A clock with one winding hole that strikes the hour?

I comfortably walked into his living room and told the client "your clock is non-striking, so how can you complain that the striking isn't working? Here look, there is only one winding hole". The client then pointed to the bell, hidden at the back. I was in shock.

My reputation was no longer at risk, it had disappeared as fast as I had entered the room. The client then proceeded to explain that this Swiss Neuchâteloise clock only has one winding hole to achieve two things: it winds the clock and it winds the bell! But how? With only one winding hole?

Neuchâteloise clock

Only when I opened the clock, did I discover the sophistication and reliability of this Swiss design. A little toggle containing two wheels  will switch which train you are winding depending on whether you turn the winding key to the right or the left. See picture below. The toggle with the two wheels sits just below where the word Zenith appears. How ingenious!

the one winding hole toggle allowing you to wind two trains

The mystery of left and right winding holes

Her arthritis is too serious to wind her Victorian black slate clock herself. She asks the cleaning lady to do so. The beautifully crafted Winterhalder and Hofmeier chiming and striking clock in the corridor leaves her cold. I must have been called back at least three times after I repaired her Victorian black slate clock  (see picture below) because it had stopped. How is that possible? I gave it my everything. I cleaned it according to the high West Dean College conservation standards. Only white spirit as cleaning fluid, pegged out all the pivot holes, checked all the wheels and pinions meticulously, checked the endshake, the depthing of each of the three trains, wheel pair by wheel pair, rebushed where needed and paid great attention to detail, repairing and improving a few minor things along the way. After the repair, I had it on test for two weeks in my workshop. And it all ran fine.

black slate clock

Yet, the call of an 80-year old for help with clearly something that is so dear to her that she does not want to know about the beauty of her Winterhalder and Hofmeier, moves me enough to get up from my bench onto my bike, down the hill to her care home. Am I doing this, because my parents are equally old and dependent on others, while I am too far away to do this for them? Is this a guilt trip?

I know she has someone to wind her clock now. Luckily, she lives around the corner, so travelling to her place is easily combined with running an errand in the village. I have been there several times now to discover that only the striking train had been wound!

Learning point: Clearly, I have not paid enough attention to explaining the very basics of setting time, winding a clock, the difference between the left and right (and sometimes middle) winding holes, how to start a pendulum swinging again. In my written reports, I explain some of these things, but who reads them? A one-to-one client clock debriefing really needs to become part of my routine. Sitting down with the client when I bring the clock back after a repair to talk them leisurely through all the things that are important to keep the clock running. Besides, these short meetings, sometimes hit on the very things life is all about. In talking my 90-year retired actor clients through my conservation report of their grandfather clock (which he, by accident, had knocked over when rushing to the phone—during an acting lull—in the hope there was another gig on offer) we ended up singing "My Grandfather Clock" together around the coffee table:

My grandfather's clock

Was too large for the shelf,

So it stood ninety years on the floor;

It was taller by half

Than the old man himself,

Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.

It was bought on the morn

Of the day that he was born,

And was always his treasure and pride;

But it stopped short

Never to go again,

When the old man died.

I am blessed to be a clockmaker.

Six lessons learned while working on my first American clock

Why is working on new things usually ending in drama? My first American clock is no exception. It started with a client pressing me to deliver the repair before a certain date. While this is entirely reasonable in most business dealings, pressing a clockmaker to repair a clock before a certain date is a recipe for disaster for all parties involved. I politely informed the client of this clockmaker law but the damage had already been done. I had never worked with barrel-less, loop-end springs before and so a strenuous fight ensued whereby I tried to get the unwound springs into the clock frame without pushing away all other wheels. I did not know you need a special clamp on loop-end springs before you can reassemble the clock.

loop-end springs in American clock

I arrived at this conclusion, proudly though, after many hours of eliminating other options. I felt chuffed to receive confirmation of my conclusion from experts responding to my cry for help via the British Horological Institute's members' database. My former West Dean College tutor also made clear in an email that I needed a clamp and would do well to make one myself from an 1/8" thick brass plate shaped liked an oversized divot fork. This was my first lesson learned from the American clock. A bit of "how to deal with loop-end springs" research got me really user friendly clamps from R&N Horological. They are cheap, simple to put on and, importantly, simple to take off the spring once the great wheel arbor is safely installed in a fully assembled clock.

The second lesson was that rebushing (and yes there seemed a great need for it judging by the enormous movement most of the arbors on both trains were allowed to make) is discouraged. I approached my West Dean tutor who kindly suggested that the frame of these American clocks is so wobbly that creating a well fitting bush will lock up the arbor and possibly even bend a pivot because the frame is bending under the force of the springs and so prevents a well fitting bush from offering sufficient room for a pivot to turn. The best advice is to accept the enormous room to manoeuvre in the existing bushes and drown it in oil.

Then I discovered that these clock movements can be bought new for about £60. So you wonder why am I repairing a clock while I can put a new one in for £60? The argument that there is emotional value in the clock always holds, but if a client sees a repair bill for many times the cost of a new movement you wonder if how long that argument will hold. Let's call this the third lesson learned.

While fiddling with the going spring to get it back in its place, I heard a loud crack and noticed (after a while) that the hole at the end of the spring that grips the great wheel arbor stud had split and now looked like the end of snake's tong. There was no way that the arbor stud was going to grab that spring end ever again. I cut off the end of the spring and created a new triangularly shaped hole for the stud to grip and had to do this twice, unfortunately, to get the right shaped hole. In the process, so much of the spring end was lost that what remained could not be convinced to engage with the great wheel arbor stud. So I decided to force it to engage which led to a further tear in the spring end. I admit that I annealed the spring end in order to create the triangular shaped hole. All according to the instructions of my West Dean notebook. But because the end of a spring after annealing is softer, it tears more easily, I suppose. Well, that is what happened and at this stage the spring was a write-off. There was no inner core left to grip. Cousins came to the rescue and will send me the new American spring American Ansonia 19 x .45 x 2500 x Ø47 (ANS19)  x  1 @ £10.25 each. I feel this is not something I can charge the client for, despite the fact that I feel the spring was at its life end.

I learned my fourth lesson during reassembly of the movement. I struggled with the question "do you get the three wiry springs of the bell hammer, lifting piece and locking detent all in their place before or after putting the front plate on?" I found out (lesson four) that you must put the bell hammer spring in position before, and the other two springs after, you put the front plate on the pillars.

As my fifth lesson, I learned that the movement has a passing strike on the half hours. A cam on the centre arbor directly launches the bell hammer at 30 minutes past the hour. It also triggers the lifting piece on the whole hours. Interesting, I have not seen many of these passing strikes mechanisms yet.

My sixth lesson was that I observed that the countwheel, which sits on the striking train's great wheel, has two series of slots from 1 to 12. One series, of course, would be enough. I gather the reason for the two series of 1 to12 slots is to allow the great wheel to turn round in 24 rather than 12 hours. This allows to run the clock longer, as the great wheel can now turn half as fast compared to if there was only one series of 1 to 12 slots.

Countwheel with two times 12 hours cut out

In the meantime, I am studying how to put the new going mainspring into the clock once it arrives! By logically deducing everything that is related to the main spring I can only conclude that we will have to wind the going train of the clock counter clockwise while the striking train will be wound clock wise. I have never seen such a thing and cannot believe my conclusion! A quick search on Google, though, on the words winding of American clocks opposite direction confirms my conclusion as correct. Why hasn't any clockmaker told me this? Somebody could have rung me and kindly explained that this is quite typical with American clocks.

I am now anxiously waiting for the postman who always so kindly says "sorry to disturb you" when I open the door in my TerKuileClocks apron, with my loop clipped to my clock glasses and my hands protruding in surgical gloves ready to receive the mail.