1900s Sessions Mantle Clock Restore #18

I had a customer come in the shop the other day and they brought with them a family heirloom they want restored. So looking at a little closer look at the case somebody in the past has put some white paint over the original black and then somebody further along came along and they started stripping it but you can see the white paint has covered up all the the decorations on the front here. Get a little closer. So at one time it had some impressions in here that I believe that they had some gold paint. So the the impressions on the front here have been covered up with a white paint and the side of this has somebody has come in here and taken off some of that paint and they've managed to get most of it off here. And they also painted the back. We'll deal with that case after I get the movement cleaned up and working. This this wood I'm not sure what type of wood it is. It has kind of a green tone to it so it could be something like a poplar. It looks like they've got the dial stuffed away in the back here. But as you can see it's a Sessions. We've got an hour hand but it's missing the minute hand and looks like they've gone ahead and painted this brass as well. The movement looks like it really hasn't been touched in many years. There's a lot of cobwebs, just a lot of grease. We'll get the movement out and get it on the bench and take a closer look at it and once we get that movement work and then we'll deal with the case. So I got the movement loosened and as you can see there's a lot of cobwebs in many years and it stinks. It smells like a musty old basement. I can see some a lot of I don't know whether it's mold or mildew but it just has a musty smell to it. We'll get this movement out and take a look at it. Boy this is dirty. Well we'll get it over there and look at it. So the first thing I'm going to do is get that suspension spring and rod off of there and this particular movement is missing the pendulum so we'll have to locate a new pendulum for it and the suspension spring looks in good shape and whoever worked on this last had oily fingers because there's a lot of fingerprints left on it. A lot of chunks of grease. There's a piece of grease on this gear right there. Oh the grease is so old it's like plastic. Take a look at the other side. As far as any markings on the movement the Sessions Plot Company, USA, Forestville, Connecticut. Now Sessions they started out in 1903 using their name so this particular movement is 1903 or later. You can see a lot of dirt everywhere on it. This oil, this dark spot you see here is from using too much oil. You never want to put so much oil in there that it runs down the plate and it has a greenish hue to it. Now we'll check the pivots here. Let's see how much wear is on there. There's so much dirt and grease I'm not sure whether we'd even be able to. There's a little movement in this pivot here but the other pivots I think are so uh so much grease in there not even going to be able to really see how much wear is on it until we disassemble it and get that hard grease cleaned out. You can see this pivot here that dark residue on the bottom here that's that's because they put too much oil in there and the oil ran down and when the oil runs down like that it'll suck the oil out of the pivot but that oil has turned to just hard grease just flakes off. Escape wheel pivot here it's it's all caked up too. Lots of fingerprints from whoever worked on it last. There's a greasy fingerprint there and a greasy fingerprint there and another fingerprint there. So I'd say whoever worked on it last they had a lot of oil right on their fingers. The movement itself you know instead of seeing bright shiny steel everything has a coating of black uh almost like a black tarnish on everything and that that is pretty typical of a clock movement that's come out of an old house from the 1800s because they had a lot of uh soot in the air they had soot from the oil lamps and they also had soot from from the wood stoves that they used and over time that soot would coat almost everything in the house with a black layer including your lungs you know. We'll get this pulled apart and cleaned up and oiled and get it keeping time again. Been so long since this movement has been serviced the oil has all turned to grease. As I'm letting this mainspring down I've noticed that it's stuck. You can see the these outer two coils here have released but there's a space between them and the the other ones and if I push on my here with my finger that it'll probably let the rest of the coils release. You can see just how gummied up this movement is. I'll probably have to soak this in mineral spirits and then from there go to a my ultrasonic cleaning and and get the thing cleaned up. So I've let the springs down all the tension's off the springs now so I can go ahead and dismantle this. So I got the back plate off and it is so filthy that I'm gonna go ahead and clean it up before I inspect any of the pivots or bushings because it's not only filthy it's it's got so much dried up oil on it that it's almost like everything's caked with a bunch of grease. I try to push that off and it's it's just really dried up on there. I think this has been close to 50 years or or maybe even longer since it's been serviced. The surfaces on uh this pallet this verge they don't really look that bad just that everything's covered with grease. But you can see the pivots are so dirty you can't really see much of what's going on so I'm gonna go ahead and clean this up. I'm just looking at some of the pivot holes on this front plate before I start cleaning. You can see the oil has turned to kind of a mud and that's the importance of of having these regularly cleaned as the dust will get in the oil and turn it into a slurry and then it'll start wiring things out quicker. I would call this one here very much gummed up. This count wheel should move freely in there and it feels like it's just all gummed up. I'm looking at the escape wheel. The pivots on these it's pretty hard to tell the condition but they don't look worn at all. It's almost as if it was bought new and then run for a while and then just let sit. That's the fourth wheel. Let's see how gummed up it is. The trunnions all look in good shape. Dried up grease on this is just pretty pathetic. Pivots look good on this fourth wheel. And the third wheel from what I can see the pivots look real good. My trunnions all look good in this one. Yep good ultrasonic cleaning and these will look brand new. Get that black wood smoke off of it. Here's the governor. Central wheel assembly. Back plate. There again you can see the oil is just crystallized. But it's a nice gold gilt movement. Well we'll get it cleaned up and expect it a little further. So the movement cleaned up real nice. I've got the pivots all polished. On this time side the escape wheel pivot right here is going to need a bushing put in there. You can see it moving quite a bit. And the fourth wheel and the third wheel pivot here. They also have some quite a bit of movement in there. And we'll get it back running. So I'll be putting some bushings in here to tighten the movement up and see if we can't get it to keep time again. So I've installed a bushing here on that worn out pivot hole for the escape wheel. Now we'll just do a fit check on it. And it's it's much tighter now. And it runs free. So I'll just continue around pivot by pivot until the movement's completely rebuilt. So I've got all the bushings replaced that needed it. And now it's time to put on the back plate. So we got it all cleaned. Installed a few bushings. And now it's time to oil. Main springs get a little thicker oil. I'll get this suspension spring and rod in and see how it runs. It's been running a week now on the test stand. I found an old pendulum that'll work until I get one of the original ones. The original pendulums were three ounces and this is a three ounce pendulum. But I still need to find an original one. And it's missing a minute hand and also the nut that goes on the center wheel to hold the minute hand. So I'll need to locate some of those. And the leather on the the hammer for the gong, the leather is missing. So I'll need to get some leather and put a new pad in there. Other than that the movement is working very fine. And just a few little pieces and it'll be complete. And this rings every half hour with the little bell. So I'll start restoring the case next. The case cleaned up quite well. I got all that white paint off of them. This is a side that had a large amount of white paint. I was able to get that white paint off and match the finish. There's the side. On the back the back of the case I was able to remove the white paint but there's still a lot of white paint in the pores. And normally I don't like painting the backs of them. But on this one here I went ahead and painted the back of it because it still had the white paint on it. As far as the label, I made a a reproduction label. This is just a new one that I printed on our printer. And I'll be mounting that right in this area here. And that's about all we can do for labels is to do a reproduction because there are no original labels available. The next thing I'll do is I'll have to clean this up and get it mounted. This dial was missing the three screws so I'll have to find three brass screws that will work on that. What's left on the case is I need to highlight these this little design under here. And this design was made with holes and so I'm going to go through here with a needle and open up these holes and then put some gold paint in there. I've got some gold leaf paint I'll be putting in there. So I'm opening these holes up in this decoration on the front so that I can apply some gold paint in there. I'm using an old Edison phonograph needle to open the holes up. I'm making these right in the same place that the original ones were in. I kind of noticed that they're not real identical to each other. They were probably put in here by hand. Once I get all these opened up I'll come back and put some gold paint in there and then we'll buff it down. Sand it down or buff it down so that they're all level. Whatever it needs. So when detailing the decoration on the base of these clocks I always use a gold color. And what I have found has been the best looking gold is actually an ink. It's this Winsor and Newton ink. And as far as applying the ink I just use like a medium-sized oiler. So just go around and fill all these holes up. So I've got the gold ink put on the decoration on that base and it seemed to turn out pretty good. I'm going to let it dry a little bit and then run some wax over it. Smooth it out a little bit. And the label turned out pretty nice. So I decided to leave the bezel the way that it is as far as I'm not going to be cleaning it up. Somebody has used some gold paint on it and I feel that in trying to remove the gold paint I'd probably end up with some raw brass underneath it. Originally this bezel assembly was a gold gilt and since somebody has painted over the gold gilt I kind of felt like if I used any chemicals to remove the paint I risk getting it on the paper dial and damaging the dial. And then we're not even sure what type of shape that the gold gilt would be in after I have removed the paint and so decided just to go ahead and leave it the way it is. So it's time to put the movement in the need to go ahead and get the beat set. And to do that you just take a level and make sure that the case is level. And then inside on the verge on these American clocks what you do is you take this this wire coming off the verge and you just bend it just tweak it just a little bit. I always take some smooth pair of pliers and hold the verge assembly up there and then just take and bend it just slightly and just bend it one way the other until you get an even tick tock back and forth. I'll bend it a little just a little bit more a little more actually that sounds pretty good now. the gong on it you take the minute hand and turn it backwards down to the 10 and you'll hear a very small click and then you can go back up. And that's how you advance the gong on these. So that's an early sessions mantel clock.