Post by Richard CullisI am getting started in collecting, buying, selling, and repairing vintage clocks and watches. Many of these beauties need a tune up. I thought it would be nice to take a real course in mechanical watch and clock repair to be able to work on them. Otherwise I will teach myself from online.
Any positive advice you choose to share would be appreciated.
Richard
There are some good books to begin with, plus some that aren't so good. It's important to note that this is a fairly ancient craft whose practitioners are mostly self-taught. And that means that there is plenty of conflicting advice out there. About the best advice to start with is (1) always make sure that you take lots of photographs of the movement prior to disassembly (this is easy enough with a digital camera, which didn't exist when the better books were published) and (2) prior to any disassembly, always make sure that the mainsprings are let down such that they don't exert any power on the movement. Otherwise the clock movement tends to blow apart.
So your first tools are some sort of mainspring let-down tool such that you can let the spring unwind in a controlled manner (you can make one that uses the original key to the clock) and the camera. My favorite parts/tools/supplies outlet is TimeSavers.com (in the USA) but there are others.
It's best to begin with simpler clocks, which excludes cuckoo clocks and any quarter-chiming clocks like grandfather clocks. If you can find a time-only (no strike) clock to work on, those are what to begin with.
I can also recommend the NAWCC.org clock-repair forum, on which you can find years of help. I spent a few days just sitting and reading the entries.
Write back with your adventures.
Mark Kinsler