old clock slows down

[Scott Touchton]

Hi,

I have a Schatz Royal Mariner that slows down as the spring unwinds
(for that matter, I also have an 1850 Ansonia that does the same
thing). Trying to figure out what causes this. One is pendulum
based, the other uses a platform escapement.

Thanks

[The Baron]

Replace the mainsprings along with a ''full service'' on all your clocks
every 20 years or so.

"Scott Touchton" <scott.t...@jdsu.com> wrote in message
news:7fd37d6c.02090...@posting.google.com...

[Scott Touchton]

My local clock repair guy is telling me that the clock runs slow when
the spring winds down because the mainspring shaft is shot (too much
play). He wants $150 to disassemble and install bushing. Just wanted
to check and see if that made sense.

If so... why could I not just swap barrels from the chime spring?
There is absolutely no play in that shaft (of course if the plate is
worn this would not work).

Spring length and tension seem to be the same between the two springs,
so was thinking of maybe just swapping the barrel assemblies.

"The Baron" <theb...@flash.net> wrote in message news:<Ur7d9.898$J8....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>...

[dAz]

On Fri, 06 Sep 2002 00:36:50 +1000, Scott Touchton wrote:

> My local clock repair guy is telling me that the clock runs slow when
> the spring winds down because the mainspring shaft is shot (too much
> play). He wants $150 to disassemble and install bushing. Just wanted
> to check and see if that made sense.
>
> If so... why could I not just swap barrels from the chime spring? There
> is absolutely no play in that shaft (of course if the plate is worn this
> would not work).
>
> Spring length and tension seem to be the same between the two springs,
> so was thinking of maybe just swapping the barrel assemblies.
>

the thing with those "Royal Mariners" they are prone to heavy wear,
Schatz in their supidity (along with a couple of other clock
manufacturers) thought to cut production costs by chrome plating the steel
parts like the pinions, barrel arbours etc, it cost money to polish metal
parts.

unfortunately the steel they use for want of a better word, is shit, very
soft, pitted, now this has a layer of very hard chrome over this, fine
until the chrome starts to flake off exposing the soft steel underneath,
the steel wears away leaving the sharp egde of the chrome exposed, it
becomes a rotating cutter slicing into the brass of the barrel and plates

the wear is so heavy that even the holes that carry the winding shaft
wear so much the key makes oval holes in the soft aluminium dials

to properly service one of these clocks the chrome must be removed from
all rotating sufaces, I know one guy that simply replaces every pivot in
the these clocks with nice hard blue steel pivot wire, I usually have to
do at least 3-4 pivots that way per clock because being so soft they
shear off while polishing.

the two mainsprings and barrels are the same, but the mainspring most
likely will need to be replaced and unless the clock is serviced properly
its a waste of time to swap the barrels over ok.

[The Baron]

As I did not state clearly enough in my first reply, you need to replace
your mainsprings as well as clean the clock and any make repairs as
necessary.

An 8 day clock that runs 3 days fast and 4 days slow needs new mainsprings.
An 8 day clock that runs only 3 days needs new mainsprings.

Often clocks fail to run at ALL because of ''too much play'', your problems
indicate that you have(power) mainspring problems. I am NOT saying that
you do NOT need bushing work, you probably need both if you want an accurate
clock.