Expert: Martin Meyer - 8/18/2009

Question
The winding of the hour weight will not click or hold up when you wind it. This is  Sligh Grand father clock 1990. It stopped clicking
but held the weigh, now it doesn't.
Thanks

Answer
Hi John,

The cable winds onto a drum, and the drum has a ratchet mechanism on it called the click and clickspring which keeps the drum from unwinding when it is wound. The click is a ratchet pawl which engages a ratchet wheel on the drum, and the clickspring is a flat spring which holds the click pressed firmly against the ratchet wheel.

On your clock, the clickspring first weakened, which caused the disappearance of the clicking sound because the click was pressing only weakly on the ratchet wheel. Finally, the clickspring either broke or bent so far backwards that it no longer maintains any pressure on the click, and so does not hold the drum wound anymore. Repair of this problem is definitely a job for a professional clock repairer; the movement must be removed from the clock and the hands and dial removed, then some degree of disassembly of the movement is required to replace the click or, sometimes, the entire cable drum.  http://www.clockmasteronline.com