Transcription
Now we're going to install the bird side levers. Okay, so I've got one, two, three, four, five lift wires for the bird side. And this is the sequence in which they go in the clock. I laid them out. Um, that's where they go. That's not necessarily the sequence in which you put them in though. Um, that varies.
However, before I put those in, first thing I need to do is make sure that my star wheel or the ratchet wheel with the lift cam, the lifters on it, is in the correct position so that the call of the bird and the bellows finish its striking sequence when the warning wheel locks up on the stop arm as it drops in the maintenance cam. So that's what I need to do first.
So the way we do this is we put the gong hammer wire in position. And we see where it is relative to the lift lifters on the ratchet wheel. Now we know that the gong hammer is lifted first in the bird striking striking sequence. I'm also going to install my stop arm so I can see the position of the gong hammer when the warning pin locks up on the stop arm. So I'm only going to install these two wires and I'm going to look at the position of the gong hammer. So, I know the gong hammer is lifted first and it needs a little run. So, the position the gong hammer should be in is about a 16th of an inch from the lifter. About right there. So, this is the position I want the gong hammer to be relative to the lifter on the ratchet when the warning pin is locked on the stop arm. So, if I watch the action, it goes, it's going to continue going, going, going, going, going and then I want it to stop right about there. All right.
So, I'm going to go ahead and install my stop arm. I'm going to put the spring on the gong hammer to be active and then I'm going to see where this ends up. And if it's not in that position when it's locked, what I need to do is loosen the nut on my movement, lift up the plate, and I'm going to pull that gear, the ratchet wheel, out of the pivot hole just enough to disengage from the wheel with the maintenance cam so I can turn it and reposition it so those lift lifters are in the right position relative to my gong hammer.
So, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to install my gong hammer and my stop arm. So, here's my gong hammer going in. Okay. Then, I'm going to wiggle my stop arm into position. And then, I'm going to There it is. And then, I need to put the pin in to hold it in position. Here's the pin. All right, I'm just going to give that a little tap with my hammer. Here we go. All right.
So, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to test my train to see if I installed my warning wheel in the correct position so that it's stopping on the stop arm in the maintenance cam. And then, where does my gong hammer lie when it locks up? So, there it is in the locked position. So, my warning pin and stop arm are installed correctly relative to my maintenance cam. So, I'm going to zoom in and show you the warning pin there is locked on the stop arm right there. Okay? So, that's what we want. And now, we want to check the position of our gong hammer when it's in that locked position. So, if you see there, the gong hammer is being lifted by the lifter. So, it's in the wrong position. The lifter on the ratchet wheel should be a 16th of an inch below the gong hammer wire. So, I need to advance the ratchet wheel so that the lifter is in that position.
So, what I'm going to do is loosen the nut right here. And then loosen the nut here. So, that I can lift the plate just enough so I can pull the ratchet wheel out of the pivot hole and out of the pinion that's next to it and rotate it so the lifter is in the correct position relative to the to the gong hammer. So, this uh pinion here and that wheel on the ratchet I need to disengage them so that the rest of the train does not lose the locked position of the warning pin on the stop arm when it's dropped in the maintenance cam. Right there. So, it's got to be locked right there when I make the move. And I didn't notice it at the time, but the pin in my stop arm fell out. And also, I should have put my clothing pin to lock the fly at this time, right here. That's where I should have put it. But instead, I make the mistake of taking the movement nuts off trying to move my ratchet wheel first. But you should have done it the at that point. And be patient with this procedure because it's going to take practice. You may not get it in the right position the first time or the first seven times. Um, or you might just get it just right. But be patient with it and be careful not to um damage anything when you're lifting up the plates.
So, I'm applying downward pressure on the post and upward pressure on the plate with my left hand as I pull the ratchet wheel out of its pivot hole with my tweezers. And out of the pinion of the wheel above it. Sometimes you might need to push down on the plate bottom plate as well. You just want want to be careful not to use too much force. And see here? See there, my stop arm fell out because the pin fell out. Okay. And now I'm going to throw my clothing pin on my fly, which I forgot to put on earlier. And since I already got the procedure underway, I'm just going to go ahead and move the ratchet wheel um, the approximate amount I need based on where the position of it was when I was checking it. So, I'm going to lift it up and out of the bottom pivot hole. And you can use your finger on the left to help you. And then, you see here we're rotating the ratchet wheel a little bit to where I think it needs to be. Put it back in its pivot hole. And then, make sure every all the wheels are still lining up in the pinions or the pinions are still in their holes. Nothing is preventing movement from going back together. I had to readjust one of the wheels. And then, boom. Plate snaps back into position. We're going to lock it down. We're going to take our clothes pin off. We're going to put our stop arm back in. And we're going to see, after that move, where is the lifter relative to the gong hammer when the warning pin is locked on the stop arm.
So, I've got my stop arm back in position, held in place by the pin. And we're going to check to see where my lifter lies relative to the gong hammer. And look at that. It's about a 16th of an inch from the lifter when it finishes its cycle and the stop arm gets locked by or the warning pin gets locked on the stop arm as it drops in the maintenance cam. So, I'll show you here as a close-up. Stop. Go. Stop. All right. Go. Stop. That's where you want it to be. All right. I got pretty lucky there that I positioned it correctly. Okay.
So, now that I got it in time, I'm going to remove my stop arm and my gong lever. And now I'm going to install all the levers on my bird side. So, the lever that gets lifted by the front works on the center shaft goes in first. Then I mistakenly put in my gong hammer lever. And I'll find out when I put my bellows lever in that it's obstructed. So, I'll take my gong hammer lever out. Then I find out that I put the wrong bellows lever in first and I will have to take that one out. So, the bottom bellows wire goes in, then the top bellows wire goes in, then the gong hammer lever goes in. Like so. And uh get your spring out of the way. All right. Now I can Now I just need to install my stop arm lever and I'll have all the levers in place on my bird side and then I just need my count wheel and I'll be able to test her out. You just wiggle that guy in there. And we'll secure that with a pin. Like so. Then we test her out. Boom. So, when I release the stop arm, the gong hammer goes, then bellows wires two, then one. Gong hammer two, then one, and then it stops. That's exactly what you want to see. All right. So, we got the bird side in time. It's working properly. And now we're ready to move on to the quail side.
So, I've got my quail side levers here, one, two, three, and four. And that's the sequence in which they are placed in the clock. You've got your first wire which lifts the bellow. You've got your stop arm. And then your next your next arm and finally your gong hammer. Okay? So, this side, we don't actually have to worry about putting the clock in time like we did on the bird side because you don't have the lifters on the ratchet wheel. As long as your warning pin is where it needs to be relative to the maintenance cam like we showed you earlier, then you'll be good.
So, the bellows wire goes in first. Then your gong hammer. Then your next lever which is what catches the warning pin when the clock warns. There's a section of the shaft that has a smaller diameter and that will slide through the groove on the plate there. And then you push the lever up through and into its pivot hole like so. Then it's secured in place with a tapered pin. Now, all that remains is we wiggle our stop arm into position which can be um a bit of a pain, so just be patient. You'll see I struggle with it slightly, but you got to get it in there just right. But it will go in, and you don't have to force it. I have a rule in clock repair that if it's hard, you're doing it wrong. So, I never like to force anything, and I take my time and make sure I do it right. Okay, so I got it in there. Sorry my hands were in the way a bit, but you'll be able to do it, too. So, that's also secured with a pin. So, we put our tapered pin in there to secure the stop arm. I'll give that a few taps with my hammer. Then uh make sure I got my end shake there. I do. Good. And now we can test her out. Okay, this is starting to look like a cuckoo clock movement. All right, let's test it and look at the side view. So, when I actuate the cuckoo side by moving the stop arm out of the way of the warning pin, apply power to the ratchet wheel, I can see that everything's moving correctly. I've got my finger under the bellows wire here, my left index finger, because if that goes down too far, it'll jam in the movement and you won't be able to see it work properly. So, everything's working correctly, as I expected. And that's because we took the time to install the warning pin in the correct position earlier.
Now, I'm just going to install my spring wire for my stop arms, which gets secured around the pins that hold them to the plate. So, with my spring wires in place, I just want to test to make sure that the spring action is good. And it is. The stop arm is shutting down on the maintenance cam nicely. Okay, so now we're going to oil the pivots and the levers on the movement. So, I've got this in 2x speed because um it's not that technical, but we're putting a drop of oil on each of the oil sinks for each wheel on each train. Here's the back of the movement. Then, where each lever interfaces with the movement, we're going to put a drop of oil on both the bird and quail sides. Then, we're going to flip the movement over, do the same thing. Put a drop of oil at each pivot of the levers here. And then, at each wheel.
Okay, now that we oil the movement we're ready to install the count wheels. So here's the count wheel for the bird side. And then we need our pinion. Shows on the shaft the ratchet wheel. And it's held in position with a tapered pin. So I put this on first. And we're just going to position that so that the hole lines up with the hole in the shaft. There we go. Then we're going to slip our tapered pin through there. Like so. There we go. I've still got end shake in my wheel. Now I'm going to install the count wheel. Put it in a position there. And um position it so my count hook is in one of the drops or slots. And then we'll put our screw in there and we'll tighten that down. And this clock is unique. It has extra wide slots because the bird will actually strike on the half hour and the hour. So, you want instead of having the count wheel in the center of the slot, you actually want it towards the front of the slot because it's going to drop in the one each slot twice. As shown how I've got it there.
Okay, now I'm moving the spring wire of my gong hammer out of the way of the count hook. And uh I want to test this out. So, let's take a look at the action of the bird side. So, I'm going to release the stop arm. And see there? That was the half hour strike. And looks like I'm going to jamming on something. And I can see down there at the bottom. Whoops, my tapered pin coming out of the pinion here is actually obstructing the count wheel. So, I need to take my count wheel off, take that pinion off, and put a tapered pin in there that's a little bit more presentable and fits properly. So, you'll have that from time to time. And you know, you can see here it's just something as simple as a tapered pin sticking out too far will prevent your bird from working properly. It'll prevent the clock from functioning. So, it doesn't take much. We'll going to that tapered pin. And we're going to put a new one in. Okay, this time I'm going to clip off the excess. And now I've got a much nicer looking tapered pin. And that is not going to interfere with my count wheel. So, let's put her back together. Okay, now let's test the action. There we go. Half hour. Then hour one, two, three, half hour, one, two, three, four. Very good. I might need to adjust that slightly. So, just take a closer look at the action here of the count wheel and the hook. It is dropping a little bit sooner than I'd like. So, I'll end up bending that hook just a hair so that it's a bit further away from from the beginning of the drop.
Now, I'm going to move on to the quail side count wheel. The quail operates first in the striking sequence, and it's got two pins on the count wheel that lift this arm, that long arm that's extending across the movement near my fingers there. And that's what releases the bird. So, that pin on the count wheel of the quail side is going to be right about there with the drop hook of the quail in the slot as shown here. And I'm just going to press this down in with um a bench key, the little little love tap from a hammer. Okay? I'm not going to go crazy on it. And then, I'm going to test this side out. I got to hold my bellows wire up, so it doesn't jam in the in the movement. And as I go around you're going to see that it begins to lift that wire, and that's what releases the the count count wheel on the bird side. So, when it finishes the quail call that hook should just finish its drop. So, I'll make a slight adjustment there. And we're going to go ahead try this again. And we're going to lift. Count wheel hook comes out. Just lift the wire and then it drops. Okay? And it should count do uh three jumps at the quarter hour, six jumps at the half hour, and then 12 jumps at 3/4 hour, and then um Sorry, three, six, nine, and 12. And it should stop in the slot each time. And on the half hour and the hour is when that pin we want that to be lifting that long lever that rides across the movement there.
So now we've got that into proper position. And now we're going to install the front works. All right, the first thing we're going to do is install the center shaft. Just thread it on. And I try to do it by hand all the way in. And then I give a final little twist with my pliers. And as I mentioned earlier, it's really not good practice to do that because you mar uh the material. But uh I really haven't figured out a better way to do that just yet. So I've got my center shaft on. Now what I want to do is put the retainer spring on my arbor, my maintenance wheel there, or intermediate wheel. Now I'm going to put the tube over the center shaft the lifting that has the lift pins on the back of it. Got my hour tube. And now I am going to secure this wheel. First a washer to prevent the hour tube from coming off. And then we're going to push that down and hold it in place with the tapered pin. Sometimes this can be a pain cuz you got to push down to depress the retaining spring while you insert tapered pin in the hole. Just be patient with it. You'll get it. Okay, we got it started there. I'm going to push on it a little bit the back of my tweezers to get it going. And then once I've got it going like that it'll be easier for me to push down and put put it in the rest of the way with There we go. We got it started. And then I can use um my pliers if I need to to push it in. But I got it. So there we go. That moves nice and freely. You want to make sure your hour tube can't come off. You want to make sure that your lift pins are not snagging on that lift wire. That lift wire is what releases the stop arm or the warning pin, sorry. After the clock warns. So, I'm going to put this bracket on cuz I forgot to which holds these um quail side levers in place.
Now, we're going to install the bird perches. And I'm going to show this in two times speed cuz it doesn't require as much detailed explanation. Basically, we're going to put the mounting posts on the bottom here. Then we're going to slip our bird perch into it, making sure that the wire on the perch is inside the stop arm lever. That's what pulls the bird out. So that wire needs to be behind there. Then we're going to secure it here to the movement. Another screw. Then we're going to make sure You do want to make sure these are positioned correctly cuz they do move. So you want to make sure your bird perch moves freely back and forth and also that it won't pop out of the bottom one like that. So you may have to adjust the position slightly. Then you want to make sure you've got your spring tight enough to pull the bird back. Sometimes if the bird is too tight, it can stop your clock from running. But usually this is not the case. You can get that pretty tight. If it stops because it's too tight, you might have a problem with your gear train. All right. So I actually installed my bottom bracket bird perch in upside down. So I took it off and put it back on. So now that it's installed correctly, it's not going to pop out of there. And my spring is causing the quail to pop back into the far back position. And that's what I want to see. So, let's test this out. So, the quail comes out when it's calling and retracts when it finishes. So, now I'm going to do the same thing with the bird on the other side of the movement. Okay, we got both bird perches installed. You'll notice that one is further back than the other. That's okay. We're going to adjust for that. And um right now I'm just want to check to make sure the birds are retracting really well. That way the door slams shut when it finished its call. And we're about ready to uh put the chains on and throw it in the test rack. But before we do that, we need to put in the the verge and the pendulum leader. So, we'll go ahead and do that.
So, first I got to loosen up and remove the back Then, I am going to thread the post with the leader onto it so that when it's tight the leader is falling downward at 90°. Then, I'll loosen the front. Just enough so I can get my verge in. So, I'm going to slide it through the plate like so. Put it in the pivot on the front. Then, I'm going to put my back post with the leader the leader through the crutch. Then, I'll position this. And we'll tighten it down. And um the position of the back post plate is adjustable. The one in the front and the back are adjustable. And that's what we use to adjust the depthing on the escapement. Yeah. If we need to adjust the pallet faces and where they contact the escape wheel. So, we'll go ahead and tighten these up. And I'm going to check make sure I got end shake. And uh we got to remember to oil the verge since we didn't do that. So, we'll make sure we do that. But, right now I'm going to put apply power to the time train and watch for the ticking and check the depthing. And I'll adjust the position of this bridge so that the pallet faces are contacting the escape wheel teeth where I want them. And now put a drop oil both pivot points of the verge. And I'll put two drops oil. One drop on escape tooth on this side and another on the other side. Just two drops oil. And then I'll put some oil at the crutch. And now we're ready to put on the chains.
So, I'm going to hold my movement upside down. And I'm going to hang my chain over the ratchet wheel on the bird side like so. And then I'm going to advance the ratchet wheel by hand a little bit. Not too far cuz but just enough so that I can put it upright. And then I'll finish ratcheting it it through. It'll come down the other side. If I ratchet it too far when it's upside down, the chain will get caught in in the movement. So, we'll pull that down so the chain is equal length on both sides. We'll do the same procedure for the time train. And I usually like to check which direction the ratchet wheel pushes cuz that's the direction you want the chain to go on. That tells you which direction to bend the movement. So, we're going to put the chain on the center wheel. Then we're going to advance the ratchet a little bit. Then we're going to put the movement upright. And then finish jacking that chain through by pushing the ratchet. And then once I got it where I can grab it, I'll grab the chain and pull it down. And I want to make sure when I do it, it's straight and I'm not doing it too forcefully so that the chain jumps the the track that it's on. Cuz there's no weight providing counterweight which helps it keep it on the track. So, when there's no weight on it, you want to be careful when you pull the chains. Now, this wheel I know ratchets that way. And this one we can kind of do from the side. We're just going to feed that chain onto the ratchet. Try not to get caught on things. These chains are like octopus arms. They grab everything. So, we're going to ratchet that through. I got off the wheel there. So, put it back on. Do it again. Sometimes I use my tweezers or a screwdriver to push the ratchet if it's tighter or if I can't access it easily with my finger. And then we'll pull the chain through like so. Okay. Go about halfway. And then that chain is off the side of the post. It's supposed to be inside the post. So, I'm going to feed the other end of the chain through there. Like so. And we're going to pull it through. Pull it gently. We don't want the chain to come off the track. And there we go. Now we got the chains on there. And now we're ready to put the hooks on and throw it in the test rack. See how she runs.
So, I'm going to show you how I put the hooks on. Now, in some cases, I still have the uh rings at the bottom of the chains. And often times they'll be in the wrong spot cuz I didn't put the chains back on same way they came off. But, uh remove those rings by just opening up one of those chain links. I'm going to replace it with a hook. And I'm going to twist I'm going to use the hook to twist chain link back into position, like so. If you overbend these chain links, they'll get weak and break. So, you want to try to open them up as little as possible when you're putting these hooks on. See, I'll show you here how I open up a chain link. I'll grab one end of it with a pair of pliers. Once half of the chain link, then I'll put a little something that'll fit in there. I got this little pointer. And I'll just rotate the one side open. Just enough so I can slide my hook in there. Then I'll use my hook to rotate it back without ever moving my pliers. All right. And sometimes I'll squeeze it a little bit shut. Looks pretty good. So now we're ready to put it in the test stand.
Okay, here it is in my rack. And I have it sitting on two pieces of wood. And so the only thing that's supporting it is its weight. So I'm putting the weights on now. You see the crutch beginning to move. Without the pendulum on, it's ticking very quickly. And as I put the other weights on, it's going to start striking. Here's the quail. Stopped. Good. And I'm going to need to put the hand on to uh test to see how quail and the bird side are working together. So I'm going to rotate the hand. Go into warning, and then boom. Quail starts going. Lifts the wire to activate the bird side. Bird goes off for the half hour. Quail goes off. Now this should be the hour. Excellent. All right, so we got a problem here. I'm going to show it to you in slow motion. But the hook on the stop arm is supposed to lock when the warning pin contacts the stop arm when that hook drops into the slot. But, you'll see it jumps out. And what that means is the warning pin did not catch onto the detent at the right time. Or missed somehow. Here it is again in normal speed. And because I wasn't sure what was causing the problem initially, I didn't film the solution. So, I want to have this short discussion on what I did. So, initially, I thought that maybe I didn't have enough spring action on my stop arm. So, I checked that and I tightened up the spring, but I would still have the problem, but only periodically. And that's what was unusual. The second thing I would normally look for is if my warning pin was in the wrong position, and it wasn't at 3:30 when the maintenance cam was at 90°. But, this wasn't the problem, either. So, it was kind of confusing. And I ended up solving the problem, but it took many hours. And what I did was actually quite stupid. And I want to share it with you because sometimes you make mistakes in clock repair, and that's okay. The difference between a student and a master is the master can fix his own mistakes. So, what actually was the cause was I had the warning wheels from the quail side and the cuckoo side swapped. And if the warning wheels were identical, this wouldn't have made a difference. But, because the pinions on the warning wheel were different, one had an additional leaf. So, the clock would stop correctly sometimes and then other times it wouldn't because each time the wheels went around um the pinion or the warning pin would advance a little bit further. So after about seven times the warning pin would miss the detent on the stop arm and the hook would jump. So the solution was to take the clock and swap out the warning wheels and that solved my problem. I wanted to share this with you because it's a simple mistake but a big one. So if you have identical wheels in a clock movement and they look the same it might be a good idea to count the wheel teeth and the pinion leaf teeth to ensure you have the right ones installed on the right trains.
So there's the quail. Quail goes again calls six times and the bird on the half hour or the hour in this case. And both the bird and the quail are snapping back pretty nicely. You can see the action of the quail side. And then here's the action of the bird side. I had to make an adjustment to the drop lever so I mentioned earlier. It was dropping off too close to the edge of the slot. So I had to bend it a bit. And now you'll see the position of that drop hook on the bird side. As it goes around, it's not going to be so close to the edge. I moved it just a bit out. And that's all of my problem. So now, while the clock is testing, I'm going to replace the bellows top.
All right. So, I'm outside and uh we're going to repair uh this bellows top by replacing it. We're not going to repair it. We're going to replace it. So, here's my original. And I removed the bellows top because it was torn. And lucky for me, I was able to find one that's the same size. Okay. Now, if I didn't have one that was the same size, I would have to order it. And the bugs are out. So, I'm going to use um some 5-minute epoxy. Then I'm going to use this uh little clamp to hold the bellows top into position. And I'm going to use this to put my epoxy on. And I'm going to use a toothpick to mix and apply it to my bellows top and my bellows whistle. So, I'm going to use So, there's a hole in the bottom here. So, when I go and clamp this, I either need to be on the edge to ensure I'm not going to fall in here. Or, I can put this down here when I clamp it. If it'll fit. Okay. Just barely. So, it actually works out pretty perfectly. So, obviously the bellows top has a hole here. And you want that hole to line up here with the hole in the bellows whistle. And you want to make sure the orientation You don't want to mount this here if it's supposed to be like this or like this. So, the whistle faces the side of the case in the movement. And if you are looking at the movement straight on, so here's the Oh, I'm sorry, the case. So, say this is the case. The whistle is mounted like so. And my bellows top needs to be positioned like so. So, I'm going to make sure I glue and clamp it in that orientation. So, the first thing I'm going to do, take my 5-minute epoxy. I don't need a lot. Mix that in. And I'm going to put it around the hole here. And the reason I'm doing this outside, by the way, is because my wife is pregnant and the fumes from this are pretty toxic. And so, doing it outside is going to provide better safety for her, but also more for me. All right. So, now I'm going to position this like so. Okay. Lock that down. And we're going to let that sit at least 5 minutes, probably a little bit longer, so that uh the fumes have dissipated. God, so many bugs out here. Okay.
So, that bellow sounds pretty good now. Now, what I need to do is put on the hardware. Uh the the eye that lifts the bellow wire. Okay. So, I'll line that up with the former bellow. And I'll mark on the new bellow top uh practically where that's going to go. Right about there. We'll drill a little hole there. And then we'll we'll press that in. I'm going to take this out. Just pull right out. You'll see it has a elongated spiked end. But, I need a hole. I need a hole to get that started and in there. All right. So, we're going to drill a hole out of that. All right. So, I'm going to drill my hole using my pin vise. Then, when I've got my hole, I'm going to get the eye started by hand. And I'll push that in carefully with my pliers to its about the same orientation and position of the original. All right. Mhm. Mhm.