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Greetings from Ireland

eeves

By eeves
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eeves New Member

eeves

Posted
Posted

Hi all,

After spending the last 10 years repairing pendulem clocks as a hobby,I've been ordered (by my better half) to start another hobby that doesn't envolve 'LOUD' clocks.

So I've turned my attention to pocket and vintage wrist watches.

I've serviced a couple of watches during the last month and brought them back to life,the most frustrating thing being screws as small as molecules, suddenly teleporting themselves to another dimension,never to be found again!

The balance assembly seems a nightmare waiting to happen,although I understand the basic principle of operation

I look forward to posting on the forum.

Dave.

vinn3 Distinguished Member

vinn3

Posted
Posted

    Dave;  welcome to a very interesting forum.  i am in vintage watches.   my Father  showed me "how to clean a clock mvt.",  "  wind it up,  remove the pendulem,  submerge it in a bucket of gasoline.  because of the lower surface  tention,  it would run down cleaning itself.   the clock experts here do it properly.   Vinn

JBerry WRT Addict

JBerry

Posted
Posted

Greetings from Cork! If you happen to be close by on this tiny island let me know if you ever need the lend of any tools

Sent from my Redmi 4X using Tapatalk

  • 2 months later...
2131tom Member

2131tom

Posted
Posted
On ‎11‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 5:53 PM, vinn3 said:

    Dave;  welcome to a very interesting forum.  i am in vintage watches.   my Father  showed me "how to clean a clock mvt.",  "  wind it up,  remove the pendulem,  submerge it in a bucket of gasoline.  because of the lower surface  tention,  it would run down cleaning itself.   the clock experts here do it properly.   Vinn

I spent some of my early life in the north-east of England (industrial County Durham).  In the pub one evening, an old but still serving coal miner said to me (I have no idea how the topic came up) that it was time to 'boil the alarm clock' as it was becoming 'a bit unreliable'.  

I had no interest in clocks then, but I was startled to hear something so drastic and asked him to tell me more.  It seems they were in the habit of immersing their alarm clocks in a large pan of boiling water on the stove, leaving it a few minutes to clean out the dust 'and other gunk', and then drying it out above the fire. 

I've since thought he might have been pulling my leg but he seemed perfectly serious, and one or two other miners I raised this with afterwards were completely matter-of-fact in confirming it was quite a common thing to do.

In a similar vein, another seasoned drinker in that area once told me that, when first deciding in the 1930s the recipe for a very popular local beer (it's still around today), the brewers had put in 'a secret ingredient which gave the drinker a headache'.  "Why would they do that?" I asked.  The old boy looked at me as though I were a fool.  'Why man, everybody knaa's thoo hasn't been drinking a proper beer unless tha' weks up the following morning wi' a decent headache!'            

vinn3 Distinguished Member

vinn3

Posted
Posted

 welcome to the " fun forum" .   boiling a clock;  this has some historical military presidence.    after crawling around in the mud. your Webley could mucked up and cease to function.   without alcohol, to clean it up, boiling water. in the soup pot, was all we had and it worked even without deturgents.  "be happy in your work".   vin

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