Wednesday.

Been a fairly busy few days since I last blogged. Played scrabble at Hilary's this morning. This afternoon and evening I got on with some work. Fixed two clocks which were playing up. A Black Forest wall clock which (it turned out) had lost a 'stop' pin, and a lantern clock which needed the clutch spring retensioning. Both problems fairly easy to find and put right.  Which brings me to the photograph above, and demonstrates two of the drawbacks of being an 'Antiquarian Horologist' or ,less pretentiously, a 'clockie'. To explain the first drawback, I must go back twenty or more years. I sold the above clock to a friend. It is a single fusee timepiece, built around 1830 to 1840, a nice, satisfying, and reliable little clock. The drawback to selling anything of this sort to a friend, is that you're expected to keep it running forever (or as much of  forever as is allowed us).  I don't really mind this, as I usually get my expenses paid. Our friend who bought the clock died some few years ago, and I've had to put it right twice since then. The first time his son had overwound it (despite the stop work that all good fusee movements have to prevent this happening).  It took me a day to take the movement apart, put the problem right, and reassemble the clock.  This time his widow has dropped the clock off its shelf, and (this is the difficulty) I cannot, on a fairly quick examination, find what the problem is. It isn't any of the things you'd expect. It just declines to go for more than a couple of minutes. This means that I must strip the movement down completely, examine it carefully, and find the problem. I expect that one of the wheel teeth fairly high up in the train will be bent (or broken off - though I can't see one missing or out of alignment), or even just a pivot leaning sideways (sneaky little things these pivots- but I mustn't get too technical).  Either way, thoroughly time consuming to find and then put right.

Shouldn't winge though. Generally speaking I thoroughly enjoy what I do, and persuading a 'dead' clock to resume its duties is very satisfying.

Good night All.