Thanks, Patrick. I've had pendulum clocks for 40+ years. This new one is a replacement for an old Tameside clock I bought in England 40 years ago. I still have the old one but the mainspring has broken and I've tried three horologists to see if it could be fixed. One said he wasn't taking new business, planned to retire once his backlog was gone, one kept it for just about a year and then said he couldn't get the parts to fix it, the third wouldn't even take it. Said he couldn't get to it for 18 months, that the part he thought it might need would then take over a year to have custom made and the cost of the part alone would be more than the value of the clock itself. So it stayed on the wall, silent and stuck. Two years.
I found this one last week to replace it:
Almost exactly the same, fully refurbished. I don't know the maker, I've not taken the case off to examine the mechanism yet. The clock is pretty accurate with my first calibration, about 1 minute fast each day, but I know I can get it closer with some adjustment on the pendulum and a good leveling.
The old one was a Tameside fusee mechanism, made by the Tameside clock company in Oldham, England, near Manchester, in the early 1900's (went out of business in the 1920's). They made thousands of them for offices, schools, pubs, railway stations. Beautiful oak case, but the face was in pretty poor condition. They didn't think that the clocks would last over a century! I got it so accurate before it broke that it would be within a minute of correct time each time I wound it, once a week.
This new one is refurbished, newly painted face and hands and the mechanism serviced by a horologist in the Valley about 100 miles from where I live. I do know it is a fusee mechanism and I suspect it, too, is early 20th century, definitely English. And I'll get it calibrated to be really accurate. It's surprising how good that fusee mechanism can be, given how simple it really is.
