Yet another clock. I mentioned in the information about the last clock I posted - A French Australian long case clock - a tale of two clocks, that I had purchased two old French Comtoise clock movements from an antique shop in Western Australia.
This case was made to house the first of these antique movements.
The movement is from around 1850/60 and has an unusual one piecepressed brass dial or Fronton. It shows what looks like a farm-hand getting drunk while swigging back a couple of jugs of wine!
It was great fun restoring both clocks and getting them working again. This first one lived in my garage/workshop fitted to a simple wall bracket.
Having convinced a friend that he needed a grandfather clock, I gave him the choice of the two movements I had restored. He went for the second with its clear white enamelled dial. So, number one was left on its bracket in the workshop accumulating more and more dust and affected by any draught every time you walked past it. It needed to go. Or I had to find someone else who want a re-cased antique!! I had no luck, and no luck trying to sell it on eBay. So, as I was stuck for a project, I decided to make a ‘quick’ wall case for it.
Now these movements where usually put in a 2.5M / 8ft tall grandfather case so that their weights could drop all the way to the floor and so keep it going for 7 days. A wall clock was going to restrict the drop and probably turn it into a 4 day clock – unless it had a very strange long case. So, I thought about using a pulley system for the weights which would halve the distance they dropped.
Hmmmmm - but if you remember your basic school day physics this would also halve the applied weight. Now as the weights were already around 7kg/15lbs each I thought having 14kg/30lbs hanging on a few screws in the wall wasn’t sensible!! I therefore decided to leave the bottom of the wall case open so they could continue their fall to the floor, while the case would still be long enough to protect pendulum from interference.
In their original long cases these clocks had plain rough cast-iron weights and a folding pendulum, though I had to make some new eights for it as part of the restoration as they had long since disappeared. So, as these would now be seen I had to make a wooden pendulum and find some shells to smarten up the weights.
One of the steel weights and its new shell. It was an interesting project in its own right shortening the shell without deforming it!!
Enough of the that.
Living in Jarrahdale Western Australia I decided to us the local Jarrah as I had plenty around the workshop. I came up with a few designs based on old Vienna regulators, and in consultation with my design consultant – i.e. my wife, she suggested that the round hood looked best.
Alas too late, I realised it was the hardest hood to make with all its curves.
The design is a nine-light clock – nine pieces of glass, 3 in the hood and 6 in the trunk. The case and hood frames are from Jarrah enhanced with white Tasmanian oak stringing.
The back panel of the trunk is book-match cherry with another string jarrah cross-banding.
The trunk door opens to adjust the pendulum.
The hood and its door are a separate assembly which slides onto the truck and is then screwed to the back board which extends the whole length of the clock.
The hood also has a removable curved top, to enable the bell to be adjusted with taking the whole hood off.
It’s a BIG wall clock at 1.4M / 4.5ft. from top to toe. It’s currently for sale at a local gallery. Though this created its own problem as being a listed building there was no way I was going to be allowed to screw it to the wall!!! However each room has a substantial picture frame, so I made up some substantial teel hangers that fix to the back of the clock enabling I to be hung from the picture rail! Not ideal and susceptible to knocks – but its worked. I am now pleased I didn’t use the pulley system for the weights.
