Information about us:

Who are we?

We are a husband and wife team, living in in the lovely village of Steyning, West Sussex.

The business is run by Richard Gordon (M Eng, C Eng, ACGI) who is a first class Chartered Mechanical Engineer from Imperial College London and a member of the City and Guilds College Association. Richard has a wide and varied interest in clocks, watches and other time keepers. In addition, he is widely skilled and experienced in machine building, engine design and development, the design, build and development of computer controlled machine tools and also electronic systems.

He is currently building a complex clock of his own design as well as machine tools and other gadgets. Please see the Projects section.

Richard has an active and varied clock service, repair and restoration interest and is ready to help you keep your clock running perfectly.

Thank you for visiting our new web site. Any feedback you have is gratefully received.

Information about your clock:

Tick-Tock and moving your clock?

The noise your clock makes is a very good indication of its health and its history. Moving clocks is quite a risky business because the parts used to suspend the pendulum are fragile. They have to be like this because they have to let the pendulum swing. If you do not remove the pendulum before moving the clock then you are very likely to make it swing to far in one direction. On some clocks, this can push the pallets into the escapement wheel. Sometimes this damages the teeth and can push the wheel out of true (it starts to wobble). You can hear this when the clock is running again. If you listen for a few minutes, you will hear slight differences in each tick. Usually getting louder and softer and sometimes not exactly the same type of tick.

Please make sure you remove the pendulum from your clock before moving it. Usually, this is very easy and obvious but do be careful, it is fragile.

Moving the clock can also mean it does not equally tick. If you listen to the clock it should sound like this:

Tick.......Tick.......Tick.......Tick.......Tick.......Tick.......Tick.......Tick

If it sounds like this:

Tick...Tock..........Tick...Tock..........Tick...Tock..........Tick...Tock

Then the clock is not level. Try putting a shim or folded piece of paper under one side (or tilt on the wall and you should hear the clock become more even. This is called “putting in beat”. Actually, what is happening is the pendulum and the clock mechanism (movement) are now lined up correctly so that the pallets move the same amount into the escape wheel. See here for an illustration.

If you set your clock in beat, it will have the best chance of keeping time and also, for a spring driven clock, should run for the 8, 30 or whatever the normal number of days between windings.

Bibliography:

Books we have found useful:

“Britten’s Watch and Clock Makers Handbook, Dictionary and Guide”, 16th edition, Good

“Clock Design and Construction”, Laurie Penman

“Watch and Clock making and Repairing”, W. J. Gaseley,

“Clock and Watch Escapements”, W. J. Gaseley,

“The Quest for Longitude”, Andrews

“Longitude”, Dava Sobel.