Clock of the day (3)

The third item for today is also from France. It is the product of an unknown company. The cast iron case had been sprayed a gaudy shade of gold which was meant to resemble the typical French gilt finish. Ahem. The movement however is the interesting bit. It is a thirty hour striking movement with a short tic-tac pendulum. I had to replace the mainspring when I bought it, as the original one had broken. To my disappointment, I discovered that the new spring, a thirty hour alarm clock spring adapted for barrel mounting, would only run the clock for about twelve hours. This is a pitfall of the going barrel system... mainspring diameter becomes a crucial factor in determining how much mainspring is available to drive the clock. I then got another old alarm spring, from one of those near-unserviceable alarm clocks which uses both ends of the mainspring to drive both time and alarm from one barrel... and finally got the clock to go for a whole day. However, if it kept time in the first few hours it would be at least twenty minutes slow by the time it was due to be rewound, such was the barrel's restrictive effect on the spring's energy. Also, the clock struck whatever hour it felt like and sometimes didn't bother striking at all. The movement was out of it's case, fixed, and reinstalled almost on a daily basis, until I finally had enough and sold it. I still think I should have persevered, but I might never have sorted the mainspring issue. Perhaps the tic-tac escapement was part of the problem. I do wonder however if there are others of this type out there? I have seen identical cases with rear-winding eight-day lever timepiece movements.