StyleKing

Style King 400-Day Anniversary Clock

[According to the Holorovar 400-Day Clock Repair Guide (10th Ed.) this clock was made by Edgar Henn, and it is shown as Plate 1099 in the Repair Guide.]

Received from Mom's estate.

Replacement glass dome purchased from Frankenmuth Clock, Wisconsin.

Uses 0.0037" suspension spring

Regulation Screw:

Clockwise = Slower
Counter-Clockwise = Faster

2014-01-11

The unit has been at Mom's for many years without a covering dome, and it is rather dusty. My first order of business, after identifying it as an Euramca Trading Co. (OEM'd Edgar Henn Standard), Plate 1099, was to disassemble it, give every wheel and pivot a good cleaning. All of the pivots were more or less dry. I found a nice layer of oil behind the click wheel on the front plate, but that's about all.

A few items I noticed:

A washer is missing from one of the bottom plate mounting thumbscrews
The click wheel has one tooth with a corner knocked off, but it still works
The 'eccentricity' nut is turned slightly counter-clockwise, probably from the factory that way
The anchor pin was bent slightly toward the front. I bent it back to true vertical
The suspension spring is not kinked but has a roughly 360-degree permanent twist in it
The top block mounting was turned about 15-degrees clockwise, probably in an attempt to set the beat with the badly twisted suspension spring

Some of the screws were very difficult to remove. Since they are steel, and will expand less than brass when heated, I placed the movement into my 250-degree kitchen oven for about ten minutes, after which I was able remove the troublesome screws holding the back plate to the top.

I opened the mainspring barrel by prying the cover off with a small awl, and found the spring to be nicely oiled, with no gumming. The cover was slightly caved in by previous repairmen, using a mallet or other percussive tool to re-install the cover. I flattened it as best I could. I planned to remove the mainspring, but when I wound it on my homemade mainspring winder, the 1-1/4" sleeve's slot was just a tad too narrow to slip over the barrel-loop end of the spring. I choose at that point to simply unwind the spring in the barrel and recover it. After all of these years, I am a bit surprised by the seeming (to my amateur eye) excellent condition of the mainspring lubrication, but I will happily go with it as is. I closed the barrel by simply compressing it in my small desktop vice which has rubber padded jaws.

I reassembled the clock and found the end shake of each wheel, the anchor and the barrel to be fine. I oiled each pivot and the barrel arbor shaft (both ends), mounted the hour and minute hands, rehung the pendulum and started the pendulum.

Sadly, in about five minutes the pendulum was only swinging about 180-degrees and the escapement was not advancing.

Through the next few days I fiddled with the beat and again tried to straighten the suspension spring more perfectly. With the beat set, I found that the clock would ALMOST run, but would still stop after some 20 to 90 minutes.

2014-01-13

After some further research in the Repair Guide and on the Internet, I removed the hands, and the anchor. Then following the suggestions found in my research, I wound the mainspring by a 1/4 turn, and allowed the movement to run, which it did quite well. I don't believe that the problem lies in binding or drag in any pivot or pinion. The wheels all turn quite easily.

2014-01-18

I replaced the suspension spring today. I have only .0023" and .0032" springs, and according to the Repair Guide this particular clock should be using a .0037" spring. But, the original spring had a full 360-degree twist when acquired, and though I straightened it fairly well, the clock still would not run. Again, I had to heat the suspension spring assembly in the kitchen oven to release the fork and bottom block screws, they were so tight. Anyway, on a lark I swapped the suspension spring out for one of my .0032" springs. Let's see how it goes.

After about five minutes of settling down time, the pendulum is swinging almost 440-degrees! Clearly this spring is too thin. I guess the only real drawback is that the pallets will lock too deeply on the escapement wheel, possible inducing wear on the edges of the pallets.

After about fifteen minutes the pendulum is swinging about 390-degrees.

After about forty-five minutes the pendulum was swinging about 370-degrees, and was still going! A quick frequency check of the swing showed that the clock was running very slow, showing 75 seconds elapsed after only 1 minute on the dial! I screwed the regulation nut almost all the way to speed the clock, but it is still running about 6 seconds slow every minute. So, I'll have to get the correct spring after all.

For grins, I remounted the hands on the dial and left the clock running overnight, just to see if it would keep going. It did.

2014-01-30

Mounting .0037" suspension spring

Indeed, referring to my last notes, the clock has continued to run with the thinner spring. It is running VERY slow (time-keeping wise), as noted before, but it has continued to run without trouble.

Today I removed the too-thin .0032" suspension spring and replaced it with the recommended .0037" suspension spring that arrived a week ago from Horolovar. I referenced Plate 1099 and assembly 32 again for the new spring. I rehung the pendulum and started the clock. Hopefully it will continue to run with this spring.

01/30 20:41 -- started 02/01 16:10 -- running slightly slow, about 1 minute a day, adjusted the regulation wheel 15-degees to speed up.

2014-02-01

Completed the re-assembly by installing the back plate 'wings', the pendulum collar bracket and the suspension spring guard.