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.

Clock of the day (2)

To get this site started off in style, I'm uploading a few clocks today. This one is from the French company FFR. It is a calendar clock from the 1950s, operated by two "D" type 1.5volt batteries. The case is wood with a formica front. The calendar mechanism consists of a motorised roller system with a long paper roll bearing every date from the 1st of March to the 29th of February. This is activated very noisily at midnight every night, and every year on the 1st of March it has to rewound all the way to the beginning! At least the process is motorised...

The movement part is also interesting. It is of typical high quality French construction, with finely cut wheels, solid pinions, and a platform lever escapement. The auto-winding system is performed by a swivelling magnet which travels between the poles of a horse-shoe electromagnet. In fact this is more like a motor rewind than a kick rewind, although the motor in this case can only rotate about 45 degrees.

I have seen kitchen clocks offered for sale on the Internet with this same type of movement. It would seem that many movements which were commonplace in their country of origin were rare or even unknown in the UK, an aspect of clock collecting which has come about solely as a result of the global village. There are indeed great discoveries to be made out there but in many cases it requires a second look. The name FFR itself may have been unknown in the UK. Another clock with this name will be featured later... being the subject of a desperate quest for parts.

The calendar clock featured here seems to be a rare model. I have only ever seen one more FFR clock with this calendar system.

Clock of the day

This clock is made from bakelite, and has no maker's name or country of origin anywhere on it. I owned it for a few years and sold it about two years ago. I suspect it is Japanese, particularly by the style of numerals. It has a very basic, almost crude, 30 hour weight driven movement wound by a chain. It has no pendulum suspension, instead it has what I term a "flick pendulum", which simply hangs on the end of the crutch. The pallets move in a jerk rather than swinging smoothly, so there is a huge amount of error. The chain is fixed bizarrely to both top and bottom of the driving weight in a loop. Despite it's atrocious timekeeping I particularly liked this clock, but it had to go, as funds were tight...

Welcome to my website!

My name is Tommy Wylie, I live in Orkney (Scotland, UK) and I am a keen collector of clocks. I have studied clocks since I was old enough to say "Mam, what time is it?". Over the years, I have bought and sold a huge number. I have rebuilt ones from near-dead and I have sometimes made new clocks out of bits which were never intended to be compatible. However, I don't intend to stop gathering clocks and describing them here in detail for the benefit of all who visit. I hope that through this site, light can be shed on obscure items, and clocks which have been thought of as trivial can be examined in greater depth. I have found many fascinating items which needed a second look! I aim that this site will reveal some overlooked gems as well as discussing the more commonplace. Hopefully the discussions and discoveries will be of interest and benefit to clock enthusiasts everywhere!