Forgotten Grandfather Clock Restored Into a Stunning Family Heirloom | The Repair Shop

Right, you've brought this grandfather clock in. I have, yeah. Tell me about it. It's not my clock, it's my friend Christine's clock. Oh right, okay. We're looking after it after she moved house about two years ago. She's unable to have this clock in her house and I said we've got room until such time as you've got the space or you move house again. So does Christine know that you've brought this in here? She doesn't know that it's here now, no. Right, so this is going to be a real surprise. It will be, yes, a very big surprise but a very happy one. Yeah, do you know how Christine feels about the clock in its present state? All she knew is that she wasn't going to let it go and one day she would be able to restore it to its former glory but that day hasn't happened until now, I hope. Fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing it in. What a lovely story. We'll do our very best. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. I'm just taking apart Christine's grandfather clock now. I think it's going to be fairly straightforward. This clock's not in bad condition at all. There's been some work that I need to rectify. So a lot of grandfather clocks had moon cycles on. In the 17th century, before street lighting was commonplace, clockmakers incorporated these moon phase dial designs so that the owners could plan their travels for when the moon was full. Steve's first job is to fix the mechanism that turns the dial. The moon phase change spring, it's actually got a crack in it so I think the whole thing's quite brittle and is going to break. So I decided to make another one. Next enlisted to the team, wood restoration expert Will Kirk. But with six foot of mahogany casing, it's going to be a tall order. It feels really dry. This furniture was never really made for central heated houses because with changing of temperatures, the wood on the inside can shrink but everything else on the top pulls together and starts to buckle and lift and that's probably what's happened with all this luciferne. A perfect fit. The pivots, they're slightly rough and they go into the pivot holes and because they're rough, they've worn the hole across. Basically that's just taking some of the rough edges off. The moon faces on these can sometimes look very grumpy. I like to think that they represent the mood of the person that painted them at the time. These ones are quite happy. They're not grumpy. I'm going to get some glue in there. I'm going to go over the entire clock with a fine tooth comb because I really want to make sure that the surface is completely sound before I start polishing. It's great when we do a restoration job where there's real collaboration between lots of experts and we all come together to create this wonderful finished item. There we go. Best way to get a straight line with your paintbrush is with one of my tatty tools which is a plastic ruler just broken with two pieces of rubber stuck to the bottom. Remember these dials were never perfect. We don't need an exactly straight line. What we need is a line that looks natural. Hi Steve. All done. Oh fantastic. Oh that's a really cracking job. She's got the name now. Yeah that's amazing. She won't have seen that before. You can't see where you filled it at all. Good. Thank you very much. Well have fun putting it all together. I will.