A job start to finish
Four attempts at one eight-day wall movement
A weight-driven wall regulator that stopped every few days, and the four separate goes it took to find the fault, including a case clean that nearly cost it its original finish.
Repair record
Five hundred movements in, the notebook still catches me out more often than the clocks do.
Bench notes from a one-man clock repair room in Lyon: worn pivot holes, mainsprings, pendulums put in beat, and movements that took four attempts.
- Bench
- Lyon, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes
- Working since
- 2015
- Entries held
- 4
- Last corrected
- 9 Jun 2026
On the test board
A fortnight of rate, taken at the same hour each evening
Nothing leaves this room on the strength of one good evening. Every movement hangs on the oak board behind the bench for fourteen days, and the figures below are the ones that decided the eight-day mantel movement was finished.
| Reading | Error | What the movement was doing |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | +11 s | Fresh wind, full torque, arc a little wide |
| Day 3 | +4 s | Settling, oil spread through the sinks |
| Day 5 | 0 s | Steadiest stretch of the whole eight days |
| Day 7 | -4 s | Torque falling away, arc down by two degrees |
| Day 9 | -2 s | Rewound on the eighth evening, back in range |
| Day 14 | -2 s | Rate holding, shake unchanged at every hole |
The written record
Four jobs, set down the week they were finished
Timekeeping
Putting a pendulum in beat by count rather than by guess
Setting a clock in beat properly, regulating it with the rating nut over a fortnight, and why a movement that keeps perfect time on my board loses four minutes a week on a customer wall.
Springs
Letting down a mainspring before it lets you down
How I release the power in a going barrel, the order I do it in, the afternoon a let-down key slipped, and why I no longer open barrels on the open bench.
Wear
Bushing a worn pivot hole without making it worse
Oval pivot holes in an eight-day mantel movement: how I measure the wear before touching anything, and the two bushes I pressed in crooked and had to drill out again.
Fixed above the bench
Four lines I keep having to read again
- Measure the pivot before deciding what is wrong with the hole.
- A movement that will not run clean will not run oiled.
- Fourteen days on the board, not one good evening.
- Leave the last repairer's work alone unless it is failing.