ClockInfo.com

Merritt’s Antiques has a new 3/4 inch by 0.0165 inch by 96 inch mainspring for American clocks. It is part no. P-1956, currently selling for $7.00 each individually (quantity discounts are available). It is a higher quality, American made version of their P-1496 that I have blogged about earlier.

I bought one of these springs to test. The quality appears to be excellent. The thickness measured as specified, 0.0165 inches. It is tempered to a nice uniform blue, and is well finished with a nicely made, neatly attached loop end.

It seems to have plenty of power, as the coils open way up when the spring is first uncoiled. It may be too strong for some clocks.

Tomorrow I am going to install it in an Ansonia long drop octagon clock with early type movement.

Daylight Saving Time in the USA officially starts Sunday March 9, 2008 at 2:00 a.m. You will need to set your clocks forward one hour. I recommend doing this before you go to bed on Saturday night (March 8th).

On the vast majority of clocks, it is okay to set the hands forward one hour. When setting the hands, you should pause at each time the clock will strike or chime. On clocks where you set the hands directly (not having a time set knob), move the minute hand (long hand), and the hour hand will automatically follow.

Hermle Clocks (such as the ones I sell at Bill’s Clockworks): You may turn the minute hand ahead one hour, pausing each quarter hour for a chiming clock or each half hour for a striking clock.

Cuckoo Clocks: Move the minute hand ahead one hour, pausing at the hour and half hour for the clock to cuckoo.

Grandfather Clocks: Move the minute hand forward one hour, pausing at each quarter hour for the clock to chime.

Chelsea Ship’s Bell Clocks: Turn the minute hand ahead pausing at the hour and half hour for the clock to strike.

Antique American wall, mantel and shelf clocks: Move the minute hand forward one hour, pausing at the hour and half hour for the clock to strike.

French Antique Clocks: Move the minute hand forward one hour, pausing at the hour and half hour for the clock to strike.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT FORCE THE MINUTE HAND. IF YOU FEEL AN OBSTRUCTION, STOP MOVING THE HAND.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT MOVE THE HOUR (SHORT) HAND - IT WILL MOVE BY ITSELF AS YOU MOVE THE MINUTE HAND.

DISCLAIMER: I AM PROVIDING THIS INFORMATION AS A FREE SERVICE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PROBLEMS CAUSED BY FOLLOWING THESE DIRECTIONS.

Marine or Ship’s Chronometer: IT IS BEST TO LEAVE THE HANDS ALONE. Consult a specialist before setting a chronometer. It is best not to set the hands, just record the chronometer’s error each day.

Lately several people told me me that their 400 day anniversary clock was “wound too tight”, and that they tried to fix it by unwinding the spring! Trying to unwind the spring is DANGEROUS (unless you are experienced at clock repair and have the proper let-down key). If you try to unwind the spring, YOU MAY INJURE YOUR HAND OR FINGERS, and damage the clock as well. Don’t try it! Also, merely unwinding the spring will NOT fix the clock’s problems.

When a clock that is wound up all the way will not work, it needs to be repaired. The repair needed can range from a simple adjustment such as putting the clock in beat; up to an overhaul, in which the movement needs to be taken completely apart, cleaned, pivots polished, and any other repair work carried out. 400 day anniversary clocks seldom need to have bushings installed, but quite often, Schatz clocks from the 1950’s need a few pivots polished.

I offer repair service for Kundo and Schatz 400 day clocks and Schatz 1000 day clocks.

I am selling a small New Haven Bakelite case alarm clock on eBay. For some reason there are no bids yet - aren’t Bakelite items highly collectible?

It sold for $28 plus shipping.

I’ve been fascinated by cameras and photography since I was a boy. My father was an avid photographer, did wedding photography, had a darkroom for developing and printing pictures, and made our photo Christmas cards himself for the first few years. Some of the cameras I’ve used over the years are:

• Brownie Hawkeye - my starting camera
• Leica IIIG - The last of the screw mount Leica cameras that my Dad bought new around 1958. When I was a boy, my Dad taught me to use a handheld exposure meter and this camera. I took many pictures with it on our vacations.
• Agfa - One of the Optima series.
• BolseyB2 - A neighbor had this camera and he took the shutter timing mechanism apart and could not reassemble it. He gave it to me, and I was able to get it assembled and working.
  
• Canonflex - This was the first SLR (Single Lens reflex) made by Canon, and was introduced in 1959. I believe that my Dad bought it when it was new, and I started using it about 1968 to take closeup pictures of my clock collection. We had a screw on closeup lens that worked well.
• Canon AE-1 with 50 mm Macro lens. I bought it new about 1980 and used it for closeup and general photography for years.
• Canon EOS Rebel Ti - when our middle aged eyes could not focus the AE-1 anymore, my wife and I bought this camera in 2003.
• Canon A540 - for home and church web site photos. Our first digital!
• Canon A570 IS - for use in the clock shop. Has manual exposure mode which is good for closeup photography.
• Canon EOS 40D - digital SLR - haven’t bought one yet but it looks good!

My nephew Bugsy recently visited all 50 states and took hundreds of photos with a Canon 30D. My sister has a Canon SD600 and before that used a Canon EOS 850.

I recently overhauled this cuckoo clock. The movement was very dirty and someone had damaged the fan fly and enlarged its pivot holes to about 1/8 inch! The slideshow below shows the repair process.

I had to plug the enlarged pivot hole, use the depthing tool to establish the correct center distance, and  drill a new hole. Also, the fan fly had been damaged and a brass strip needed to be attached so that the fly fit properly on the arbor.

The code given previously for a Flickr embedded slideshow does not work in Explorer 6 or 7. Use the following code instead:

<pre><iframe src=”http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?user_id=uid&set_id=sid&text=” align=”middle” frameborder=”0″ height=”480″ scrolling=”no” width=”520″></iframe></pre>

where uid is your Flickr user id number and sid is the id number of the set of photos you wish to display.

Thanks to this source for this information.

A Picassa slideshow can be embedded in a WordPress blog with no problems. The visual editor seems to work fine. All I did was to take the slideshow code provided by Picasa and insert it into the post using the code view.