Fixing What's Left Of This 130 Year Old Seth Thomas Eclipse Clock

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to amateur repair time tonight I am going to work on this Sessions Clock now I think it's a sessions but I don't know for sure it's got a paper dial on it that has an S on it that I think is in sessions logo but the paper dial has obviously been replaced so they could have just put one off anything on it I've got this cabinet quite a while back I don't even remember where I got it but it's got a um I think my buddy Jean brought it to me he got it at the flea market or something it's got a little bit of issues with the cabinet but it's stuff that I think can just be nailed back in um I have the missing part that goes over there but I don't have a piece for the top but I'm not positive that it had a piece for the top there's a hook on the back of it to hang it on the wall if you look at the top there are a couple like there's a some kind of something there and some kind of something there so I don't know if originally there was some kind of headdress on it um we may be able to look it up and try to find a picture of this thing somewhere I have seen some of these that don't have that hang on the wall and do not have anything on the top it all it look kind of looks like it's missing something but I don't know for sure um so I think we're going to to take it apart see what makes it tick um and then clean it put it back together and uh do any repairs we need to do and see if we can get this thing to work I've had it a long time I bought an ultra Sonic Cleaner which has allowed me to really fix a bunch of these movements I've got a ton of clocks I've got clocks everywhere um I've got them in the other room and closets and I just whenever I see them I pick them up I love these things I just think they're awesome and they're really fun to work on the part I didn't like was cleaning them I wasn't any good at it but this Ultrasonic Cleaner really helps me with that so um I've been able to fix a bunch of them lately so I've been wanting to get to this one and tonight we will look at this the wood is on the door that's a little unique just a cool Old Clock Maybe we can figure out um the age of it somehow looking at the movement so there is a board here that the dial is mounted to it looks like I can take that loose with those screws um this actually says eclipse on it NE old pendulum pendulum Bob I guess you would consider that uh this clock has an alarm on it but the key is missing from the alarm usually it's stuck on there um I wonder if this key fits it so this key has two ends I think a lot of time that end is to set the the speed like this make it faster or slower I wonder if it'll fit this alarm no I wonder if the regular key will fit the alarm yeah all right are you ready to hear it let's hear the alarm for the first time in many many years or we'll try to that was antil climatic that might need a little adjustment all right um like I said the paper dial has obviously been replaced I don't know if we can clean that up you know I hate to replace stuff like that I'd rather just leave it but it looks like crap if I had one of those things escuin the little trim piece that goes around it that would clean it up the outside's not that bad well it's kind of messed up up there too we might have to but I hate to lose the uh oh that is that a sessions logo or is that a Seth Thomas logo H I guess we'll see whenever we uh get the movement out we did just work on a Seth Thomas that had this setup here with the hook that this goes in but it could just be that for a while there were several companies doing that so how will we ever know this is definitely different than the Seth Thomas we worked on before but okay so uh if we look at the movement we will know so let me see if I can take the hands off and then take those four screws out and see if that comes off um it looks like a piece has broken off at some point here which you're going to be able to see through the glass so that kind of sucks but what can you do the thing's old if you don't know if you're not into clocks this thing's going to be at least at least 110 years old it's probably from the 1800s um they're not super valuable some of them are depending on what they are but most of the ones I get I don't even want any that are super valuable I like ones that are old and beat up a little bit and I like fixing them and saving them and getting them to work again um so I don't have any that are highly collectible or anything that one up there maybe that's an anonia Schoolhouse clock that's pretty big and super cool it might be worth a little bit but um all fixed up this clock would be worth maybe 100 bucks so they're not they're not real expensive or anything um so like I said I like kind of messing with the older ones that are just kind of messed up a little bit and need a little hip so we're going to give it some hip so let me take that panel off and we'll see what's Underneath It All right so that came off really easy and it is a Seth Thomas it's the kind of the liar shaped um movement I don't remember what they call this one what some of these they call like the number two the there was the 89 I think it's the 89 that's the one we worked on last time this is different and you can see that they patented their movement here in 1875 so this is probably sometime between 1875 and 1900 what a cool looking movement at least and it is pretty dirty so it's about time somebody clean it that says half inch the 5 and 7/8 is uh to tell you how long the pendulum leader is supposed to be um I never know though where they're measuring it from um you know it kind of looks like five and 78 would be from here to here kind of looks that way to me okay um I guess we'll go ahead and remove it from the cabinet and I'm I'm going to do a little research too see if I can find a Seth Thomas that looks anything like this maybe if we find one that's similar we'll know if um it's supposed to have something on top of it or not I'm going to play hell ever finding whatever's supposed to go on top of it but I would love to see if they have something that just kind of looks like this you know now the way you can do that is if you look online um there's some I think there's a website clock.com I think is the website that has a bunch of manuals scanned in or not manuals I'm in my arcade and pinball mode that has a bunch of cataloges scanned in and um it just pictures of clocks and what they cost where you know from1 1890 where they're trying to sell them and um you can get an idea of at least what was available so I'm going to go look at some Seth Thomas catalogs and see if around 1880 1890 they had something that looked anything like this or if you know this could even be a replacement case or something I guess I could look on the back see if there's a sticker all right well I was actually able to find what watch what clock it was it's called The Eclipse which is what it says on the pendulum so that's the original pendulum and um this is what it originally looked like ours is missing this really ornate headdress here this is the piece that's broken off this piece is still here all of this etch etching on the glass glass is gone like the artwork on the glass is gone and the base is gone so we've got just a flat board here with this base missing a flat board here with the headdress missing and um the artwork on the glass is missing if we had that artwork it would hide that chip in the wood that's right here too so I don't know that I can get any of that here's what the dial originally looked like it would have had a s Seth Thomas St logo in a diamond right here above the uh the center it's got the calendar I guess that's the original calendar and um one interesting thing um that's on ours as well of course is that when you open the door the the trim is on the actual door instead of on the actual clock um so yeah it's an eclipse a Seth Thomas eclipse what year are they saying this is or do they know maybe they weren't able to find it looks like that liar movement was only made till about 1885 so it was probably shortly after whatever that patent date was interesting you know I have some wood trim that I got from that guy whenever I bought all this well wasn't that guy though H that's two different places I've got some trim that kind of looks like that but there's no way it's going to look just like that uh I don't know that we can find the parts to make that look original all right so I have let down the main Springs and I have um the way I do it is I tie them off with a zip tie you can use those C clamps but I have trouble getting those things out once you put them assembly back together the zip ties work great for me um and of course I remove the Escape wheel whenever I took the front plate off I've noticed online and again this is amateur repair time so you know I'm an amateur I've noticed on line a lot of people take the back plate off but that doesn't seem like a good idea did to me so I just prefer to take the the front plate off if you take the back plate off you have the problem where all the screws are on the front you've got to worry about the escapement wheel so it just seems obvious to me to take the front plate off but I mean again I'm an amateur so there may be a really good reason to take the back plate off instead um I've been making these videos like this because I want to have some way to remind myself of how this stuff stuff was in here whenever I get ready to put it back together so the reason I can't pull these out is because they always have a spring wrapped around something or the other so you had to get the spring out of the way so we can start up here with the with the the uh regulator I think they call this the fly oh and the crutch on this is a dead beat crutch I've had some that are a half dead beat they said but I think this one is a full dead beat which you can tell by basically the pallets both being shaped the same so it's not a recoil slightly different did you hear that in the background that's a clock going into um warning so it's getting ready to strike now one of those I don't have the hour set right they're both set properly but they don't have the um one of them doesn't have the um the correct time uh our strike on so it's going to be aw so this is the I think this is the warning wheel this is the count lever I think I'm trying to figure this stuff out you know I'm trying to get better at it um this one is the it's not the warning I can't remember what they call this one it's the one that catches that little lever over there for the count it's like the regulator or something not regulator something like that this wheel here is a little bent up that's weird wonder what happened there what do we need to see all this stuff get clean it's the second wheel oo I haven't seen one with the all these clicks on it I'm not sure what that's for maybe to hit yeah it must be involved with the strike which this is the strike side so it makes sense have to make sure we don't do anything crazy here well trying to pull the [Applause] [Music] [Applause] trying to pull the uh thing off that post it is really on there must been a tight fit all right we got it scared you didn't it it's got uh two of these which I think means that it's going to strike on the that is all bent up look at that we'll just have to see how that goes that doesn't seem right I think usually there's one on one side and one on the other [Music] side um and this one is very crooked it's obviously been bent so maybe that's how they do the warning on this one I don't know we'll see I could see where our spring is oh okay it's wrapped around a a pin on the back makes sense the first few I've done I've I've tried to keep the time side Wheels separate from the strike side Wheels but you don't really have to do that because the strike side Wheels one they'll all kind of only go one way usually the first wheel is very similar on both sides but on this one I mean the second wheel on this one it's not but the the um the strike side usually each each of the wheels has some kind of little something on it to hit a a uh to hit one of these levers that's all on the strike side this thing's pretty dirty so a good cleaning is going to help it oh they have a ah okay that explains it there is a um copper pin a tapered pin and it holding it from coming up there's a spot for it over here but it wasn't in there um and I was able to just pull the spring out even though it gave me some trouble right there's that and let me get something to take that out so I can do it safely all right folks there's what we've got everything was cool don't worry about it um So lately I've been counting the parts I think that's kind of neat most of them have 20 or 21 Parts internally not counting the crutch and the um or the verge in the the pendulum suspension smir right so one and I'm counting the I don't take the spring off the wheel so one two three four um five six 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 yeah this one's a little a little simpler maybe possibly there's one or two things missing maybe I don't know it seemed like it's the same I didn't notice anything majorly different okay so I'm going to go put them in the Ultrasonic Cleaner um see if I can clean up the plates and the uh great Wheels first and then we'll see what they look like with everything clean okay so I was able to get them all Ultra sonically cleaned it does a pretty good job but it doesn't get everything off which is kind of how I want it I don't want it to look brand new I just want it to look fairly clean so it has little dark spots and stuff on it that don't come off whenever you do the Ultrasonic Cleaner but you can see it gets most to the old dirt and grease and dust off of it but you're going to have spots here and there you could probably go over this some more with Brasso or something and get it to be really shiny but again I'm not looking for really shiny so the pivots it gets pretty clean just being in the Ultrasonic Cleaner you could polish these that's kind of what you're supposed to do let's see how bad they are though without get the camera to to focus on it so you get the point it cleans it up pretty good and that was kind of like what I needed help with cuz I'm not good at cleaning stuff by hand um you can see the discoloration again this is well over 100 years old so I'm quite happy with that being 100 years old I think it looks good and just so you can see up close the um the name Seth Thomas Thomason does that say Court Thomason court is that what they're saying no Thomason Connecticut Thomason Connecticut USA it was patented in [Music] 1875 I read online and they acted like this liar movement they kind of stopped making them about 1885 so it was it would have been sometime in between there five and seven eight we talked about that and you can see how it's not completely new or anything all right so I'm going to check the pivots but I don't really see any that are that are all that worn to be honest I think this one is is in a lot better shaped than they usually are you know if they're worn usually you can see that it's elongated somewhere these have either perfectly worn or there's virtually nowhere at all I when I read online people say things like oh I put 13 bushings in it and stuff like that and of course I'm an amateur but I just don't see it I don't see how any of these need bushings like I don't see how we did one a while back where I put a bushing in it because it obviously was elongated and messed up but all of these look fine to me and I know you can you know basically you're supposed to put the the wheel in it you know the one that goes in it this is obviously the wrong one and just see how much it deflects and if it's more than a certain amount it needs a bushing but all of these look pretty good to me that's what't even fit in that is the wrong one but you get you got to use the the the pivot that's supposed to be in the bushing obviously um is this one of the smaller ones how many different sizes do they have I guess I we got to use the Escape wheel I don't know there's just it seems to me as if they're fine um you hear all the ones ticking and talking in the background they're I'm getting them working um so I don't know we'll keep at it okay so I'm ready to put it back together I'm going to put it together if I run into anything weird I will show you all right as an added bonus all my clocks are about to chime all over the house I think um I had to make a new pendulum leader because I broke the old one the little the feather broke off of it that's all right that's pretty common so I bent a new one tried to make it exactly the same length I got it all back together I oiled every pivot I cannot find a pivot in my opinion that needs a bushing or anything I mean I don't know if somebody's done it or this thing just never got used I or maybe this is just a really nice Design This liar M uh movement where you just don't need them but I just don't see it I was hoping to find some that I could rebush but you know I don't want to do it if it doesn't need it okay so oh that's the slow one that one Chimes really slow or not Chim strikes really [Music] SL I need to watch that um episode of The Twilight Zone with the clocks again okay I wound up the um side and this thing is so well adjusted not because of what anything I did but just how they had it um I've been using the hand to do it but I don't know if we're at the half hour or the full hour and I don't know if it'll work laying down but I think it will um is that doing oh it's cuz I've got the crutch on it now H well I can't do it you'll have to see it once we get it in the clock but this thing it's so well the levers are so well adjusted and it's chiming dead on 12 um or not chiming striking dead on 12 and then it's striking at six but it seems like it's softer the hammer doesn't move as much just because of the way they've got that little I showed you how those were bent in there a little differently that's because one of them is directly driving this and the other one is driving it through this wheel because it's the strike on the hour so it's just two different ways that they're doing it um I didn't I didn't record everything because uh we've got a whole bunch of stuff left to do I've still got to put a face on it and I can't find the parts but I've also got to glue Together part of the cabinet so um I'm going to go ahead and mount it back in there remove my zip ties after I wind it up and uh we'll see if the thing will run and we can keep a beat with it look how clean the pendulum got I'm very happy with that look how what what a great little piece this is now it was only for this model and it says eclipse and it's two it's like multiple parts that little middle piece moves because it's separate look at that just what a what a nice little design so anyway I'm to mount it back in the cabinet and we'll see if it'll tick or tuck it's a little out of beat but we'll mess with that once we get it uh wherever it's going to sit I put a little bit of oil on the pallets but it's got a nice wide swing on it it's almost I don't know I may have made the leader a little bit too long I matched it up I thought exactly how it was I need to look at the video I did at the very beginning to see if this is lower than it was cuz it's almost at the bottom it's got probably a quarter inch clearance it's not it's pretty close to the wood so I don't know if it was that low before um I may have to rebend the take a little bit out of the length of the um the suspension spring there the pendulum spring there because I've got um plenty of adjustment room on that you know you turn the KN to go up and down I bet it's going to be too slow in that position because it's way down um so I'm just going to watch it a while and see how it runs I did have to put two new screws up in there one of them was definitely the wrong one it was an older one but it just it looked like crap and one was missing so so I'm going watch it a little bit I'm going to put some hands on it and just see if it seems to be keeping decent time um I guess I could try to do the the strike okay so it is in I think it just went in um warning or maybe not okay that's warning so we've got this in the wrong spot okay beautiful what a cool movement so what I wanted to see was when it gets to a half it looks like it it doesn't have as far of a of a swing so I wonder if it's softer on the half hour since it directly drives it it doesn't use the the governor and the it doesn't use any of this the the minute hand actually makes it strike so let's see if it's just as loud we're coming up on it now see it moving yeah it didn't even work because of the way it's bent H I wonder if they did that on purpose see what would fix that ah that would take a kind of serious adjustment there's a little lever that sticks up in there and then as that Arbor turns there's there's a little pin on the side of it that pushes that lever out and eventually you get to a point where the lever goes by it and it I guess it's going this way and it drops it back so what's going on is that that lever is pushed where it doesn't move very far so this is pushing it out but just a little bit and it's not enough that it can actually go over and hit the um the gong I guess I could adjust the the hammer closer to the gong and the way it's set up now it would probably make the strike a lot louder and then the half would be it would work but it wouldn't be as loud I kind of like it like that but you saw whenever I was in there that the stuff was bent up but if I was to straighten that arm in there I would have to readjust that little hook in there too or it wouldn't do it at 30 minutes so um H all right so you can see the problem with why it can't strike on the half hour it no matter what you do it can't hit that gong and it's just pulling it back and letting go of it and it won't hit it if you adjust it down where it will hit it then it's too far whenever it strikes on the hour and the reason it looks like it's this but it's not if you look real close that's not actually touching right now it looks like it is but it is not if I can move the thing hold a second that's not actually touch touching it just looks like it is what's touching is that on that on the second wheel back there so I don't know if I can bend that a certain way basically I need it where it when it stops after the strike which is how it is now I need it to where this is resting against that because when it strikes when that wheel goes by and it it lets that go back this hits that and we've got it adjust to where it hits the strike I mean the the gong but it because of how that rests holding the pin it doesn't allow this to be in the correct position it could just be as simple as bending that down a little bit actually I think that would probably do it um I'm going to mess with it and bend it a little bit and see what I can figure out all right so yeah it was It's actually an adjustment on that little bar as it enters the back of the first wheel on that first on the second wheel on that second wheel there's little posts all the way around it that are what actually strike the chime but if that is adjusted too far up then when it uh whenever it uh finishes striking I keep saying chime I know it's not the chime it's the strike whenever it strikes it the way that wheel stops where it stops if the bar is too far up it will push it back a little bit which pushes the uh hammer back a little bit well because it's like that whenever it goes to half an hour whenever it strikes it can't actually hit the gong because it's uh that little wire is holding it well if you go the other way too far what happens is whenever it um does the half hour yeah it hits fine but whenever it does the hour it barely hits it so you can actually you actually can adjust the the um the loudness like I was saying by moving that bar you can make it where when it's at rest it the hammer is just slightly farther away from the the coil and whenever it's on strike it's deeper into it goes deeper into the coil so I'll show you where I've got it and I guess we might as well just get her moving you can see I've got it pretty close to it right now I think it's on the half right now and I'm just using the hand to do it I know you can do it by hitting the um the wire but okay so that's in warning so it's actually up at the top again folks this is amateur repair time this is how you learn you you screw around with things until you figure out what's going on all right so it's in warning and now it's going to strike and it's going to strike 12 times actually roll to [Music] 12:00 I might back it out just a little bit more so you get a little more of a a ring you know doesn't sound great but that would just be moving the hammer out slightly so so it resonates a little more okay so that was on on the hour and we'll move it down as if it's going to hit the half hour and you'll see it move out and do it without the um um the strike side it's just doing it with the time side and it's adjusted that dead on pretty much 30 so I mean it worked out pretty good yeah I think I may back it out just a little bit so that it just sounds a little better so typically I don't replace I have no interest in putting a new dial on them but this one is just horrible it looks like somebody cut it out with a pair of scissors and it's just really rough and then they put it on top of the one that was under it very ugly so I'm going to try to remove it and see what the original one looks like down underneath there if there even is one and then uh we'll put a new one on it I've got plenty of paper dials that we can put on there that'll look better than that uh so it appears this one has the Seth Thomas logo like this I'll look again at the um the clips pictures that I've seen online and see what their dial looked like I've got a whole bunch of the different styles let me see if I can remove this though and we can see what it looks like under there all right so that just peeled right off it looks like maybe there wasn't two dials it looks like they may have cut part of the paper from the dial the replacement dial and just had taped it under it and stuff to try to mess fix where they messed up um um and this is what's left of the original dial so obviously can't use any of it I'm going to hit that with a wire brush and clean it up a little bit and then um we'll pick out a replacement down all right so since the clock is so old and beat up it's got parts missing and everything I went with the ivory face instead of the white because I thought the white would just look obviously too new this still looks pretty new but whatever um and I've got this little uh Circle cutter this is called a car build Circle cutter um and you can adjust it you can put the bar on it to make it longer and all that so I've got it set up for I've measured it out to what I believe is correct for the middle hole um so we'll see if I can get that somewhat straight so that's pretty good looks much nicer uh but I need to cut out the two uh escin holes for the winding keys so that would be something like that I need to put the little trim rings on it so I'm going to put some glue on the back of the paper glue it to the pan and put the trim rings in all right I even got it pretty straight I think it looks pretty good the glue is still drying so I'm kind of making sure it lays down if the pan is a little warped but that's good and of course the there's a big piece of wood missing there hey hey what can you do but that looks much more presentable than that one they had on there all right so I'm going to put it back in the clock and that's about as far as we can go on this one till I find some pieces some wood to you know to replace the stuff that's missing all right folks so I got the paper cut put it back in there and mounted it back in now the all the pictures I saw online had Roman numeral dials they didn't have any of the Arabic Arabic dials um so I think originally it probably had a Roman numeral one and another thing that I noticed the pan was drilled slightly off center the the two little um winding arbors so I had a choice to make I tried to split the difference if I mounted it where the 12 was perfectly straight up it made the two bottom holes off center so what I did was I mounted the two holes centered in the paper but what that meant was that when it's mounted in the clock the 12 is not perfectly up you can't it's hard to tell but it's slight lightly it's maybe one degree off or a couple degrees off um the movement is mounted level and uh you know that'll help it run [Laughter] well I glued this one that was all floppy I glued it I put glue all down this side and around the nail that they had in there and then I glued up here where it had broken loose and then this piece had fallen completely off and there was a nail over there same thing I glued all down there and up there and so it looks much more presentable like that obviously this is never going to be a collector's quality clock but I'm trying to make do with what I got right and what I what I think is neat about this design is that the all of the trim moves with the door that's just cool I I think um so it seems to be keeping good time it's in beat which is more than I can say for some of these clocks uh it's got the you know we got a Seth Thomas um Iden identification on the dial now I guess we did before but it was that weird logo that didn't look right um yeah so there we go I'm happy with it and it's doing this oh I have I didn't get the uh time back to where it's supposed to be yet but you can see [Music] here that it does [Music] strike so I got to go a couple more um but yeah I think it came out pretty nice um if I'm just going to look around and if I ever find the headdress part that goes on it or the bottom part that goes on it I will certainly buy those and one at a time if necessary and put them on the clock oh the glass the glass originally had uh like two little lines here and like a little circle where it's like I guess it's like street lights or something and uh kind of like a like a garden look there's this is this the one that had the flamingo on it I think it had a flamingo on it um but anyway they make a reproduction glass of that but the problem is it doesn't perfectly fit this it's too big so I'd have to cut it down and it's expensive it's like 20 some dollars and then you have to cut it and you might break it so I'm just going to leave it how it is for now if I do find the correct glass or even a a decal like a a rub for it um the art will cover this and probably disguise that that um piece of wood is missing so there's art up here down here and then all down here too so I need that I need the headdress and I need the bottom tag tail piece so that I can hang it on the wall but um I'll tell you another thing I've got one two three four I've got five clocks in here running right now one of them isn't running CU it's a 30 hour I've got five clocks that I've been running and uh two of them are Seth Thomas and in my opinion the Seth Thomas ones just run a little better they're dead on it they have beautiful Bobs um and they just keep on keeping on so I like the Seth Thomas stuff not saying anything bad about any of you other clocks I'm looking at you Waterberry um but these Seth Thomas ones are they're they're just very well-made clocks it's a shame this one's been so abused but you know it's 120 years old or whatever what do you expect all right folks so there you go I hope you enjoyed it now if you enjoyed watching me work on this clock I've done some others I am obviously an amateur but here's another one that I was able to repair a little while back I'll see you on that video