This clock hung in my mom and dad's living room from the time I was about 12 years old, and for 29 years after that, and was a very deeply ingrained item in my life. I was so used to hearing those chimes every 15 minutes whenever I was at their house. The only thing I knew about it's care and feeding was that it had to be wound every so often, with a large key that was kept in that little compartment at the bottom.
When my dad passed away, the clock was neglected. When the clock stopped, I just never did wind it up. When we eventually cleaned out the house, I took the clock, and transported it as gently as I could, and stashed it away at my house. I'm not sure why I never put it up, but I didn't.
When we bought the new house, moving the clock was a big deal - it was one of the fragile items I would only allow to be transported by me, swathed in blankets, set gently in my truck like a passenger. Then it went into the living room, where it leaned up against the living room wall for a year. Again, I wanted to put it up, but never did figure out just the right place for it, and so kept procrastinating.
This week I decided it was time to put the clock up, and it was going in the Imaginarium. I made a place for it, and brought it upstairs. I assumed it would need wound, but I wasn't sure it would still work - despite trying to treat it gently for the last 3 years, I was concerned it might have suffered some damage and just not work anymore.
(In retrospect, I think that was why I'd procrastinated putting it up for so long ... I think that, even though I was afraid it might not work, I was more afraid of hanging it up and having the fact confirmed, as I was concerned I might feel pretty heartbroken about it.)
But, I brought it upstairs, and I hung it up, and attempted to wind it. It has three places it has to be wound, and I seemed to remember my dad telling me one was for the chimes, and the other two were for the hands, for keeping the time. One of them (the one for the chimes) wound up fine, but the other two wouldn't budge - they felt incredibly tight, as if they were already wound up. Except they couldn't have been, as it had stopped running in April of 2007 and had not, to my knowledge, ever been wound up since. (though, apparently I was wrong ...).
So the chimes would work if you moved the hands around manually, but the clock itself wasn't working, the hands wouldn't move on their own. I was bummed (though not quite as heartbroken as I had feared, because I determined immediately that I would get it fixed).
But first I decided I was going to take it down and take a look at it. Now, I know nothing about clocks, so it was probably a silly idea, but I figured as long as I was careful I couldn't hurt it any worse, and I just kind of wanted to see if maybe, against all odds, it would be something simple I could easily see once I took the face off.
I propped it up in a convenient work space, and tied the glass face cover up to keep it out of my way.
Then I removed the hands, and the clock face. Wow.
I was impressed. I was enthralled.
I was in steampunk heaven! I never considered myself a very 'mechanical' minded person, and I am definitely not usually a very patient person, especially when tinkering with something I don't understand that doesn't work. But I spent probably a good half hour just looking all around the inside of this thing, gently, experimentally moving little bits here or there ... I discovered which mechanism makes it chime the hour (I was delighted when I gently lifted a metal bar with a tiny screwdriver I was using, and some type of flywheel inside the clockworks box began to click and whir, and then I could watch the little hammers strike the metal rods down the right-hand side that make the chime!).
That rather wedge-shaped piece in the upper part of the picture, with teeth along it's upper/left side - that's what makes it chime the hours - when the mechanism is engaging at the third tooth, it chimes 3 times for 3:00 ... and so on and so forth. I discovered that if I gently move that piece to the left of it (which is what starts the hour-chiming sequence), then hold it there instead of letting it go back to engage against the hour-chime piece, it will chime as many times as I let it. It might be set to chime 3:00, but if I hold the piece, it will chime 5 times, or 10 ... it's as if ... I control time! (just kidding!)
Anyway, that was all incredibly fascinating (I've never been so interested, for so long, in something I totally didn't understand and which didn't work), but it didn't help me fix it, so finally I decided to put it back together, hang it back up, and see about finding a clock repair person.
Meanwhile, Greg had come up to see what all the chiming was about, and he was taking a look at it. He asked me about the pendulum.
Well, it's a funny thing - I would have sworn on anything that the pendulum never had moved - I even seemed to remember our family commenting on it, why would you have a pendulum and a little window to see it through, if it served no purpose, but (I seemed to recall) we all decided it must just be decorative. So I told Greg the pendulum did nothing.
But (like I had also done) he had to tweak with it, and while he was moving it back and forth, I was able to see, from the side, that in fact some gear-work was moving inside the clockwork box. It was doing something!
But we still couldn't wind it up, so I still assumed it was broke. I put it back together, and hung it back up.
Then, on a whim, I reached inside and started the pendulum moving.
And it kept moving. And it was ticking.
And I looked up, and the minute hand was moving, every so very, very slowly, a tick, a tock, a slight tremor, a miniscule jerk to a new position ... and it kept ticking, and the pendulum kept swinging. A minute. Five minutes. No sign of slowing down.
I moved the clock hands to 3:00, and it chimed the hour!
It works!!
I was astounded. I have no idea what happened there.
Okay, I have a couple of vague ideas.
Apparently the pendulum did work all those years, and for some strange reason I just didn't remember it.
And it's possible that someone did wind the clock, sometime in the past several years, but with it not being hung up, the pendulum couldn't swing, and so the clock never ran ... and so never ran down. Which would explain why two of the gears were so tight I couldn't turn them - they were already fully wound up - I'm lucky I didn't break something! (though I was very careful, and never tried to force it).
As for why the chime gear could take winding, maybe it just hadn't been wound up quite as far - because though I was able to turn it, it was very tight, and could only be wound maybe a quarter of a turn, no more.
So ... it appears that the clock is, in fact, working beautifully! (after I made a slight adjustment to the hands, as I got them back on a little crooked, and initially it was chiming the hour at 3 minutes after - but that's now fixed). It's been running for an hour, ticking away, pendulum swinging, chiming the quarter hours ... it just chimed 4:00, with it's 4 bells after the four quarter-hour chimes.
I couldn't be happier. It's a very warm fuzzy feeling to hear the old clock click, and whir, and chime the quarter hours again.
And I'm beyond obsessed with clockwork now. Must. Know. More!
Later Addendum, Sunday ...
I now know that I was delusional in thinking the pendulum didn't work in this clock, because (a) well, since that's what runs the clock, it had to have worked, but (2) a memory resurfaced just as I was falling asleep last night. We used to have a lot of company, and the clock's 15-minute chime schedule really bothered some people, making it hard for them to fall asleep. When that would happen, my mom used to stop the clock by simply stopping the pendulum during their visit, then reset and restart it when they left.
So - obviously it was working. I have no idea why I had such a strong memory that the pendulum didn't work. Oh well.
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