Cuckoo Quail Clock Hubert Herr for Robert #28

So today I received this real nice cuckoo quail clock in the mail. It belongs to Robert from Arizona. Let's take it over to the bench and see what's going on with it. So the first thing we'll do is we'll get these hands off of here. Looks like this clock was imported by the Welby company. Welby was a United States importer. They imported a lot of different clocks. They operated sometime between 1950 and the 1980s. We'll get these bellows out of here. Okay we've got the birds loosened up. Movement fasteners taken out so we can go ahead and remove this movement now. So we'll take these birds off so they don't get damaged. As far as any markings on these birds, on the bottom of the bracket it has a DM NR 161 7038. I'm not sure exactly what that number is. It could be a patent number, maybe a German patent number. I've seen a lot of these brackets that have that same number on it. But a real nice articulated cuckoo bird. And then here's the the blue bird. Like I say one of these is a quail and one of these is a cuckoo. I need to remove this taper pin so I can get that minute wheel off. So the rear plate is ready to lift off. And so far the parts all look to be in very good shape. There is some rust on this pinion. The second wheel pinion in the shaft has a lot of rust on it. It's like surface rust. You can see it in here. It's just a red rust. And then the escape wheel also, the pinion has some rust in there. All in all the movement looks in excellent shape. We'll get this cleaned up and reassembled and get it adjusted. And so I found some nicks on this lift arm here. And this lift arm runs against a pin on one of the gears. One item that's going to need to be addressed on this is this lift arm here. It rides against a pin on one of the gears. But sometime in the past somebody has put some pliers on here, made some adjustments on it. And then they have put some solder on here. It's got some solder on this shaft. And looking at it, inspecting it a little bit closer, it's just hanging on there by the solder only. It's broken right here. Should go completely through that shaft. So that's a previous repair that I'll go ahead and correct that. In fact I can probably just pull it off with my fingers here. But that's no problem. We'll get another wire in there and get that inserted in there the way it's supposed to be. And to fix that I'll have to pull that shaft out of there. It looks like it was soldered in place because now it's not going to go through the plate with that blob of solder on there. I'll have to cut that solder off so I can remove that shaft. But you can see the solder is not allowing it to go. While I'm attempting to remove this I also see signs that they got some solder on this shaft here it looks like. Whoever tried to solder it. I don't know whether that's... I can just take a blade here and cut that blob of solder off of there. That would just carve some of the solder off until it'll come out of there. Okay I got that solder cut away so I can go ahead and pull this out now. But you can see where it was soldered here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drill that wire out of there and then fabricate another rod and insert it in there. So this is my setup for drilling that hole to replace that lift rod. Cut that hole drilled through there now. Looks good. So I've got the old wire drilled out of the shaft. Next step is to fit another wire in there. You could probably use this wire because it wouldn't make it that much shorter. But the end is kind of all gummed up with solder. So I've got the new lift wire installed in here. And this back side I went ahead and peened it over so that there's no way that it can come out. It's in there real solid now. Now I just need to kind of calculate the estimated length and cut it off. I'll just make sure I cut it a little bit long so I have room to trim a little bit. Now I need to fit it between the plates with that wheel in there and bend it to the correct contour. So I got the wire mounted in the shaft. I peened it over on this back side. It's mounted in there nice and solid. I just need to determine where to bend it at now. And I don't know if these are original bends in here or not. So what I'm going to do is just go with this bend right here first. Right about there. And I'm just going to go ahead and use these pliers. I'll mount the gears in there and see how it operates. So I made a bend in the wire right here so that it will free this cam. But now the wire needs to come back this other direction because it needs to contact this pin on this gear on this side. So now I'm going to need to bend it back this other direction so that it's in the path of this pin on this gear. Just one bend at a time and it'll be right back to the original position. So I'm just making the final adjustments on this locking lift bar that I made. I'm using this index here so that I get it bent to a 90 degree angle. I need to bend it right in this area here and this arm needs to stay parallel. It needs to come over right in about this area movement and see how it works. So it's time to assemble this cuckoo quail. And I did not remove the count wheel for the quail side. And I did not remove the pinion for the cuckoo side. The bearing surfaces were in good shape so I left those intact. So first I'm going to focus on the the cuckoo side and how I set the cuckoo side up. The first thing that I will do is I'll put the the front plate on. Once I get that front plate on the next thing that I do is I take this gong wire for the cuckoo side and I install that. And on the main wheel there's eight pins that when they rotate they activate that gong and also the cuckoo arms. But right now we're concerned about this gong arm. Slide that in there swing that around and as I rotate that wheel in the direction that it goes you'll see that it activates that arm. So I want to locate that main wheel. So right after it releases the gong I want the next pin is we do not want that that pin to be touching that lever. It's got to be away from it maybe a 30 second of an inch. So once I establish that position I take some assembler's putty and I fasten that main wheel in place which would be right there and I fasten it to the front plate. And then I double check and make sure that that pin on that main wheel is not touching. Might be hard to see this but right in here is one of the eight pins on the main wheel. And when this gong lever goes around it should not be touching that pin because that's the receiving pin. It's got to be away from it just just slightly right in right in about that area there. If it's touching that could stop the clock when it comes time to do the cuckooing. So that wheel needs to get a little bit of a head start before it hits that lever. That establishes the position of the main wheel and everything else will fall in after that on the cuckoo side. So I can remove this gong lever now. And then I disassemble and once I've established the position of the main wheel I put in this lock arm and this arm right in this area here locks into the cam. And this part of the cam wants to be locked against that arm. So it's important that if when locating that cam against that lock arm that you do not rotate the main wheel. So if it has to move a little bit you need to pick this wheel up rotate this wheel and put it back down to make sure. Once that's in position then the third wheel needs to be inserted and this pin on the third wheel needs to be up against that locking arm and it can be rotated until it comes up against that arm right about there. Right now the pin is right here about where my tweezers are. And once that's in position I'll put some more assembly putty just to hold that third wheel and a little bit to hold that lock arm and then I put the front plate on again to do a fit check. Now once I get that front plate on I pull the assembler's putty out to free those wheels up and then I take the cuckoo gong and install that. Then I run it by hand and do a test to see how it is performing. So then on the cuckoo side I do a test to verify it's working. Release the lock lever here and just slowly turn with my hand and that's one complete cycle right there. So the gong hammer moved and it locked into place right afterwards. So when this locks this gong lever down here should not be contacting the pin on the main wheel and so I need to check that and it is about a 16th inch away from there. Then at this point in the process I remove the cuckoo gong arm and install the long cuckoo arm, install the short cuckoo arm, and install the the gong for the cuckoo. And then I do a test on this. So I'm going to test the cuckoo side to see if it's assembled and timed correctly and what I'm looking for is this gong should drop first and then the long arm should drop second and the short arm should drop third. So I put a little pressure against the main wheel and then release the locking mechanism and there goes the gong and the long arm should drop next and then the short arm and that completes one cycle. I'll do it again here and again. So now I know that this cuckoo side is set up properly it's ready to go and the next step is to do a fit check on the count wheel. The count wheel is mounted with this screw right here and what I'm looking for here is for this locking lever to be locked right in this position here where my tweezers are pointing so it needs to be hugging that side of the count wheel and at the same time I'll need to lift the count wheel up and mesh it with the pinion from the main wheel so that the screw will be able to go where it needs to go. So now I do another test and do another test put some pressure on the main wheel and then release the locking lever and it should go once one cycle and there it went one cycle that would be the half hour mark and then to do another test put pressure on the main wheel release the locking lever should go 11 times one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and 11 and it should lock 11 and it locks and then for the half hour it should go once and there's once so now I know that this cuckoo side is completely set up where it needs to be so now I need to disassemble some of this I'll remove the count wheel the gong hammer and the cuckoo arms and then I'll make sure that this is in the locking position I'll take my assembler's putty and with pressure against that main wheel I will push this putty in here and get those locked into place and I need to put the putty between the the assembly wheels and the back plate so I don't want those to move so now that I have the cuckoo side set up correctly I'm going to move over to the quail side and get that set up so once I get that plate together I need to work on this cam location of this cam and this lock arm needs to be right in that position right there and once it's in that position I'll take assembly putty and press it in here and lock that wheel in place and at the same time I'll put some right here to lock that lever in place once that wheel is in place then I will flat part of the cam is locked against this lock arm right here so here you can see the flat part of the cam is locked against the lock arm next item to go in is the third wheel and the third wheel goes in so that this pin is about a quarter of a turn away from the lock lever so the lock lever is located right in this position and then the pin is right about a quarter of a turn before it gets to that lever and once those two wheels are in position I use some more assembly putty to hold those two wheels in place and then I put the front plate on to do a fit-up check once I get that assembled I remove the assembly putty so then I run it through a test I'll put some pressure on the main wheel release the locking lever and rotate it slowly and it should come to that slot and it should lock into place which it does and then run it through another test it should lock so now I know the quail side is set up correctly and once I know that's set up correctly I'll go ahead and put some assembly putty in there and get everything fastened into place so once all the gears are assembled and in place with the assembler's putty I separate the plates and then I assemble the time side main wheel for the time second wheel the escape wheel and then I put the plate on and once that's all assembled I'll take I'll take off the assembly putty and run it through another test next item is the lift arm for the cuckoo side and to do that the plate is going to need to be separated slightly and so I'm going to go ahead and put some assembler's putty on some of those gears so that they don't lose their clocking so to put this lift arm in we've got to separate the plates so I get that got the lift arm in now I can test the cuckoo side again and this is the lift arm and lift that up it should activate it and locks into place lift it up and it locks into place so good so this lift arm gets two clips to hold it in place that's that checks out good and we can put these lift arms in for the cuckoo hammer and run that through a test one that checks out good now this this hammer gets a spring attached to it spring goes right through this hole here so I'll run that through another test now I need to put in the warning wire for the quail side that goes right in through here and to do that I'm going to separate the plates slightly so I'm going to put in some more assembler's putty on some of those gears so I got that warning wire and lift lever installed so I can remove some of that assembler's putty so next I'm going to put in the governor and the pallet for the escape wheel the governor for the quail side and then the pendulum rod the lift arm for the quail side gets a clip and then the rods for the birds quail side and the lift rod for the cuckoo bird and there's a spring on the quail side I'm going to oil the main wheel before I go any further so lift wheel for the quail side a clutch minute wheel our oil and then a steel pin that runs through the shaft here so as far as setting these cuckoo quails up this one's been running just flawlessly for two weeks now and I'm about ready to put it in the case I thought I would go through a couple items on this on the gear that the minute hand is attached to on the back side there's four pins