I’ve put my clock repair self-education “on hold” the last month or so. A few things led to this:
- need for parts and tools: my first and second clock both need bushings installed, so I had to order those- now I’ve decided I need a bushing tool rather than trying to hand-bush perfectly perpendicular 0.1 to 0.3 mm holes in 2-3 mm brass. My second clock is also filthy (as are clocks 3/4/5… much dirtier than clock #1), and I bought an ultrasonic cleaner to help with that. As it turns out, I can’t get cleaning solutions shipped from the U.S., so I’ve had to find a Canadian supplier
- vacation: I couldn’t order parts and tools by mail for the three or four weeks leading up to our vacation for fear that they would arrive while we were away. Some carriers have five or seven day “return to sender” policies and, given that 30% of the cost (or more) for parts is shipping, I didn’t want to risk that
- failure of collectable clock: my Napoleon III era French clock stopped running a couple of weeks before we left on vacation. This is a clock I had no intention of servicing until I had completed all of my “learning” rebuilds as it is a more expensive and “special” mechanism. I spent a week getting advice and examining the movement [1], got it running without disassembly, then decided to stop it and “preserve” it until I could do a proper cleaning/repair of it later
I’m starting to get parts and tools in order now that my vacation is finished. I’ve found what I hope to be a Canadian supplier of the “correct” cleaning solutions I want, and will hopefully have that in hand in three or four weeks. I’ll probably order my bushing machine in the next week, and the bushings themselves arrived via mail while we were away. Putting this all together means I’ll probably not have much progress on fixer clock #2 until the beginning of November.
I could get all excited and start stripping down more clocks in the mean time, but I’ve decided to try something new: patience. I might take a look at the cases of a couple of my clocks (ignoring the mechanisms) while I wait, but my plan of the moment is to keep reading the clock repair and collector’s forums and practice calm breathing…