Standard Electric Clock Co Restoration

[Louis71]

Hi all

 

I'm new to this forum and joined to further my watch restoration knowledge but I was recently asked to restore this clock so I thought I’d share it with you. 

 

 

The clock was bought in New York by a friend of mine many years ago but as it ran on 110v  it never told the right time in the UK!! The neon ring, which I’m pretty sure was fitted at a later date, was also quite faint. 

 

I started by stripping the clock down and removing the hands, face and movement as well as the neon and transformer. I found a new mains movement from cousins with euroshaft fittings and soon discovered that unfortunately there was no way I would be able to salvage the original hands. I have a friend who has a cnc machine so I had him cut me a new set out of 1mm brass. 

 

I took the neon tube to a local specialist who tested it for me. The original transformer was a death trap on 240v apparently but fortunately the tube was in good shape and much brighter on a modern transformer.

 

I guess the purists out there might have tried to make the original movement work but for me I was really happy to bring this clock back to proper working order. 

[watchweasol]

Hi Well done changing the mech is no big deal some of these units disintergrate inside to a point where changing the mech is the only way. At least the clock is uptodate and safe to operate in the UK.

[nickelsilver]

Nice! I think the issue was 60hz rather than 50hz, so even with the voltage stepped down it wouldn't work right without a more sophisticated electrical adaptation, or- changing the movement. It's awesome the neon is functional, that's a nice looking piece.

[Louis71]

Thanks guys. I’m no expert but the movement didn’t look very special anyway. And yes, the original neon definitely makes it special. The modern neons just don’t have the same feel. 

[oldhippy]

Nice work. When replacing hands on clocks, you need to have the weight of the  replacements as near to the original,  it can cause the movement to run erratically.  

[Louis71]

55 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

Nice work. When replacing hands on clocks, you need to have the weight of the  replacements as near to the original,  it can cause the movement to run erratically.  

Thanks. Yes if I'd have wanted to keep the original movement I would have probably tried to salvage the hands or if I had to remake them I would have made sure the hands were the same weight. As I chose a heavy duty mains movement as a replacement that can handle huge hands I was pretty confident it would be fine.

[Tmuir]

I like the look of some mains powered clocks, but the old mains powered movements are usually death traps, replacing the movement was probably the best idea.

I did once read how to convert Smiths mains clocks to run on 12 V AC but being your clocks came from the USA the frequency difference would still stop it from working.

Nicely done.