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I just overhauled a Seth Thomas called “The Giant, No. 2″ shown in Tran Duy Ly’s Seth Thomas book as being made ca. 1904. The movement is 8 day time and strike with inside escapement and is labeled 8 1/4 (this movement model was later called no. 89 and was made in several pendulum lengths for mantel and shelf clocks. It came in many variations).

This clock had a pair of original Seth Thomas mainsprings (.0182″ thick strike and .0175″ thick time) that would have been ok to leave in the clock, but I wanted to make it easier to wind and reduce future wear

I installed a pair of Merritt’s Antiques P1496 springs that measured .0162″ thick. The pendulum makes a large motion with this mainspring, indicating plenty of power!

On modern German clocks, such as Westminster chiming wall, mantel and grandfather clocks (by makers such as Hermle, Howard Miller, Bulova and Ridgeway), it is easy to correct the clock if it is striking the wrong hour after the hour chime. Suppose the clock strikes 6 times but the hour hand is pointing to 7 o’clock. Proceed as follows:

• Grasp the HOUR (short) hand near the center of the dial and move it to the correct hour (6 in this example). The hand is a friction fit on its shaft
• Using the MINUTE (long) hand, set the clock to the correct time. You may turn it backward or forward to the correct time, but if you go forward, be sure to pause each quarter hour for the clock to chime. If you move the hands backwards, the chime will re-synchronize within 2 hours.

Note: On older and antique clocks, do not move the minute hand backward past a point where the clock will strike or chime. There are many variations in clock movement design. If you have any doubts, only move the minute hand forward.

1. When trying to install the Independence Day theme, the following error message appeared: Warning: array_merge() [function array_merge]: Argument 2 is not an array in: …/wp-includes/widgets.php on line 53. Based on the comments on this post:
   http://www.gudlyf.com/2005/01/14/wordpress-plugin-technotag/feed/
   I changed line 53 of wp-includes/widgets.php to:
   $sidebar = array_merge($defaults, (array)$args);
   The change casts argument 2 to the array type, and seems to work fine.
2. I have multiple links categories (Blogroll, Clock History Links, etc) and my pages would not pass XHTML validation, due to repeated use of an id by the widget code. The WordPress forum gave the following fix: Insert the following line of code as the first statement after the else { on line 360 of wp-includes/widgets.php:
   $before_widget = preg_replace('/id="[^"]*”/’,'id=”%id”‘, $before_widget);

The above applies to WordPress version 2.2.

A side note: Dreameaver MX was adding multiple attributes such as mmTranslatedValueHiliteColor=”HILITECOLOR=%22Dyn%20Untranslated%20Color%22″ to the page, so I used jEdit instead for editing, and used Dreamweaver only for site management such as uploading files. I can’t explain why Dreamweaver is messing things up, I have the preferences set for it not to do code rewriting.

Another problem I had (never solved) with Dreamweaver MX editing php files was that in some cases it was replacing a require_once statement withe contents of the included file! I hope to try the latest version of Dreamweaver later this year and see if it is fixed.

Below are shown some original retail prices of Westclox Big Ben and Baby Ben alarm clocks. Shown in parenthesis are the equivalent prices in 2007 dollars, using the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota online calculator.

1930 Montgomery Ward and Co. Catalog:

• Big Ben and Baby Ben leg model plain: $3.25 ($39.99)
• Big Ben and Baby Ben leg model luminous: $4.50 ($55.37)
• Big Ben and Baby Ben base model (style 2) with gold non-luminous dial: $3.75 ($46.15)
• Big Ben and Baby Ben base model (style 2) luminous gold dial: $5.00 ($61.53)

1939 Sears, Roebuck and Co. Catalog:

• Big Ben Loud Alarm, plain: $2.75 ($40.66)
• Big Ben Loud Alarm, luminous: $3.75 ($55.44)
• Baby Ben, plain: $2.95 ($43.61)
• Baby Ben, luminous: $3.95 ($58.40)
• Big Ben Chime Alarm, plain: $3.50 ($51.74)
• Big Ben Chime Alarm, luminous: $4.50 ($66.53)

1957 Sears, Roebuck and Co. Catalog:

• Big Ben and Baby Ben, plain: $7.65 ($55.95)
• Big Ben and Baby Ben, Luminous: $8.75 ($63.99)

Many American antique clocks with open (not in a barrel) mainsprings use a “standard” mainspring of 3/4″ wide and approximately 18 thousands of an inch thick. There is a lot of variation in these springs between manufacturers, and across clocks made by the same manufacturer. I will comment more on these variations later.

In general, these clocks will work with thinner mainsprings if the pivots are polished and the necessary bushings installed properly. Also, some of these clocks show severe wear to the mainwheel teeth. Installing a thinner mainspring can reduce future wear.

Merritt’s Antiques has a mainspring specified as 3/4″ x .0165″ x 96″, part number P1496. Some of the springs in the first batch I received were about .0155 inches thick. They provide plenty of power for many 8-day American antique clocks, and have worked perfectly in the following applications so far:

• Ingraham oak kitchen clock, ca. 1880, for both time and strike.
• Ansonia oak kitchen clock, 4 pillar movement, strike side (this spring is also fine for the time side, as the original mainsprings are about the same thickness, in fact, even thinner springs would work).
• Waterbury oak kitchen clock steel plates, brass bushed, time and strike springs (this movement originally had thin mainsprings).
• Ansonia oak kitchen clock, 5 3/4 inch tall 5 pillar movement, time and strike springs
• Ingraham time only store regulator, deadbeat escapement, clock runs 15 days on one winding.

The mainsprings in this batch can be identified by being packaged in red, yellow and orange boxes.

In the Waterbury clock mentioned above (my job no. 4369), the new strike mainspring broke in September 2007. I replaced it with the same type of spring Sept. 28, 2007 (0.0155 inch thick).