More fun with American clocks, sigh

I had a clock returned on Monday, apparently the striking mechanism was jamming the time part. Solving these problem required dismantling the clock to shorten one of the springs. An unenviable position because American clocks don't normally have anything to hold the very tightly wound mainsprings while your dismantling. Trevor found a couple of C-shaped bits of wire that were supposed to solve this issue. Only one of them did its job properly, thankfully I didn't get injured thanks to holding it in a death grip with thick work gloves.

I started on another American clock a little later in the week, this is a fine example of why clocks should be regulary serviced. The pivots were deeply scored and at least four of the hole are so worn that they move well out of proper alignment. On the other side it's a unusual movement, there's much more brass in the plates than is usual for an American and it will strike the half hours by means of a passing strike, very odd.