Anchor repair?

[LittleWatchShop]

Working on this Gustav Becker today.

Wondering if I should try to do anything about this worn anchor.

Thoughts?

[watchweasol]

Hi LWS. if they are too deep to stone out the only other option is to reface with a bit of soldered on spring or replace the anchor. But that involves removing the material from the anchor and getting the face to the same thickness as before with the facing piece on quite a task. I think Cousins have anchors but how they are refitted on , I think riveted on at the edges.

[LittleWatchShop]

1 hour ago, watchweasol said:

Hi LWS. if they are too deep to stone out the only other option is to reface with a bit of soldered on spring or replace the anchor. But that involves removing the material from the anchor and getting the face to the same thickness as before with the facing piece on quite a task. I think Cousins have anchors but how they are refitted on , I think riveted on at the edges.

For now, the clock is assembled and in test mode.  Hard to know if the grooves are too deep.  The material is quite thick, so this represents a small percentage of wear.

Here it is in test mode.  Go ahead and laugh.

[oldhippy]

You need to reface the pallets. It might still be working but the escape will be shallow causing poor action which affects the swing of the pendulum.  it could also damage the teeth of the escape wheel. 

[transporter]

yep I'd reface, I got a job lot of old pallets off ebay once and then started practicing, basically I measured the thickness of the spring that I was using, then scored a line onto the pallets to that thickness, I annealed the faces to soften them for filing and filed down to the scored line, then soldered the new faces on and polished them up.

It did take a couple of attempts before i was happy with the result but its not too difficult

[oldhippy]

As you know practice is the way too go until you are confident then the job becomes easy. 

[transporter]

Absolutely, I,m happy to do them now but there was no way i was going to go in blind on a customers clock, mind you its always good to have a mentor to guide me. 

[LittleWatchShop]

Thanks for the input, but I'm gonna leave it as is.

[transporter]

On 6/15/2023 at 1:46 PM, LittleWatchShop said:

Thanks for the input, but I'm gonna leave it as is.

Gonna be honest, if it’s a customers clock it’s worth putting the extra effort in, trust me the return trips to them to collect it as it’s stopped again etc just isn’t worth scrimping on these jobs.

[LittleWatchShop]

It is a 'customer' somewhat. I fix these for friends...for free.

[HectorLooi]

I did a couple of anchor polishing this year. One of them was for a friend's clock that would stop after 4 day's on a full wind. I changed his mainsprings and polished all his pivots but the clock was just erratic, as @oldhippy says.

I was hesitant to repolish the anchor as the metal is extremely hard and exit pallet face is facing inwards and really difficult to work on.

I finally bit the bullet and started filing the pallet faces but the metal is as hard as the file itself. I finally resorted to using a diamond file and triangular stones of decreasing grits. And after hours of draw filing and damaging all my stones, I managed to get the faces to an acceptable polish.

The clock has been running for the past 2 months and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

I watched a video on resurfacing the pallets but I can't seem to find it now. The clockmaker used a piece of steel from an old mainspring and fused it with a low temperature solder so as to keep the temper of the steel. Sure looks like fun. 

[LittleWatchShop]

10 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

the metal is extremely hard

It amazes me that a brass escape wheel can wear on a steel anchor.  If the clock ran for fifty years and every tic removed 30 fm of material, then...OK I guess.