I tried to Repair a Howard Miller Pendulum Clock And Made It Even Worse!

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with a clock repair video we don't do too many of these but I'm going to start doing some more of them because I these are really fun so usually we do pinball repair arcade game repair jukebox repair stuff like that and the reason I do those videos isn't because I'm really good at it it's because I just enjoy it right so there's all kinds of stuff that our whole family kind of enjoys working on and uh this is my office I've got you can see I've got a lot of old clocks radios um I just like these things so our buddy Eric brought this into the shop a while back his dad um worked at a thrift store or worked at a a recycling Center or something like that and people would bring stuff by and donate it and things like that and so he would he was in the habit of rescuing stuff from the trash is what I understand and unfortunately he passed away and um Eric had uh decided that he needed to clean up some of the stuff so he brought to the shop this Howard Miller Clock now this thing these are really interesting if you're into clocks um you'll know all about I'm not an expert on clocks obviously I'm not an expert on much I just enjoy working on stuff these clocks are are just fascinating to me I love clocks this one's not that old it's probably from the late 90s uh and it's not really worth all that much um most old movement clocks aren't because you don't really need one if you've got a iPhone so clocks have kind of went the way of the dodo bird but I've got a whole bunch of them I've been fixing up my office here and I've got a couple on the wall you can hear one behind me here I've got a bunch of them I've got tons of clocks and I just enjoy them and enjoy messing with them so when er when Eric brought this by the shop I thought you know for such a nice clock surely I can give this thing a little bit of attention spend a little time on it little money on it and get her going again in what do you think so we're going to do that in this video now I am not going to start making clock repair videos and radio repair videos uh to replace my arcade game and pinball repair videos we're going to still keep doing that the way we've always been doing it but from time to time I'm going to do a video uh working on clocks or radios or something so I figured we'd look over this one and see if we can fix it up a little bit and um maybe order some parts for it and then I'm going we hang this thing on the wall maybe I'll hang it over there there's a spot right there it would look really nice wouldn't it so he brought it to me in a box and his dad had been messing with it a little bit I think um but it's got some stuff missing this is a Howard Miller if you know about clocks you know you know as well as I do everything about it or better than I do about it but basically Howard Miller is a a decent brand of clock of uh kind of modern clocks it's a movement clock they also of course make quartz clocks that take batteries and stuff but this is one that actually has a movement in it this thing as hard as it is to believe um retailed for probably over ,000 um it might have been a little cheaper than that back if it was in the late 90s but if you want to buy a Howard Miller brand new movement clock like this it's over $1,000 now if you get one of the quartz ones more like $4 or $500 um however they're not really worth that that's just what they cost new so you can pick these up at flea markets and things like that for 50 bucks pretty easily so they don't have a lot of value most old clocks don't I don't really have any that are valuable I've got some that are cool that I like but they're they're not really worth a bunch of money so this one is not really worth anything I mean maybe 50 bucks I don't really consider that uh we'll probably spend more than that on it in Parts trying to fix it but uh with that said they're very wellmade in my opinion I'm not a clock expert there's probably you know new ones that are much nicer than this but to me there's nothing wrong with these clocks they're not made cheap at all uh the old clocks the really old ones like this I've got this old regulator up here I think that's a sessions or no it's an Ansonia Ansonia uh hanging on the wall up there the uh those are really cool and and old and everything this one's made about as good you know the the old ones were mass production they made tons of them and stuff and they they were cool and reliable and I love all that stuff these are kind of just the modern version of that they're well made um and you know they got a kind of Hefty price tag on them approve it whenever they're whenever they're new I don't know of any of them of any of the other brands that are more expensive than this but I imagine there's some you know that high-end clocks that rich people rich people buy I'm not rich people okay so let's look at this thing and we'll figure out what it needs and then we'll order some stuff and we'll see what's going on what do you think let's do it now I looked up some pictures of it online just to see what we're starting with here and um on these Howard Millers on the back they always have a a little label so here's our label this is a [Music] 613-2274 it's basically an American company that's putting together clocks now um the movement here Howard Miller Clock Company let me see if I can get some more light on that I need to get I'm going to film some more videos in here but I'm going to get some more lights and stuff before then Howard Miller Clock Company what does that say I'm using the phone as a magnifying Zealand Michigan no zero Jewels unadjusted made in Germany 341-020 33.5 CM 117 50 now if you're into clocks you know a lot more about this than me I am an amateur uh if you're not into clocks I can tell you a little bit about it the F I'm not sure what that stands for Howard Miller Clock Company this is actually a uh hermle movement h e r m l e uh it's just branded as a Howard Miller movement but it's a hermle see how it says made in Germany that's a hermle uh movement 341-020 is the number of the movement the 33.5 cm it's different on each one but basically it's the measurement from the suspension post to the bottom of the pendulum that's missing right so there's a pendulum missing on this thing after looking at it I this is the suspension Rod or whatever you want to call it by the way people I'm not great on nomenclature so if I if I get the uh the wording wrong please forgive me um it goes through the I think this is called the crutch or am I right with that I think it's the crutch there's pieces missing here so what's happened is there's a little post that's supposed to be up here that's sticks out okay that post sticks out and on the top of it there is a little spring it's a little flat piece of metal that's spring steel that can move back and forth and so that steel has a little screw through the post that's missing and then this hook hooks around that that little flap of Steel and it allows this to go back and forth right so this metal piece let's see if I can get it out of there without scre screwing everything up I'm going to film some more videos in this room but I'm going to get some better lighting before I do and figure out a better way to do it I need to get like tripod in here and stuff too let me see if I can get this out with one hand let's not break it I don't want to break it folks we're here to fix it not break it well see that's the thing about working on clocks I'm not really any good at it because I don't have the dexterity or the patience really I'm trying to be patient but there we go you really got to kind of boy she wants to tick doesn't she this is a tick tocker not like that crappy Tick Tock either so there is our suspension Rod so that hooks on the suspension spring at the top they also call this a pendulum leader I believe uh and then there there is a little post down here this is what the pendulum hangs on so here's what we need to do we need to measure this freaking thing and figure out how long it is that thing look at it look at what it's doing look at it boy she wants to go doesn't she I'm telling you this is a nice little clock now when you look at it you go oh it's just a little cheap it's just a little cheap uh something you'd find in the thrift store ah looks are deceiving I think it's pretty cool okay so we're going to measure it and then I'll tell you why so if I measure from about where that pin would be to the other pin we've got 4 and 1/8 in I I started at one come on people come come on now people come on now you don't start at the end because it look it it moves come on people all right so it's 4 and 1/8 in somebody write that down 4 and 1/8 in now this little piece here keeps it from going too far up in the air now I don't know if this crutch is bent right it may have bent but I don't know we're going to try to put it back in there hope I didn't bend it but I'm just saying it may have bent we need it to cooperate come on you sucker I'm trying to help you nobody's ever helped this thing and then it wants to fight me boy this is harder to do when you're holding the camera in your hand there we go we're back in there okay so if I push up on this it'll only go so far because there's a little that little divot that we were looking at right on the side so that's as high as it will go so that tells me that it probably doesn't sit actually quite that high probably it's probably a little lower than that right so why am I doing all this it's because we're trying to get the right length pendulum okay so it looks like it hangs just a little below there okay so four and an eighth remember and then from that post I'm gonna say that's another 5/8 of an inch let me see let me make sure I'm doing that right yeah another five 58 of an inch so 4 and 3/4 of an inch okay so there is a post missing from up here we're going to get another one and then there is a little spring that hangs down and the distance from there to the bottom of that pin down there that we measured in my guesstimation is 4 and 3/4 of an inch Okay so it tells us here 33.5 CM that's a little bit over 13 in so 4 and 3/4 of an inch 13 13 and A4 Ines minus 4 and 3/4 of an inch is nine uh is 8 and 1/2 in so 8 and 1/2 in U plus 4 and 3/4 would be 12 13 and A4 yeah so we need a pendulum that is about 8 and 1/2 in long maybe a little less than that if we want to be 33.5 CM now this doesn't work on every single movement but that's how this particular one works I looked it up so basically from this post to the very bottom of the adjustment nut on the pendulum needs to be about 33.5 in which is about 132 in something like that so 8 and 1 12 in or a little bit less is the pendulum size that we're looking for um so somebody write that down somebody write that down 8 and half Ines so let's try this let's see if the thing wants to cooperate looks like it's tick tocking pretty good by the way I'm I'm not going to put the top the front on yet because I'm able to work on it on the table here without that front on it but these hinges somebody has swapped the hinges and they put just regular door hinges on it when it had um I can't remember what those are called but blind hinges maybe where the hinge folds in on itself see you can see where where the hinge was and then the other part that went on the door would have folded inside of itself instead someone has put these on there which are too thick they're not going to hold the door on right okay and if we look on the bottom of this yeah you can see the other what the other side must have looked like and this is like a cherry finish this is real wood I mean um think how sad the state of manufacturing is whenever it's it's whenever you're happy that something's actually made of wood so uh let's see here where did I what did I do with my key I had a key I thought get is can't remember which one's the time now it needs to be oiled and all that obviously but we're testing it people that's the gonger it's all wound up [Music] one of them sounds a little muted but we can adjust that so let's um let's see here where are the Hammers there they are let's see if I can get any light in there where you can see it oh yeah okay so I'll spin it around so you can watch the Hammers do their thing so we're going past the quarter [Music] hour so that's the half hour so here's the 3/4 [Music] hour [Music] so it's doing three quarter of the Westminster Chime and if you don't know the Westminster Chime I believe that's the one that Big Ben does world world uh famous Big Ben that we all love for all you for all of our British viewers you know the the the news of Big Ben has traveled for even as kids we knew what Big Ben was all right so here we're going to hit the hour at 3:00 by the way it is not 3:00 in the morning but we're going to hit the hour at [Music] 3:00 so basically the thing's working without a pendulum the pendulum is just going to help it wow very cool so it's a decent little clock now this is strange to me they don't have grommets here usually they have these little gold grommets but I don't it doesn't look like they were ever on there it's just it never had them um okay so we need to try to find online an 8 and 1 12 inch P pendulum we need to find the suspension spring and we need to find the suspension post I think they call that a bridge and then also on this cabinet and I might not even do this we might wait a while on this because look folks I'm not going to spend a fortune on this thing right this post is missing on the top which is real common I think they call that a final I just painted the walls like don't look people I'm going I'm going to put a a plate plug on the wall don't worry about it this um the final's missing so I might have to find one of them but I'm not going to pay big money for AAL people sometimes they want $200 for those things yeah I'm not doing that cuz at the end of the day when we're done this clock's going to be worth like 80 bucks you know what I mean I mean we can't spend a ton of money on it I don't care if it hey the other one wanted to get in on the on the action um I'm not I'm not going to pay a fortune on parts for this thing but I am going to pay what we need to pay to get it to work right and then I'll look around until I find a final that's not $200 oh and we have the door here uh for the back okay so I'm going to order some parts we'll get them in and then we'll put them in this thing and uh see uh see how it looks and how it acts then we'll see if we can hang it on the wall all right folks so I got in some of the parts but the I wanted to take the face off so I could oil the front of the movement but we're running into our first problem here I don't know it's I think it's GL Glo on H I don't know why they would do that if this whole board would come off but there's no way to take it off when you you know when you oil them you kind of need to get to the front too you've got the pinions that go all the way through and there's a a bushing in the back and a bushing in the front you kind of need to oil both H all right I'm going to do some research and see if I can find if anybody has uh revealed The Secret of how you get the face off of a Howard Miller Clock I mean obviously I can take the hands off but if this board won't come off h trying to see how it mounts I don't think I can get to the mounts from the back oh wait maybe I can actually I mean obviously we were back here before how is it mounted I think you got to go through the front I mean all right I'm going to look it up and see if anybody's done a video showing how to get the face off all right so I read a lot on the um I always get the the acronym wrong it's the na the National Association of watch and clock collectors Forum a bunch of great people on there they're actually arguing on there though about whether or not you should even oil these movements some of them are saying it doesn't help don't do it all you can do is make a mess others of them are saying well it's a modern clock so they oiled it right from the factory the factory says to oil it every two years um but then again they made it where you can't get to the front plate so I don't know but all of these pivot Points should really be oiled you would think so I guess I'm going to do the kind of I'm going to oil the back ones and try to oil the front ones from the inside side as best I can and then we'll go from there but the thing with oiling these is you don't want to put a ton of oil on them just a little bit little teeny tiny drop so I'm going to do that and then we're going to try to take this bridge off here so that's next so when I took the little Bridge off the escapement just started on unwinding I think it's an 8 day clock so uh looks like it's starting to wind down I didn't want to break the Verge by having the Escape wheel hit it so I've got it just kind of I'm holding it up out of the way while it winds down not the best way to do it but [Music] well unfortunately I just broke it worse than it was so I bought all these parts for it got a brand new pendulum a brand new spring a suspension um Bridge suspension Spring Bridge here's the old one that I took off here is the screw uh I have another screw too here is the new suspension spring and here is the suspension screw that holds that on here is the suspension leader that we looked at earlier so what's the problem I made a big mistake now it's nothing that can't be fixed but it means we're not going to be able to fix it in this video because I messed up so when I took the suspension this is the new one but when I took took this off I was under the impression that this just held the suspension spring and the Pendulum like the one you can hear in the background right uh but that's not true see the little hole that I was talking about how it's slightly different that hole holds the Verge so this goes in there and as the escapement unwinds tick tock tick tock these pallets slide into each side of that gear let me see if I can show it to you so as you saw when I took that loose I didn't know that this was attached to it as well so what it did was it lifted the pallets up out of the escapement wheel which normally wouldn't be a [Music] problem except I forgot to unwind the clock so you saw it spinning really fast right well normally that wouldn't be a problem but what happened was what had happened was let me see if I can show you the escapement wheel that you're looking at right now the teeth hit the pallet because it was spinning so fast and it knocked off some of the freaking teeth on the escapement wheel completely rookie mistake that's why this is amateur repair time right so if you look it looks pretty good right but we'll get around to somewhere where it's not that good there it goes again all right yeah look at that it's how a couple of them are knocked off so I ruined the escapement Wheel by allowing it to spin so quickly I forgot that I had it wound up when it started spinning I started filming it because I thought well this will be funny to show that I forgot to unwind it now there wasn't any danger really because the spring is still held in place where it is so all it was going to do was move that well all of the wheels the the the main train it was moving really fast so that's why you had the escapement wheel going fast the minute wheel going fast the hour wheel going fast the first wheel the second wheel the Third Wheel all of that stuff was spinning really quickly right which would have been fine if it would have just ran out of power but it didn't because this was just sitting in there like this so I took this plate loose and so this went could just move around in there and one of these pallets hit the tooth and started knocking them off now the other thing is this is called an auto beat Verge see that spring in there here's here's the problem with this I think I messed it up because I can move this pretty easily see how easily I'm moving that with my finger I don't know I think you are supposed to be able to move it on this particular type but I don't know if you're supposed to be able to move it that quick that easily so that basically tick tock tick tock and the Pendulum you know is attached through through this this crutch and that catching the pendulum hanger tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock is what makes it do its thing on that escapement wheel but the problem is if this will move independently of this pretty easily then the pendulum's just going to swing back and forth without this moving you know so I don't know if I've damaged this or not it may still be fine but I don't know so I kind of need another one to look at at so here's our deal you can get these they're about 40 bucks you can get the escapement wheel it's about 30 bucks so you can still get them new but my problem is I need to remove that entire movement if I'm going to remove that because you have to take the plate off which means every little see all these little pivots every wheel that's in there is no longer attached on one side so that's kind of a big job right it can be done I can do it I think but that's the thing so I mentioned it online in a post on the the clock form and you know got some pretty uh horrible replies so I guess I'm flying solo people it'll just be my normal viewers and anybody that happens to stumble upon this uh watching the uh I had one gentleman tell me that you can't learn clock repair through through trial and error I don't know you know the guy's so intelligent that he can fix little microscopic things in clocks but he's so stupid that he doesn't think that you can learn something by trying it think how damn dumb that is right really offended me that the guy said that not offended me personally but it offended me that there's people out there spreading that kind of nonsense oh you can't learn how to repair a clock by by uh trial and error the hell you can't buddy but I can't on this video because I broke it [Laughter] right so I guess that's it for this one now so here's my plan I don't really want to buy this new and buy that new because I don't even know if this is bad and I think what I'd rather do is buy a non-working one or a parts one and then inspect the Verge in it to see if it's if it acts like this one or if this one's messed up then I'll understand it a little better right and then if I get one that's the correct drop so remember how this one's 33 and A2 that wheel kind of determines that the Escape wheel helps determine that right so that's one of the wheels that's different depending on the drop so I need to find another one of these that's an exact this exact one 33 and A2 now the good news is they've made tons of these there's like hundreds of thousands of these movements out there so uh what if I buy the one though and it has the same part worn on it because it's used so I think the only answer is about two of them so that's my plan so uh there we go oh and if you if you're if you're a beginner like I am the way it works is you wind up the main spring and then as it unwinds it spins the Escape wheel well if if it doesn't have anything to regulate it it just spins real quick like you saw you saw how quick the hands were moving right so you need something to slow it down so uh you know the original ones had a weight you lifted up a weight and as the weight fell it would unwind the clock and the hands would just go like mine was doing right so you need something to slow it down so they call that the escapement how to let the power escape from the movement so you wind it up now it's got kinetic energy in it right so it will just unwind real quick real rapidly uh as the power escapes through that escape movement so what they did was they made this little wheel the Escape wheel with teeth on it you know pretty much like this one and as it this one's a similar size so I can show that as it tries to unwind it goes click back this way but guess what there's a little tooth in the way this little pallet catches it click well when it does that the pendulum is way over here when the pendulum comes back back right when it gets to about the center point it goes click and that tooth allows this gear to turn one tooth but then this one catches it on this side so now it's stopped again so the pendulum is swung back over here so now the pendulum swings back and when it gets to the center point what's it do it lets the tooth go because that pallet comes up off of it and then click it grabs it on the other side right absolutely brilliant design so my the whole thing I screwed up was I thought that the pallet the The Verge would stay in place when I removed this plate I didn't realize that it was through a hole right in the center of that plate rookie mistake people but that's how you learn uh regardless of what that guy said I did have one gentleman that was uh pretty friendly uh who doesn't hate human beings these people are they're anti-human uh I had one person who's not anti-human tell me that these faces are taped on so you can take that off he said with a long um like a kitchen knife or something if you go very carefully so you don't bend it back behind her the whole pan will come off so uh we're going to have to do that and get another movement and blah blah blah but I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for a couple of those move Parts movements and hang on to this thing until I find some good parts for it um but don't fret I've got plenty of other radios and clocks and stuff to work on so I think what I'll do is I'll upload these like on the weekend or something because a lot of them I'm not actually going to be able to fix when I was a kid my dad used to work on watches and pocket watches and stuff and he had a ton of them that he couldn't fix he just was unable to to get him going he didn't have the the skill to do it unfortunately and I'm in the same boat so I don't really feel that bad that I couldn't fix it yet you know and I think all I messed up was possibly The Verge and possibly the Escape wheel but it sucks because both of these were fine before I started messing with it so what lesson did we learn unwind the clock that's the best thing to do I my my uh thought was that you need to unwind a clock for a safety precaution but since the movement was still together and the plates still on I didn't think that it was really much of a safety concern it's even still mounted in the in the case but that's one reason you unwind the clock the other reason is that the Escape wheel doesn't start spinning really fast hit one of your pallets and break a bunch of teeth off of it man we were this close too almost had it so leave your comments below let me know what you think so far uh does anybody know where to get a Howard Miller or a herley 3 41-20 332 uh Verge and uh uh Escape wheel let me know might want two of them oh the 117 that's beats per minute what do you think about that I figured that out before I uh decided not to frequent certain places if you know of a good clock repair for them too where they don't hate beginners uh let me know about that okay so uh I hope you enjoyed it give us a thumbs up for filming it for you we didn't have to do this people why would I why would I film something that I did people come come on now why would I why would I film something I can't even fix I told you at the beginning that I didn't know what I was doing why would I film that people I didn't have to do that I'm just doing it because I thought it would be entertaining so hope you enjoyed it leave your comments down below make sure to check out my brother Donnie his link is also down below uh he has his own channel I work on arcade games pinball machines Juke boxes usually um but my brother Donnie works on Old buildings old Vehicles he has cows around a lot sometimes goats I'm over there with him on his channel a lot so go check that out so I hope you enjoyed it don't do what I did uh this is a amateur uh repair time here so don't make the same mistake I did learn from my mistakes people this is probably going to cost me probably $15 or $20 when it's all said and done I'm trying to minimize uh so I hope you enjoyed it we'll see you on the next one