Keeping Time

There is history behind the antique mantle clock above the fireplace.  It's a family heirloom.  A wedding gift from the marriage of my grandpa and grandma on my dad's side of the family.  I haven't a record of who gave it as a gift or if it was a gift my grandparents gave to each other.  What I know is that when my widowed grandpa moved-in with aunt Mildred to live out his days it came into my dad's possession.  And it wasn't working.  It hadn't worked for years and nobody had enjoyed it's steady ticking, a single chime on the half hour and bong to announce the hours.

As a youngster (a preteen at the time) and a tinkerer I examined the clock's works from the access door on the back and realized that the gears were fouled by oil and whatever clings to oil over the course of decades.  So, with Q-Tips dipped in Hoppes No. 9 gun bore solvent I cleaned and removed the oil and grime from all the moving parts and following a winding of both springs the clock came to life.

It never kept perfect time and required a periodic resetting of the hands yet it worked.  It spent decades on the fireplace mantle of my folk's house.  

When my widowed father moved to a retirement home the clock came into my possession and famously kept imperfect time on my fireplace mantle.  Then, about three years ago it fell silent - its ticker no longer tocked.  It remained on the mantle as a decorative fixture and I figured I'd take it to a clock place to see what needed to be done to bring it back to life.

In any event, the other day I took it from the mantle and hustled it to the work bench where I gave the clock works a good spritz of Casey Bore Solvent from the can.  I wound it up, set the time  and nothing happened.

Sigh.      

I returned it to the mantle and made a mental note to Google search antique clock repairs in northeast Wisconsin.

Several hours later I heard a familiar tick-tock and lo and behold it was back to keeping imperfect time and announcing the half-hour intervals with its chime and dinging-out the hours with its familiar dong. It has been running reliably ever since.  Gotta love me that gun bore solvent.

In any event I did some Googling based-upon the tag affixed to the inside of the rear access door...

And found this advertisement in a German language Gazette from the very early part of the century.  

The device is going into its 106th year of intermittent operation.  A non-digital, mechanical timepiece that doesn't require a battery.