1842 Ogee H. Welton | Shelf Clock Restoration

Well another clock came in the shop today. This one's an H Welton. So the face on this is a wood dial. It's hand painted and it's got some real nice gold trim on the corners and then they went ahead and golded the minute track and another piece here and then some more ornamentation that is golded in there. To get that face off we'll have to take the hands off. The hands are usually secured with a taper pin. It goes through this this hole right through here but the pin is missing on this one. I don't know how they managed to keep the hands from falling off because it's just sitting in there. This minute hand seems as you can see it's it turns without the shaft turning. It looks like that hole has uh it's either been kind of buggered up or retrofitted to fit fit this. It may not be the original hand and that should be a square and it's it's uh not an exact square but we'll deal with that later. Then the hour hand is just friction fit. It slides off rather loosely on there. It's a real nice hand painted dial. Now it's held in by two pins on the bottom. You just turn those real carefully. The dial will come right off. It looks as though it has some damage from the pins over the years. Very old wood on the back. So these are a weight driven clock. This is the alarm side here and there's a little wooden pulley there with this cord running down to a weight. And then for the for the striking side there's a cord that runs up through here up to a wooden pulley and then here's a the cord that holds the weight for the chime side. For the time there's another nylon cord that runs up to a wooden pulley and on the side is another cord for that weight. But let's get this movement out of here and uh look at it a little bit closer. The movement on these are held in by a wood block with a screw. Loosen this one here and somebody has driven some nails in this one here. Usually you don't see nails in these but uh you'll have to remove these nails and then the movement will slide out right here. So we'll get this movement out and lay it on the bench and take a closer look at both sides of it. Now the movement should slide right out. So with the movement out we can take a little closer look at it. So as I'm looking at this there's a lot of dog hair in it. Here's one right here. I don't know if you can see that on there but there's a there's one there and here's another one right here. Stuck to the oil on the on the plate. Right here they've used what they call a rat bun or it's a band-aid bushing. Typically they would have drilled a hole through here and put a screw in there. Not really what you'd call a recommended repair. It's a repair that was used years ago. They could repair the bushings without dismantling the clock movement just by putting this little assembly bushing in there. I see a lot of these uh defacing antique American strike movements because they have longer pivots that protrude through the plate far enough for the band-aid bushing to hold it. This saves a lot of time but ends up defacing the movement as can be seen by the soldering job and acid flux residue left behind to eat away at the brass and steel pivot. It's a time saver fix but not a proper repair. If you look real close you can see uh black spattering marks in here with a little bit of green tarnish. Here's some more black uh splatter areas and and some green tarnish right in through here. If you look at the steel pivot in there it's rusty in there. I'm probably going to remove this uh this little band-aid repair because it looks as though the acid flux when they put that on there got between the this little band-aid bushing and the plate and the acid is in there eating away at things. Let's look at the back side here. I see signs it's there's some solder here at one time so they may have tried to put on a band-aid repair there but failed. And here's uh peening prick marks. That's not really a good repair either but it looks like they may have put those in there to hold in their bushings. Maybe their bushing was loose when they put it in. And the governor it looks like they've uh the guy that liked to do the soldering got to the governor too because there's a soldering blob of solder here and look at all the green tarnish. That's not even in balance anymore because they've got so much solder on it. Looks like they've blobbed solder over here on this back plate but I'd say it probably should be dismantled and cleaned. I'll check the pivots to see if they're all polished okay and definitely I'll be removing this band-aid here and putting in a proper bushing. So now that I got the movement out of the case we'll take a little closer look to it. We'll get this uh suspension spring and pendulum rod off of here and it looks like it's uh bent a little bit. We can straighten that out. That should be straight there. Take a closer look at it here. I'm going to take some watch paper here put a few few items on it. One thing I noticed here is too much oil on it. You can see right on just this gear alone a lot of oil residue if I take this paper there and lay it there. But you can see all the oil that soaked into the paper. There's only supposed to be oil on these pivots not not on the gear itself. As I go through here here's a piece of uh piece of debris here that looks like a could be a piece of chunk of metal but you can see where this just that little debris there if it gets in one of these teeth in there it could stop the clock. Right in here there's a hair. Another hair right here. A lot of uh what looks to be like either lint or animal hair in here. Here's a rather large one here. This pivot here there's rust on it. I'll get some of this watch paper and kind of pat it and you'll be able to see. I'll just push push down with my finger and you can actually see the color of the red rusty yellowish rust on there. Whoever put this band-aid uh bushing in here they soldered it in and the flux must have had some acid in there and it's laying in between there and it's rusting that pivot the back side. Here's some solder residue it looks like they may have had a one of those band-aid uh bushings in here. There's the remains of where they had something soldered there. And here's some more peen marks. They squeezed the metal around there. Here's some more animal hair right here. There's some more debris in here. The governor shaft pivot doesn't look too bad. Well here here's some more debris. Not sure what that is. And here it looks like the solder flux got onto the plate here and it dabbed some solder there. A lot of green corrosion. Here's some uh type of rust or gunk left over from the soldering right there. I'll put that on this watch paper. Here's another chunk. I can see where these chunks could uh fall off of here and get lodged in a tooth or one one of the gears and stop the clock. There's some more just gooey right here between these two teeth. There's a piece of junk right there. I just pulled it out between the teeth. Right here's the alarm wheel that activates the the hammer and there's a piece of gunk right here. All of these chunks are enough to stop the clock. They get into the wrong place and that's the problem with over oiling these movements. That the oil sticks to these gears and then when any little bit of dirt gets in there it sticks there and it causes problems. Over oiling is one of the big evils that we see in watches and clocks and there again this band-aid bushing you can see a lot of green corrosion here and looks like when they soldered it it spattered resin on this wheel because there's a lot of dots of green corrosion on that. So well we'll dismantle this. So here's the uh just out of a couple minutes there's some of the dirt that I pulled off of the movement and this movement is held together with pins. We'll pull those out. We've got four of them. Well we'll pull this apart and check it out a little closer. So as I'm pulling this off on the strike side. Boy somebody really did a job on that governor. Looks like they've soldered a hex bolt on there and this pivot is really need some attention there. The lantern pinion looks okay on this one. For that governor it looks like they put a washer in there for a shim right. It's stuck like axle grease and there's some solder that just fell right off. Wasn't even adhered. A lot of a lot of green corrosion from that acid flux. This rod here has a lot of rust on it. Here's some type of a repair right here. They've used a piece of copper and soldered that on there. Here's the pivot that had the band-aid bushing on it. It doesn't look too bad until I clean it off. It's it's really rusty real pitted on there. Back side a lot of gunk in here. More animal hairs. Yeah the gunk is like hard grease. So you can see here where somebody in the past has severely punched the metal in an attempt to squeeze it take up any wear that was in the brass. Then after that somebody has come along and put a bushing in and here you can see where somebody has used like a hole punch and squeezed the metal in order to take up any worn part of the brass. Quite quite dirty. Took some watch paper there. Here you can see where they've used some punches in order to squeeze the metal and somebody has come in afterwards and they have put a bushing in there. Here's that band-aid bushing. Here's the back side of where that band-aid bushing is. A lot of rust. You can see the orange rust that was coming off of the the pivot. Rust is due to the acid that they used in the solder. The governor looks like somebody has come in and soldered this lantern pinion together. You can see the solder and there's rust on here on these metal parts from the flux that they didn't clean off. There's a lot of end shake on this and so they had used a hex bolt and stuck on here to take up some of the slack on this fan. The original blade on here was just a one blade. This piece here is the original and for whatever reason they've come in and and soldered on some heavier gauge on here to get a four bladed fan. Gummed this one up with all that solder. I'm going to need to take this and run it through some soda solution to neutralize that flux. I don't want to run this through my cleaning solution because it'll contaminate my cleaning solution. So I've got the movement cleaned up and I found considerable wear on some of the pivot holes. So I'll be putting in some bushings to bring this back up to spec. This is the pivot hole that had the band-aid bushing on it and it's quite worn. I'll be putting in a new bushing there. You can see it moving when there's pressure put against it. So that'll be getting a new bushing and on the other side this is traces of solder from where they had a band-aid bushing at one time. That pivot hole has considerable wear on it so that'll get a new bushing. So I'll go through this movement one at a time and put bushings in where it's needed and then we'll go from there. So I'll be making some new bushings for this. This is the bushing wire I'll be using. Probably some of these larger ones here and we'll cut this on the lathe and make some new bushings and get this clock running again. So I've installed a bushing on the second wheel of the time side and we'll do a fit up to see how it fits. This has approximately anywhere from a half a thousandth to a thousandth of clearance now. Always do a dry assembly to see how they work one by one and then we put the main wheel in and do another fit check. And as I move that main wheel back and forth you can see that there's no more than a thousandths of play between that pinion and the bushing. And on the back side of the plate I'll be putting a bushing in this position. Ideally I like to have about a half a thousandth to a thousandth of movement. This one here probably has about 10 to 15 thousandths movement. So I'll cut and fit another bushing for this pivot and I'll continue to go one at a time wheel to wheel until the whole movement is rebuilt. So I've got all the bushings replaced that need it and I've got all the pivots polished on these gears. So I'm down to the last item here. This governor is trying to decide what the best thing to do on that is. These two extra blades that somebody has added they're much thicker brass than the original and they've messed it up with just a bad soldering job. I mean that's a pretty sad repair job there. The acid has gotten into the pivot on this and rusted it pretty severely from the flux. And also the shaft it looks like the acid got onto the shaft because the shaft is is real rusty on that. And they also had these washers on there as shims to correct the end shake on it. And I'm going to go ahead and remove those because they're they were put on there afterwards. We'll get rid of those and I'll polish the pivots on these and clean that rust off the shaft. And then on this governor blade I'm going to remove that excess solder and also those extra heavy gauge brass blades on there. And we'll take it back to original and see how it operates on here. I'm not sure exactly why they put those on there but we'll we'll get them off of there and see if we can keep get it to keep time again. So I went ahead and removed these these extra fan blades that somebody had makeshiftly put on. The governor is back to the original state now. I've polished the pivots on the on the shaft here. It fits in there nice and snug now. We'll get that inside the movement and see how it works. It looks a lot better now. I used the used rosin for the flux on it as opposed to the acid flux that somebody else had used earlier. We'll get this mounted in the clock see how it works. So I've got the movement back together and all oiled up. The governor I repaired. So this this is all back to original up there and I've mounted the cords for the weights, the strike side, the alarm, and this is the timekeeping side. So if I pull on this cord real gently you can see the time side is now running nice and smooth. And if I pull gently on the cord on the strike side it's it's working and then gently on the the alarm and it's working. So we'll put this together a little further. Next piece to put on would be the verge. So with that I'll need to mount the verge and the verge has polished surfaces that the escape wheel rides on and that fits right on the shaft right there. And then we'll go ahead and put some oil on it. It needs a little bit of oil on each one of these shaft areas where the brass rides. Then there's a clip that swings around here and it locks it on there. So that's now locked in place and when I put pressure on the the main wheel you'll see that it wants to run. Now every place where this escape wheel touches that verge it needs a drop of oil. So we'll put a drop of oil right there on that surface and a drop of oil on this surface and that's all it needs for oil. Now we're down to the hands. This is the hour hand and it's it's not the original hand. You can see where somebody has soldered this back piece on here. This piece right here that I'm holding with the tweezers is probably the original piece and it's been soldered to this hand here. The minute hand is also not original to the clock and the the center of this is supposed to have a square in there to fit that square shaft. As you can see it it's real loose on there so I'm going to go ahead and fasten a washer on here and file it down square so that it fits it properly. When I pulled this apart they had this square washer on top of this hour hand which it doesn't belong and when I looked at it closer it's actually the remains of the minute hand the original minute hand. So once I get these hands on here then it will take this this alarm indicator. This is the indicator for the alarm that's how you set the alarm and that slides right on here. It's got gold gilt on it. Most of the gilt is is wore off but I'm not going to clean this. I'm going to let the customer do the cleaning and that slides right right over where the hour hand slides onto and before I put that on there I want to go through mounting this pendulum suspension spring rod. Now I've straightened this out it was crooked when it came to me and it has a little just a little notch right in here it's a locking notch and when these clocks were purchased new this was not connected. In fact they recommend taking this off if you're going to transport it but this slides right in to a slot right right there and that's how you you mount that. You slide this up through this area right through there and then slide that in there. The pendulum goes on the bottom of that. A lot of times during the transporting of this this will slide out and become dislodged so once that's on there then this alarm indicator will go on there and once the alarm indicator is on then the hands will go on but right now I'm going to go ahead and work on this hand and this hand is also twisted it's bent you can see the bend right in there and I'm going to go ahead and straighten that out and then affix a washer on the back and file it square to fit to fit that properly. So it's time to get this movement mounted in here first off I'll get these nylon cords strung up through the top slides right in that slot right there fits nice and snug now the striking side cord goes up here on the left side and I'll use this little wire to fish it up through the the top look right there pull that right through the top and then to pull it down I'll do it in reverse stick this wire back up to hook on it and pull that down that's a wooden pulley that this rides on okay we've got that one in now the time side goes through a slot in the wood right here and then push this wire down through here hooked on and then do the reverse pull it back down through now we got the time side in for the weights takes this block of wood there's a slot cut in this wood and that slot goes on the back plate of that clock movement so I've got the movement installed in the case and I'm just doing a preliminary setup first off I've leveled the case up here so this case when they you install it in your house will be nice and level we need to put the weight on here for the time that that in there and we need to put a little tension on that wind it up a little bit and this pendulum rod the one we were talking about earlier I need to get that mounted slides up right through here and then it mounts in that slot that's behind that alarm dial so that's secure right between this pendulum rod and these two wires there takes just a one drop of oil in there on both sides and I use a synthetic oil so it doesn't dry up like the older whale oils that they used in the past then we hang the pendulum on there and this pendulum has a screw on the bottom you screw it up it's the pendulum move up and it makes the clock slower screw it down the pendulum will go down lower and it makes it run slower and set this in motion now it's got nuts not got an even tick top to it and to correct that and to do that this rod in here is bent slightly and be very careful when you bend this you don't break anything by bending that this rod here it'll put it in beat and now it's sounding a lot better so now I've got an even even tick tock on that so now it's in beat is what they call that so I'll go ahead and hook up the striking side striking side has a little release lever here you push up on it wait for the alarm that'll definitely wake you up but we'll go ahead and let it run for a couple days here and see how it does so the clock has been running real strong for a couple days now I'm going to go ahead and put the dial back on it H. Welton started his factory in about 1841 so this clock this clock could be 180 close to 200 years old I'm not not an expert on on dating them but he started his company in 1841 so the potential for this to be glowing is really really high and it was missing the uh the taper pins I had a brass one I'll put in there and I'll cut this shorter these oogie clocks are basically a pine box covered in veneer this veneer looks like it might be maybe a black walnut and they've all got this oogie type of curve in here and that curve was put in there so that it would accommodate these weights it hides the weights and it gives the weights some room to move around in there and most of them had a uh a reverse painting on the face of them this one here has a mirror now these these were basically a shelf clock but once in a while they were hung on the wall and if you look real close here you'll see a hole here and there's a hole here so this this clock was probably at one time hung on the wall so this is a nice example of an oogie shelf clock produced by H. Welton between the dates of 1841 and 1845