rich. wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:55 pm
have you thought of getting the proper part/wire for it?
Yes Rich, but it's animal sourced and doesn't show physical signs of weakening, plus the stuff supplied by the specialist supplier in whose catalogue I looked is still far too thin to fill the drum evenly, think of this effect as being similar to cyclists riding two abreast, each getting caught in tramlines that converge just slightly sooner than the hapless souls are able to free their wheels, same as the monofilament does, GHT, which is why I already eliminated that as an option, though maybe a weight forward salmon line would give me sufficient thicker stuff before it tapers off?
Chris, I like the idea of that coated wire. Dad used bare steel stuff in the wall clock for the same purpose and although its thickness is immaterial since that clock's drums are smooth, it takes on a life of its own every time the weights have to be removed to allow me to lift the rest off the wall for routine cleaning, sometimes taking hours to get straight enough for reassembly, but that stuff
looks ideal, however, wire thick enough to fill the groove in the drum would be too stiff to allow me to tie a suitably small knot in the end where the wire comes out of the hole in the rear of the drum. In this movement, the back of each drum is only a couple of millimeters forward of the rear plate and that only just has a big enough hole in it to allow me to get one pair of very thin pliers in to make that knot which, in this clock, should be made small enough to feed back inside the drum, allowing the weight to be taken by the smaller hole at the rear edge of [the drum's] surface..
However, this is only one of several clocks that I'll have to do similar things to, and I can see at least a couple that would be well suited to that coated wire.
Arceye, yes, the synthetic gimp that Cousins sell is probably the closest to original that I'd trust not to wake me up by dropping its load, which isn't a quiet thing by the way, though in fairness to the broken stuff, it appears never to have been changed.. That clock was built in 1834, according to its maker's records, all of which are now mine as I'm his second last surviving relative, so maybe JPB, 1830s style, should have used a higher quality product when he was building the clock!
On the other hand, [the clock] is in a very average condition, its case having been pretty badly made and its face being an amateurishly enamelled one, so I thought maybe some (
fluorescent ![Embarrassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
) nylon line would lift the old thing a little..
The cushion idea is a splendid one, might it have been thought up by someone who's heard that sickening crunching/banging noise before?
And believe it or not, the end of that enormously dense weight actually came with a crumple zone, note the slight distortion in the image.
GHT: Surely you're not accusing
him of wearing a syrup? I think it's actually a severe case of "Barry Norman Syndrome" where one's real hair is combed to make it look as much like a rug as possible.
Edited Monday Morning: I've placed the order with Cousins and shall be using the synthetic alternative, not because it's animal free - my shoes aren't and that doesn't concern me - but because the stuff is apparently much more straightforward to knot, which is the part of the job that can take a disproportionately long time unless the person doing the labouring was born with really tiny hands that have several triple jointed fingers apiece.
Were the clock a valuable one in mint condition then I'd get the movement down, split the plates for ease of access and use the authentic material, but it's a cheap old thing that I would have left in a skip if it had been found in one. See the date complication? There's no gearing to drive that, to keep it reading correctly all that you do is open the cover, turn the finger manually and that's the job done. The old bugger is pretty accurate though, typically within half a minute +/- over the course of the week, and that's why he's still living indoors rather than providing leisure facilities for my family of blind mice in the workshop.
Thanks for all of the ideas chaps, and the links, which are bookmarked for future reference as I'll almost certainly need at least two further orders of differing types of line when I get round to cleaning and rebuilding further clocks, which are almost inevitably going to be suffering from years of being soaked in paraffin then bathed in 30 weight vegetable based engine oil as a "maintenance" routine
![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
.
Country folk and their funny ways, etc..
![Neutral :|](./images/smilies/icon_neutral.gif)