not sure what c is is it a g? I'm not sure. What's the maker of the clock? Oh it's a gerard. Okay well that's what the g is. Okay that's got that out of the road but the movement is so big I can't even see the screws that hold it in. Okay I suspect that we have to take the dial off because I can't see any access to any screws to remove that movement. We'll see if we can get these other parts out of here before we go any further. Okay that's one part of it and I did notice we didn't have a key. Oh there's the key and there we go it's a a gerard. I think gerard's made record player turntables too. Might be the same company. All right I think that's all the parts. Can't hear anything else wobbling around in there. So we'll take the front dial off and see if we can access some retaining screws from the front. I'm not familiar with this model of clock. I don't think I've ever done a gerard before. All right some little fine screws around there and of course the door will actually come off. Well I think the door will come off with this plate. It should be hinged to the plate. Maybe it's hinged to the cabinet. Okay it must be hinged to the cabinet because I've got the four screws off from the plate. Let's lift that out of the road. It's quite heavy. There we go. There's the screws that hold the movement in. I certainly haven't seen this before. It's possibly quite common. I don't do a lot of clocks so we need a bigger screwdriver to undo those. You can hear the clock ticking away there. That's a really good sign. It's very uneven but it doesn't have a pendulum on it of course at the moment. Very pretty brass movement isn't it. Now we will have to be careful that this movement's going to drop away once we undo all these screws so we'll have to try and support it somehow. Probably best to do it horizontally and that way I can reach in and hold the movement while I undo the rest of the screws. There we go. Now we need to get this massive movement out of this little case. If we lean it backwards. Certainly a tight fit. Oh yeah there we go. Tilt it right back. Okay remember that for putting it back in. So we'll move this. Just check. Oh we do have more parts in here. Oh that was the hanger for the pendulum. Any more parts? No. The case is empty now. Okay now with the movement out let's have a look at it. I love the machining on the brass on these old clocks. It's fantastic. It's a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering and it looks very very clean. It's trying to tick as we're moving it around. Not only it looks really clean but it looks really unworn. It's a bit hard to tell. We'll inspect all the pivots shortly. The best thing about it is that no one's got in here and sprayed oil everywhere. My fingers aren't oily. It's nice and dry which is kind of a good thing but it sounds a bit... it sounds like the opposite to what you want to hear. But clock movements suffer mostly from too much oil and the wrong types of oil. This one if it's been serviced correctly would have had just the smallest dots on all the pivots and it actually looks like it needs a re-oil but it's fine. You don't get the problems which you do with over oiling. So it doesn't need a big cleanup. It doesn't need a dismantle. The fact that it's trying to tick away is a really good sign. I think we'll probably just give it a re-oil. If it is 10 years since it's been serviced it will certainly be due for a re-oil. I'll have a close look at all these pivots through a magnifying glass just to make sure that there's no obvious wear to them all. But they all look pretty good just to my eye. And then we'll just go and give it oil. We'll set it up on a little block of wood and we'll hook the pendulum up and make sure it's going to run fine. And then we need to work out where those missing parts came from. Okay before we re-oil we'll just see if it will run. I've got a piece of wood here that's about two miles too long than what I need but the movement will sit on here nicely. There should be enough room to hang the pendulum without it fouling on the bench. This looks to be a little bit off center to me and possibly that's the reason why the clock wasn't running. And they are adjustable. They have a bit of a clutch in there and you can bend that arm. I think that arm's called the and the top section here if you can see that okay is the actual suspension spring. And this loose lever we found in the bottom of the case or hanger is the for the pendulum. So if we slip that over the bottom of that I think it's called a crutch and hook it onto the base of the suspension spring like so and you can see it flips to one side a bit. So I think it needs adjusting there which is really just a matter of putting a bit of pressure and straightening it up again and that's what you do to put the clock in beat. So we'll get that hanging a little bit better. We'll put the pendulum on and see if it's actually going to run. Still looks crooked to me but I'm not actually sure if my piece of wood is level. So the pendulum just hangs in there. When you are moving a clock it's always advisable to take the pendulum off because if that gets slung around as you're rocking the clock back and forward or even in a car you can actually damage this suspension spring. So that seems fine now. I don't know if it's going to tick though. Actually it ticks way over there so it's out of adjustment. We do need to bend that move that crutch across. There we go that moved it a lot and it and that's starting to tick. So it's quite possible that the clock movement was transported with the pendulum on and it's moved that hanging lever or the crutch across to the wrong position. That's actually running now. Ah it just stopped. But certainly there's an oil and we need to fine tune that adjustment. Now I'm not sure if we're in focus now. So I'm moving the pendulum back and forward and you can see the escape wheel turning past the pallet and if we get the microphone clocks close you might be able to hear it tick. So the midway between the tick and the tock is where we want the pendulum to be totally vertical at the back. So I think it's close now. So before we muck around anymore I'm going to give the movement a proper oil and then we'll set it up again and see if we can get it running. So I've had a good inspection of all the pivots and it doesn't look very worn at all. I did poke around with a little cotton bud and there is a bit of old oil around each of them so it hasn't dried out. I also ran around each of the pivots with a fine toothpick. Yeah it's a little bit grubby but I don't think it's worth completely pulling apart. So we'll re-oil it now with some fresh oil. Just got a very fine oiler here and some clock oil and we'll just put a touch on every pivot point and you can see the clock's liking the oil already. It's starting to run. That pivot under there is a bit dirty. A bit of black stuff on that one. Okay let's do the other side and a little bit of oil on the clips. There we go. I think it's got all the pivot points oiled. You don't want to put any oil on any of the gears. They're not designed to be oiled. Some people do put a little touch on the pallet. I'm not sure if that's necessary or not so if you know a bit more about clocks than I do, which there's a fair chance, if you're watching this video let me know. I might just put just a touch on them and there we go. I think the clock movement like that it's ticking away quite happily. They will run of course with no pendulum and they run fast because the pendulum regulates the speed. That's actually sounding quite healthy. Okay I've just adjusted the beat by ear. It sounds pretty good to me. Seems to be running consistently so I think I'll go and have some lunch and leave it tick away. Again I still haven't checked to see if it's wound up or not but it's clearly got some power driving it and then we shall look at replacing those missing parts or the parts that were removed and I did notice, have a look at this, not only did the relative remove some parts it is wired up to cogs in the drivetrain of the chime and he's twitched a bit of wire so that the cogs can't move. That's fairly agricultural so we'll have to take that out and refit the parts we've got and see if we can get the strike to work. Okay I've been had some lunch, I've had a coffee, we had a bit of a storm here and I had to reassure the doggies that there wasn't a big monster coming to get them. Things have settled down now and the clock is running beautifully. It sounds in beat and I just downloaded an app which analyzes the beat of a clock and I'll show you the screenshot now and you'll see the bottom part of it how it's even between each of the ticks and the tocks. It's an even spacing that indicates that we've pretty well got the beats set right and right at the top it says a beat error of almost minus four minutes so over a day losing four minutes without any adjustment is pretty good. We can adjust the length of the pendulum to change the speed of the clock to regulate that but even these old clocks only running you know within four minutes a day is pretty fine so I reckon that's good. I just got to sort out the the twitched wire up the top there and try and refit these parts. Now I had a look at the parts this one goes on the front and it's it is responsible for counting the gongs which which count the hour and there's a little clip in there with that so that's fine. I can't for the life of me find where this goes I can't see anything it screws into so if you recognize this maybe it's not even a clock part maybe it fell in the back it wasn't in the bag it was just loose in the back of the clock so I'm not sure perhaps it will make itself known as we reassemble it back in the case there might be something might be something to do with um I don't know it's brass it looks the right age but I can't see where it screws into it. Okay let's surgically remove this little bit of wire and you know what those of you who saw my last video I reckon these little pliers are going to be helpful we don't want to drop the wire in amongst the gears and I don't want to damage the teeth there we go how good's that okay let's remove the pendulum this time it's certainly running well and we need to have a look at the front side of the movement now I think this piece goes on the front side and this rack is something to do with counting the the hours and there's a little pin on this piece that rotates so I think there's a spare post here I reckon that's where it goes and I think this end tang works against this cam something to do with coordinating the number of strikes with where the hour hand's at and I think some clocks are auto adjusting I'm not sure if this one is or not I don't know enough about these movements but sometimes if it gets out of whack it will actually correct itself uh so we need a little there's a little washer to go over the top of this post just there and there was a split pin in the bag but as I picked it up one of the ends fell off and then I went to straighten the other end and it fell off so clearly that split pin is no good anymore but fortunately the gods gave us some wire that we can use so I reckon we can probably just feed a bit of this wire through the hole I think it's about the right size and there that's as good as any split pin okay so I think that's all that was taken out other than this piece which remains a mystery so we can set the thing back up running now and we can see if it's going to chime or strike well I'll put the minute hand on so I can wind it forward I don't know exactly when it's going to get to the right to the top of the hour okay there's no need to have the pendulum on it it's running fast but that doesn't matter we really want to see what happens once the clock gets to the hour position I'll just put the minute hand and the nut on for now then I can forward the movement through and we'll just see if it activates the chimes or the striker oh there we go it looks like that pin's bent yeah something's not right with that lever we have to straighten the pin I think it needs to go until this pin can drop down so it wasn't moving the rack along it's obviously been bent somewhere along the lines and I don't think I did it so what happens this time that's working better pins a little bit bent still but at least it's moving the rack along allows that pin to drop down so that's working successfully and it's moving the hammer every time it operates that so there's no parts missing from there it seems to be working fine I'll just straighten this pin a little bit more and there you can see the mechanism operating the hammer so I'm confident that's all working fine we will have to probably readjust the hammer to strike onto the gongs properly but everything should be fine to go with this clock let's put it back in the case okay lay it on its back and squeeze it in and we'll get a couple of screws started so it doesn't drop down we don't want to bend that crutch lever again now that we've got it running so accurately okay the movement's secured in there we've got the face back on I've just bent the hammer arm a little so that it lands on the chime on the gong thing nicely what a lovely tone so that's all set up right now the next step is I've got the minute hand on the front of the clock and I'm going to turn it forward because we need to align what time the face says when the hands are on it to what time the clock thinks it is so if we wind the minute hand forward and there we go we've got we've got one gong so it's either one o'clock or it's half past something so I'll wind it forward another half hour and see what time it says two two o'clock so now we know where we can fit the hour hand so we'll roll the clock over and we can remove the minute hand for the moment and we know it's at two o'clock so we press this on pointing to the two just to press fit and our minute hand can go back to the 12th position and we can secure the hands there we go now we can put the pendulum on it and we're pretty well finished this will slow the ticking down a bit there we go complete and running and sounding magnificent I'm going to take the pendulum back out because we're going to obviously move it and I'll be taking it back to the shop for the lady to come and pick up in fact I might even drop it around to her house then I can put the pendulum on for her because it is a little fiddly to get in there to set the right time we can either stop it by physically just stopping the pendulum and then wait until just after two o'clock and then start it again or we can wind it forward you can't wind them backwards so it's now just after five o'clock here so I would need to wind the clock forward and I would need to stop each time the gong works just to leave it so that it stays in sync so you hear the the warning what they call the warning where the movement gets or the mechanism gets ready to chime and then so on and so forth until we get to the right time that's sounding great so there we go thanks for watching guys another successful repair not that really I kind of needed repair it needed a service I hadn't worked on one of those garage clocks before it's quite a nice clock and you can probably hear it ticking away on the bench here I'll leave it running for a few days just to make sure everything's right but should be good to go thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed that if you're just new to my channel and wanted to find out about clocks I do clock videos every so often also dabble in all sorts of stuff so hopefully there's a good variety for you hope you hang around thanks for watching bye for now