Brass Gear Clock Bench

Lyon · France · Anno 2015

Domestic mechanical movements, mended one at a time and written down the same week

Bound and numbered

Repair record

Every job written up for these pages, newest first. The earliest one here is from 17 October 2023; the four years of entries before that are in two hardback books on the shelf and were never meant to be read by anyone else.

  • Wear
  • Springs
  • Timekeeping
  • A job start to finish
  1. 2026

    Four attempts at one eight-day wall movement

    A job start to finish

    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.

    Finished 27 Jan 2026 · corrected 9 Jun 2026 · 11 minutes at the pace I read

  2. 2025

    Putting a pendulum in beat by count rather than by guess

    Timekeeping

    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.

    Finished 11 Mar 2025 · corrected 6 Nov 2025 · 10 minutes at the pace I read

  3. 2024

    Letting down a mainspring before it lets you down

    Springs

    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.

    Finished 26 Feb 2024 · corrected 14 Sept 2024 · 8 minutes at the pace I read

  4. 2023

    Bushing a worn pivot hole without making it worse

    Wear

    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.

    Finished 17 Oct 2023 · corrected 2 Mar 2024 · 9 minutes at the pace I read

Entries are corrected rather than rewritten, and a correction never removes the figure that was wrong. Where a later job contradicts an earlier one, both stay and the newer says which it overturns. The reasoning behind that is set out in thenote on how a job is written up.