As Acquired Condition

English origin, c. late 1800's. Brass and bronze hybrid flat bed frame design. Hour strike using rack and snail system with quarter strike using a count wheel. Three legged gravity escape with jeweled locking pallets. Pendulum, dial, hands, weights currently missing. Eight day duration. Original movement 27"w x 22"h x 11.25"d.

The first two photos show the bell hammer system and bells as they were originally fastened. Clearly nothing aligned! The bell hammer rods looked ungainly and their extreme length entailed the use of very strong springs for striking. This would, in the end, require a large amount of power from the driving weight. We decided to reconfigure the strike system to make it's use of power more efficient as well as more visually elegant. The hammer heads look to be temporary wood models that were fitted at the time I acquired the movement.

The third and fourth photos show the centrally-placed black-painted steel pendulum support bracket; what I dubbed the "goose neck". This proved to be mechanically unstable for a swinging pendulum in it's original state. The rigidity was increased in conjunction with  the recreation of the pendulum and new bell support frames.

The remaining photos show the potential of this movement as reflected in the beautiful fleur-de-lis frame design and high tooth / pinion counts of the wheel works. The first photo shows the design of the going train frame. This was used as a basis for the design of the pendulum rod and dial hands. At the same time one can see the sad abuse the movement and in particular, the escapement which suffered at the hands of inexperienced 'repair' persons who tried to make this clock run over the years.

Certain indicators such as the lack of pinion wear, serious structural deficiencies as well as the overall lack of the movement to properly function as found, convinces me that this clock never ran. Several owners had tried modifications in the past to make this movement function, but none, in the long run, were successful. The escapement as found was completely inoperable, even though a former inexperienced repair person had tried to remake several parts of this system. The pendulum,  dial and weights were missing. The bell support consisting of a single threaded tube; wholly inadequate, was attached to the same support as that of the pendulum assuring that the vibrations from the strike function would hinder the accuracy of the time keeping by interfering with the pendulum. Certain other systems like the strike fly fans found to be inoperable or unsuitable to our envisioned design; were discarded and recreated. Other systems that employed springs were redesigned to operate by gravity via balanced counter weight configurations. The hour snail and motion works wheels were skeletonized. Various unused holes in the brass frames and cast iron base which were the result of prior experimentation or outright failures were plugged.