Expert: William J Perkins - 12/31/2009

Question
 Hello, my wife purchased a very nice 1850's German table clock for me about 2 years ago.  It came from German ebay from a master clockmaker.  It was cleaned and tuned ready to go before transport.  I put the pendulum on and tried to restart it and was distracted by a noise that caused me to swing the pendulum a bit too hard.  I believe what has happened is commonly referred to as banked.  There are no clock shops here local and no one wants to drive to unbank this clock.  My wife is a jeweler and has an extensive experience with German clocks but is unsure how to unbank one.  Can you explain to me how to do this?

Answer
You are apparently speaking of the clock beat, a sound generated by the swinging pendulum, which is connected to what is called the anchor.  As the pendulum swings back and forth, at each extremity the anchor should release a tooth of the escape wheel.  As a tooth escapes, the action is stopped by the anchor engaging another tooth sending the pendulum back in the other direction until a tooth escapes on the other side.  This keeps repeating until the power source is depleted.  The sound caused by this capture, release sequence is the tick, tick you hear.  For a clock to run correctly the sound must be the same at either extremity of the pendulums swing, thus tick, tick is what you want to hear.  Tick, tock tells you the clock is out of beat.  Fortunately putting a clock back into beat is generally fairly simple.  What you do is stop the clock, open the back of the clock, center the pendulum, pull straight down with a force of about 1#, while maintaining this force, swing the pendulum back and forth is an arc of about 1.5".  Release the pendulum at dead center.  Give it a gentle nudge to get is started.  If your clock is one with a friction fit anchor you will have returned the clock to beat.  If your clock does not respond to this routine the anchor is of the fixed variety and you will have to take it to a clock repair person adjustment.  Be of good faith, the probabilities of the clock being of the fixed anchor variety are slim.  Regards WJP