Bushing a French round "Pendule de Paris" movement

[walterk55]

The round French time and strike movements are probably the finest movements ever industrially made.  My opinion.  It is very rare that they need a bushing.  When they get dirty, and the oil dries out, they stop.  This then keeps them from having a lot of wear.  Small pivots, and very good brass plates help as well.  Imagine my surprise then when I disassembled one of these to replace a broken mainspring, and found that every single hole in the movement had been bushed.  I fear this is an example of someone who just had to use his or her bushing machine (or an excuse for overcharging the customer). Been repairing clocks since 1972, and in all that time I only put in ONE bushing in a movement of this type>

What think you?

[wls1971]

As you say they are very good but they where making them well into the 20th century and later examples do not have the quality of earlier ones especially in the steel and brass used in the deco marble cased clocks from the 20's, 30's tend to be the worst, most are unsigned and just say "Made in France" the area I see most wear is on the strike side of these clocks.

For the most part I tend to re-bush a bush with French clocks where they have been bushed badly in the past with much softer brass than was originally there in the first place.

I've seen some horrors as well I had a Carriage Clock where the pivot had broken on the fly leaving just a stub so the repairer(bodger) had hammered a brass tube through the pivot hole just enough to hold the stub, surprisingly it ran.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by wls1971

[watchweasol]

welcome to the forum,  Been repairing them longer than that and only ever had to bush one  an escapement bushing, either the clock had ,had a hard life or they were over zealous, in what constituted a worn hole.