Ingraham Clock Repair 2

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Amateur Repair Time. If you didn't see last week's video, we've been working on this old ingrown clock. Um, I bought this at the flea market for 10 bucks. It's in pretty rough shape. Somebody spray painted parts of it and the movement was really screwed up. It had a um a bent wheel on the strike side. The hour wheel or the minute wheel, the center wheel was pretty screwed up. This is after we've cleaned it. Um, it had a broken gear or wheel, I guess you call it. Let me see if I can find it. There it is. See the crack? And it had a broken would that be a collar sleeve? Let's say it's a sleeve. had a broken sleeve. I can't see it now. I have this. I got to go get some new glasses. I went and got new glasses, but there it is. See it? But now I'm in that that hell where you have to put your glasses on and off depending on how far away the item is. And I don't want to get bif focals. I'm too young for bi focals, people. I I just can't do it. I would rather look like a fool moving taking my glasses on and off. I don't really need them that much if anything's within like a foot. Okay. Um, so Oh, so this was bad. Oh, look it right on the dot. It is that late, too. It's 12:30 at night. We just finished filming the first part of this video. So, this thing was filthy. You wouldn't believe how filthy. If you're a clock person, you probably already know. You've probably done worse, but it was filthy. So, I was able to take it all apart, put it in the ultrasonic cleaner. We put four bushings on it, which was in the uh the fourth wheel on the time side, both sides, the front and back plate, and then the uh escapement wheel, the escape wheel, front and back plate. So, we did those four pivots. And uh um this is amateur repair time, so I'm not the greatest at it, but as you can see, the thing seems to be running pretty good. The strike even works. And it had a the strike wheel was bent and had a bent tooth. And I was able to bend it back, get it straight. It's working great. I said the strike wheel. It was the governor wheel on the strike sign. Okay. So, today, uh, we need to I'm just going to clean it up and we're going to swap out the glass. This glass is horrible. Look at this. This is actually cracked. And there's like a piece of cardboard or wood or something. I think it's wood that they've glued in or nailed in or something and then they painted the other side trying to mimic it. But that's right where the cut is. I mean the the break is. Um so yeah. Um but I love the swing on that though. Look at that. That's got a nice I guess that's called amplitude, but that thing's a tick- tocker, isn't it? And I love it. Little ugly, but as you can see, with a new glass and cleaning it up a little bit, it's going to look a lot better. I wish they hadn't spray painted whatever they spray painted on it, but whatever. You know, it's a $10 clock. What can you expect? Paid 10 bucks for it. Uh, and here is the face. We're not going to do much with it. Again, I wish they hadn't painted the rim, but it was probably in horrible shape. Um, the whole back of the cabinet had fallen off too, which I don't know if it was because the spring exploded or if they just were really rough with it. We also reglued u these things back where they go and renailed the bottom and put the back back on and all that. If you didn't see that video, you might want to check it out. It was really fun. And it ended with us getting the thing ticking and talking somewhat in beat. Okay, so uh let me clean it up a little bit and I guess uh we're ready to mess around with the glass. So, I think I'll just remove that door because it's trying to fall off anyway. It's got little nails holding it on. And every time you lay it down, if you open up the door, it it about pulls the door off like it that's trying to take the uh the hinges out. So, um let's let's lay it down and see if we can remove the door. All right. So, I'm taking the trim off. There are little Originally, these things had little pieces of wood just nailed to the side to hold the glass in. And so some of those are still in, but down here they've done some real trick stuff here with this piece of wood. They've got just a ton of nails nailed in here um with no heads on them. But what I'm doing is grab them with a pair of pliers and then if you hit the side of the pair of pliers with a little hammer, it just pop them right out. All right, so I got it out. Check this out. If you look really close, you can see the remnants of the gold. So, it originally had these things. I think these are called spandrels. So, it did originally have some kind of design with a spandrel. See the gold? This is probably the original glass and it was just all screwed up and so somebody just put paint on it. You know, they did the best they could. I'm not mad at them. This thing has seen some stuff, but that's some of the gold, you know, that was on it. I wish I could see like a stain or something on it where you could tell what the original design was. was like, does it have that chain thing that we were looking at, that bamboo looking thing? I don't I can't see anything. So, it didn't I don't think it stained it. Um, but if you if you look, you know, the the design is on the back. So, if you look, whatever it is, it had something that went up the right side to about there, which isn't really all that far. Right. So, it stops about right there. So, it was kind of low on the right side. Um, yeah, I can't tell. Who knows? And the other part, this part was just a piece of wood that they had cut to fit. And you can see there's a little bit of gold there, but what that is is the remnants of the gold. Well, I don't know. I don't know. I was about to say h Yeah, I don't know because it should be on the back. I don't know. I don't know, folks. We're trying to figure out something that doesn't really matter, but it's interesting to me. Okay, so uh that's that. Uh I have gotten in the new piece of glass, but it's too big and it has it features a design that has to be centered around the dial. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and mount the dial back in carefully, um, temporarily so we can get some measurements and stuff and figure out where we need to put our glass. All right, so I temporarily mounted it back on there. Dial and the door. And here is our glass. Just needs a little cutting, that's all. Okay. So, I'm going to carefully try to measure as best I can to where, you know, the dial is going to be centered in this area. Um, a little bit tricky, but I don't know that there's really a um perfect way to do that. I'm just going to have to do a bunch of measurements and get it the best I can. If it's off, it's off. But I'll I'll do the best I can. All right. So, I've drawn it all out exactly how I think it should be. And I'm using a straight edge and a little glass cutter. The trick to this is to put a little bit of oil on it. If you put just a little bit of oil on the line, for whatever reason, it'll cut pretty good and it'll snap pretty good. And of course, I'm wearing gloves. But this is I just hate doing this because it's this thing's $18. If I break this, I'm at $18. I don't like that. If it was just a piece of glass this size is like $4 and then if you could cut it, break a couple of them and then put the the logo back on it and you could screw up three times and still be, you know, at $17 or whatever. Um, yeah. Okay. So, I'm a little nervous. All right. Final cut. Three of them worked. Please, Mr. Glass, don't break. Please, Mr. Glass, don't break on me. Please, Mr. Glass, don't break on me. Well, it actually cooperated. It let me cut all four sides. I cut the bottom piece first because it was the smallest. It was only that big. And it snapped right off. I couldn't believe it. So, I laid it out flat on an edge and then uh with the gloves on just right at the end started trying to mess with it and it broke right off clean. And then I did the other end because, you know, I was trying to shorten the length of the cra of the brake. So, like if if you did that one first from here to here all the way down, that's a little harder to break clean. So, it's easier to break these. Um, so I did them first, which made this shorter. And then did the sides and it worked. Pretty cool. I have a grandfather clock that I am going to be doing a video on that I have to do some glass for, too. So, that's coming up soon. Could be that I'm already working on it, but you know. Okay. So, that's pretty cool. Um, so there's there's not a ton left, you know. I want to, you know, clean it, of course. Um, but, uh, we're ready to put the hands on it. You know, I need to take the movement back out, though, to get my, um, to get my spring retainers off of it. Um, so I got to do that and then put the hands on it. And then we'll watch it a while and see how fast or how slow it's running. It's been running for two days like this. So, it was pretty cool. Tick tock. It looks a heck of a lot better with that the with the proper glass on it. And I don't even think that's the the one it's supposed to be, but it's pretty good. Look at that. I got it lined up pretty good, too. Um, I like the worn look on the dial. That doesn't bother me at all. If it's if it's crazy worn where you can't even read it. Yeah. Okay. But it worn like this, I just think gives it character. I mean, obviously the whole thing's worn. You could probably put a bunch of paint stripper on it, clean it up a little bit, but you know what are you doing? You know, this is the story that somebody beat it up at the flea market. That's the story. Somebody spray painted it. That's the story. If it was just god awful where they spray painted part of it blue or something, I'd do something about it. But I'm just going to leave it how it is. All right. So, I got the hands on it. and it's been keeping pretty good time. It's a little bit slow. So, I was able to lift the pendulum up higher uh to speed it up a little bit, which is actually good because it gets it up closer to that little window in the uh in the glass so you can see the pendulum a little bit better and it's almost centered. Um, so I'm happy with it. Very cool. Oh, and I got the I took the movement out and I got my um little holders out. If you didn't see the previous video, you put those on the springs so that they uh you can remove them and play with them. Um so yeah, I'm real happy with that. So I paid $10 for it and then I, you know, it needed that center arbor, that center wheel. So I would say that's worth about five bucks. I' from time to time I'll I'll get a you know a box of parts somewhere. I'll buy them on eBay or something and you know I probably don't even have five bucks in it, but we'll say it's worth five bucks. I think that's fair. Um and then the glass was $18. I ordered some other stuff too, so the shipping wasn't really anything, but maybe we'll say 20 bucks. So $20 and $10 and $5. Um, so 35 bucks. And then, um, the only other, you know, just a little tiny bit of oil and the, um, I put the two bushings in it or four bushings in it. So, four bushings are probably what, $2. So, 35 bucks. Um, so I'm in at about 40 bucks maybe total. Probably not even quite that. Um, and it's worn and it's been spray painted and it's not the it's not a perfect example of the of this clock, but it sure is running good. I'll Another thing I like about this one is the amplitude. I think I mentioned that earlier, just how far it's swinging that pendulum. Um, I've had some before that they just barely move. This one up here, it's got a problem with its hourhand. Whenever whenever I redid that, this the little the hour snail or whatever that's called inside of it is made of plastic and the snout of it was all screwed up. This is like a 70s clock. It's just a it's a cheaper thing that they put in this big old ca case. I like the big case. Thought that was pretty cool. I need to one of these days watch that video again, figure out what that plastic part was, and keep my eye out for one of those because what happens is the hourhand doesn't attach to it very well, and it'll slip off of that plastic piece. The snout of it is all screwed up. It keeps it keeps good time and works well, but um I say that, but it's slow. I guess it I guess it keeps good time. Obviously, the hour's off, but the minutes off, too. This one is correct. Um, but see how the amplitude is very slight on that. Now, different ones do different things. Um, it just depends on the manufacturer and how the movement's designed, but that one, it just barely moves. And so, one thing I've noticed messing with these is, uh, to get that thing to really swing, the thing needs to be pretty tight. You need the all of the bushings to be pretty tight and, um, for it to just have plenty of power. And then there's a there's a strange little thing. And if you watched whenever we were messing with the escapement, the spring is actually the pendulum isn't really moving the escape wheel. The spring is moving the escape wheel. The pendulum is allowing the escape the power to escape through the escape wheel, right? But um all it's doing that what the pendulum is doing is setting the time of it. The spring is what's actually driving it. So, what that means is the spring is actually pushing the pendulum. So, like when it when those teeth, you know, they're on that wheel, when it's when it swings to one side with the inertia, what happens is this tooth slips off the tooth and it allows that escape wheel to turn one tooth, right? And then it when it gets up this high, when it goes back, that right when it gets to about the center line, that tooth behind it actually pushes the pendulum. So it's it's not that the pendulum is just swinging like this. It's actually being pushed. If you remember riding a swing when you were a kid and somebody gave you a push, you know, and you would come back down and right when you get to the bottom, they push, they jump behind you and push you again, you know, and how that that inertia would swing you up. or maybe you remember doing that with your own kids. Um, that's essentially what's going on with these pendulums. So, to get it to swing real nice like that, you've got to have it all pretty tight. You got to have all of the the bushings pretty tight. Now, if the bushings are sloppy, the thing will usually still run unless something's broken. This one up here was like that cuz one of the first ones I did, and it's a newer movement, you know, and it just it's not a really nice movement. I'm not trying to talk too bad about it cuz it's on the wall working right now. But, um, it's it's it's not too nice of a movement. It's actually, I think, a cuckoo clock movement. Um, it's just a little tiny one. Um, compared to the size of the of the case. You can tell by the winding arbors. See the little holes? See how close they are to the center shaft? That shows you the size of the clock. It's not that big. Look at this one next to it. This beautiful Ansonia or Ansonia, whatever, however you pronounce it. See how the winding armors are wider? because that's like a fullsize movement. Um, more like this one, you know. You can see how the the triangle created by the hands and the winding arbors is a big wide triangle. Um, and on that one, you can see it's much smaller. It's just a much smaller movement. Um, so if they're kind of worn and the they're sloppy, you will get two things happening. one, you'll get that where you don't have hardly any amplitude, which is kind of boring, you know. This looks cool when, you know, um I've got an Ansonia Blackbird over there that is a tick tocker. That thing swings wide, you know. Um and the Seth Thomas, that one you're hearing right now, is a New Haven and it swings pretty wide. So, whenever they're tight, they just they swing like this. And that's kind of what you want. So, I found that out. And then the other thing that it'll do if it's worn is it will actually speed the clock up, if it's dirty, it'll slow it down. If it's worn, it'll speed it up. Um, so if it if the bushings are worn worse than this one was, um, it it causes this problem with the escapement where it kind of moves away from the the verge and it's just easier for the escapement. If you can imagine that that escapement wheel being held in place by the by the bushing that it's in. And then that verge, you know, usually nobody's moving the verge. It just sits where it is. That's clicking back and forth on the wheel. We're hearing it right now on that one over there. Right as it's doing that, if that if that escapement wheel can move around, it lets that verge slip by more often. You know, it just it if you if you think about this has to move way over here to slip past that gear and then it has to move back to slip past that gear and back and back. It takes it a little while to do that. Right? If it only has to move just barely, it can actually it will speed up the clock. Right? So if if that if that if that uh escapement wheel is is able to move out of the way of that verge so that the verge can move quicker, it'll speed it up. Now if it's if it's uh dirty, what you get is there's no power to move the the pendulum and so the thing it just takes it just moves slow because everything's slow and there's just not a lot of gear power to to drive everything. I've been watching a gentleman here on YouTube named Jr. Clocker. Jim, I think it's Jim. Yeah, Jim. Um, his channel on YouTube. He runs a clock shop and he's he's just an old school clock guy and um so he he he's bought out a bunch of clocks and stuff and it's a fascinating show. He sells on eBay, too. He's a big eBay seller and he's done a whole bunch of videos working on these and um he's always talking about the main springs. He swaps the main springs a lot and um I don't know if that affects the amplitude at all. Um but what he's mentioned is that they get set. So the a new spring is very strong and it will try to expand. I mean it'll expand way out. You saw how this one was sticking out of the side of the cabinet when we started at least on the last video. You didn't see it on this one. Um I guess most of them will do that but they get kind of set where they're at. So if they if they literally sit for a long time wound up, they kind of get trained to that. Um it's kind of like training your hair. Have you ever had your hair trained a certain way? If you comb it the same way all the time, eventually it just kind of lays that way. Your hair's trained. I heard about that when I was a teenager. Um this the springs kind of do that. They get set where they just they're going to stay kind of how they are. So yeah, that you can still wind them up and make them tighter, but they're only going to get so big. So in other words, they only have so much power in them. And so he's said before that it'll it will lengthen it will shorten the amount of time that the clock will run. If that's the only tradeoff, I don't really care to trade any to change any main springs. Um, but I wonder if uh the amplitude has anything to do with that. I don't I don't know. I guess if the spring was really weak, it wouldn't be able to push that thing like it's supposed to. Um, but I'm not sure about that. So, that's something else that we'll have to look into. But, uh, there you go, folks. I, uh, I'm I'm This is one of my favorite ones that I've done, I think. I don't know why. I just kind of I like the look of it. I like that it's kind of, uh, beat all to hell and we got it to work pretty good. And I like that we spent just slightly too much money to buy a glass for it. Then it then maybe um some people would have, but it kind of deserved a new glass, so we went ahead and did it. And then I like that the glass cooperated and didn't break on me. Um and the thing wants to work. I love when they want to work. Do you do you know about that concept? Have you seen that concept? Sometimes when you're working on something, it fights you the whole damn way. It just doesn't want to work. like it just it wants to die, right? And you know, of course, I know they're not sentient beings, but um uh it just seems like sometimes certain things and it's I guess it's in the design, you know, but certain things they're not necessarily easy to work on, but they they tend towards their purpose, right? So, for instance, this is a you know, it's an Ingram clock movement. Well, what is the purpose of that? It's to just to wag that pendulum and to move those gears and to turn those hands. And this thing was horribly abused. I mean, it's been spray painted that that abused, you know, horribly abused. And when we got in there, it sprayed oil all over it. If you didn't see the last video, you missed out. It it it looked like they had poured motor oil all over the movement. Just unbelievable. Um, and it popped out of the side of the cabinet and everything. But whenever we got in there and cleaned it up a little bit, what we found was Oh, there was a bent gear, too. What we found was there were a bunch of uh gears that were still in fine shape because they had been made right. Uh the plates were still fine. There was a few bushings that, you know, were worn a little bit, but they took new bushings just fine. Um I filed it down a little bit so the the the pinions went in. I used a little chamfering tool to u make it where the the pivots fit well and everything and u u you know um um a smoothing brooch and kind of you know made it a little bigger so that the everything fit right and then we put it back together and this is what we got. And then, you know, every little part of it that's been abused when you mess with it a little bit. Like this little latch here is just a simple little thing, right? But, you know, I bent it back a little bit. That was the latch. Ding. Holding it in place like it's supposed to. It's just every little thing kind of cooperated and did what it's supposed to do because it wants to be a clock cuz that's all that it is is a clock. You know what I mean? So, you know, 20 people at the factory probably touched this thing when they were making it, and they were all trying to make it a clock. So, it's it's not that this thing has a a soul or a spirit to it, but the people that build it did, right? So, if the guy stamping the plates for the for the the the sides, uh, you know, if that guy was particular about his job, he did it right and it was a nice quality product. And the same thing with whoever made the hands and whoever fit the dial on and whoever um you know uh uh put the put the hinges on the door and everything. They did a good job and it's here it is a hundred years later and the thing with a little help even after it's been horribly abused still works just fine. That's incredible. So I just I just really like them. I would encourage you if you're if if you've watched this video this far, you're probably a fan of clocks or you probably would have bailed a long time ago. Uh it might be a hobby you might want to think about getting into cuz it's cheap. These things are inexpensive. Um and the parts are pretty cheap. The glass was a little more than I wanted to pay, but if you think about it, a piece of glass with a design on it and it's a it's a reproduction of an old design. I mean, it's worth $17. I just was bitching about having to pay it cuz I was afraid I was going to break the glass. By the way, I bought a bunch more on eBay earlier. Uh there was a guy on there who put some up. I bought eight for uh 30 36 less than $50. I got eight of them. Most of them are silver, but there was one gold one, but um and they were all that same size where they're too big. But, you know, of course, that's good because you can put it in any any uh case. They're all kind of a little different. Um, so, uh, I got a good deal on that. But anyway, um, it's a it's an interesting hobby to get into because there's parts everywhere. It's inexpensive. Now, if you're trying to do it to make money, you're you're just wasting your time. You're not going to make any money doing it. But, it's really fun to get one that's all beat up and bring it back and the thing cooperates and starts working. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Same thing with the radios and stuff. The radios are a little more expensive um just because they're a little more useful honestly. Um that silver tone over there that we fixed up. If I plug that thing in um it's going to pick up somebody talking on the radio right now, you know, so it's still useful. Um the clocks, yeah, they they tell time, but you know, we've got so many ways to tell time now. They're not they're not super useful anymore. But it's a these particular ones, it's a great American um design built here in America in a factory in America. I just I just think it's really cool. And of course, there's, you know, even greater Swiss ones and stuff, you know, and the British tall case clocks are famous and all that, you know. So, I'm not It's not just because it's American, but I'm American. So, I like that this was, you know, built in Connecticut or Chicago or wherever it came from. where uh Ingram, I don't know where they were made. Connecticut, maybe. But it it's just a cool hobby. You can get parts cheap. Um I've watched several of my other hobbies go up in price when one of the one of the first ones that I started was doing the arcade games, of course, and we still do that. But the prices just went nuts. Nuts. We used to go to auctions and you could buy like a Miss Pac-Man that didn't work for $25. And it's just how things work. I've been to auctions and bought bought working games for 20 cents. Now, that sounds crazy, but it's the absolute truth. I swear to God, it's the truth. U I bought five games for a dollar one time at an auction, and some of them worked. That's just how it used to be. So, it used to be you could get things cheap and uh it was it was more fun, you know. Um and you know, we sell them, so you'd think I'd be happy that the prices all went up. Well, we made a lot of money off of them, but it's kind of it gets to the point where it's almost embarrassing that this game is worth $3,000 or whatever, you know. And then I kind of got into pinball machines a little bit, too. Same story. The pinball machines have went nuts, and I'm sure you all know that. But I'm I'm kind of happy that the electromechanical pinball machines haven't completely done that. You can still get some of them inexpensively. Um, but same thing. So, I've watched that where they went crazy. I've seen Adam's family pinball machines advertised for sale before for like $2,500. That's where we used to be, right? So, the prices have went up like four times what what they were. Um, now you you'd be lucky to find one for 9 or 10, I think. Hell, it may have gotten worse since the last time I looked into it. Um, and that's like the most popular pinball machine ever. So, there's a lot of them. $10,000. Um, and the new machines now are 10 or $11,000. So, it's just a crazy hobby to get into. This hobby, on the other hand, it's going the other way. The prices are going through the floor. So, lately, I've picked up a couple grandfather clocks. I mentioned that earlier. And um you know, there was a time when a grandfather clock would cost you $4 or $5,000. Like a Seth Thomas grandfather clock in the 80s was four $4,000. Um well, you know, you can buy them now for 50 bucks if you look around. Same clock. And a lot of times they haven't been running for a long time. They've been just sitting somewhere and you oil them and they work fine and they're just as nice as they were. Usually people took good care of them. Um, so it's an interesting hobby to see it. The only reason you're going to get into it is because you enjoy working on the things or you just like the thing. You like collecting it. You like looking at it. You like playing around with it. And so it's it's the opportunity to to own something that's that at one point was expensive but now is, you know, very affordable for anybody. These things these uh I've got a friend Rodney who watches some of our videos. He's a pinball guy. Uh Rodney was telling me that uh he called these things rooster head clocks because of the thing on the top, you know, rooster head clocks. And he I think he said he had a hundred of them at one time uh back in, you know, like the 80s and the early 90s. It was very popular to collect these things, but the bottom is falling out. So, a good condition one, you know, that works great, that looks really nice, is really kind of worth a hundred bucks if that if you can get somebody to give you that for it. Um, so it's just an interesting hobby. Um, because if if you get into it, you're not going to spend a lot of money, but you're also not going to make any money. So, I'll leave it at that. Oh, I've almost talked long enough that it that the chime went off. Um, but we'll we'll leave before that. We don't have five minutes left to talk. Uh, so I hope you enjoyed it. Leave your comments below. If you haven't uh seen our videos where we worked on some of the other ones, I'll put one up here. I'm looking at one over here, this New Haven Clock Company one that's running really well. Maybe I'll show you that one next so you can check it out. I'll put that video up here. But leave your comments below and let let me know what you think about the Whoop. That was the New Haven Clock Company one chiming its uh its uh its words of approval or its its gong of approval. Uh so uh uh I'll put that video up here. Leave your comments below what you think about clocks. If you watch this video this far, you're probably into them at least somewhat. And we will see you on the next one. This is amateur repair time.