Father & Son Precision Time

Wooden Gear Clock Repair and Reproductions

We embrace preservation of your wooden gear clock. You might consider having us preserve the original movement and make a reproduction of it to put in your case behind the original dial. Depending upon the complexity of the movement, we can produce one, made with laminate hardwoods, for between $3000 and $3500. The original movement can be hermetically containerized and stored in the bottom of the clock case for safekeeping.

Your consent to begin work holds us blameless of any direct or consequential damage to the clock gears and plates during handling, disassembly, cleaning, restoring, assembly and test. Old wood is extremely fragile and not predictable. Gear tooth weakness cannot be seen; it’s experienced as a chain reaction of shattered and flying gear teeth!

If, during the course of restoring the movement, additional teeth fracture, then those will be charged additionally to the job that we have estimated. If, during the course of testing the movement, catastrophic damage occurs similar to what I’ve described below, the job stops. You will still be liable for the work as estimated, working or not. There is no running warranty expressed or implied. Again, old wood is extremely fragile and not predictable.

Father & Son Precision Time understands your desire to restore your wooden gear clock back to full operating condition. There are some things you should realize about the character of wood.

Clocks manufactured from the late 1700’s through the early 1800’s were done so out of necessity. The British were not very keen of the colonists making munitions, cannons and an array of weapons from imported clock movements, parts and other raw materials, thus an embargo was placed on the colonies. No materials were available to the early clockmakers to make clocks of steel and brass construction.

Thus these clockmakers resorted to using available materials…wood and crude steel. As you realize, no two pieces of wood are the same, and when a gear is cut from a solid piece of wood, the grain in one direction will give one degree of strength whereas a gear tooth cut across the grain is not very strong.

Now add to that a couple hundred years of neglect, dirt, humidity and temperature changes from season to season, and you can understand why we believe the best thing you can do for your wooden gear clock is to preserve it “as is”. However, if you really want it restored and functional, then you run the risk of catastrophic damage to the gear trains from tooth failure. It may not happen, but it might happen.

We always hold our breath with these gems, since so much happens to wood under tension, release and stress again, as the clock ticks, the strike engages and stops, over and over again….and this has already happened over a period of decades of use. 

Failure can never be predicted with wood.  One moment it's visibly fine, and then with the next use, a failure can occur. Not so with metal gears where failure generally appears first as visible distortion.

Only a very small percentage of wooden gear clocks survive today, and most of those are in a very precarious condition.  It was never intended for wooden gear clocks to be manufactured on a continuing basis.  Wood swells, contracts, is subject to wet rot, dry rot, etc.  Many of these clocks have seen storage in damp basements or fiercely hot attics, and then put on display beside a potbelly stove.  Imagine the stresses involved.

After working on dozens of wooden gear clocks over the past 30 years, I've not yet found one that didn't offer surprises.  In fact, I don't think I've ever charged a job where I didn't end up on the losing end. They're not predictable, plain and simple.

There is an available practice of treating the wooden gears and plates with penetrating epoxy that serves to add strength to the wood.  However, conservationists depart from this method, in that it is a process that cannot be reversed.  Those who advocate the use of penetrating epoxy would argue that the colonists would have used it if the product existed. 

You'll have to be the person who makes that decision, since it is your clock.  When treated, the epoxy dries clear and is not visible to the eye.  The only way one would be able to determine treatment by penetrating epoxy is by laboratory analysis.  Those that are not treated are very susceptible to further degradation, whereas those that are treated stand a chance of going another two hundred years, possibly longer.

Therefore, we will do our best to restore your wooden gear clock to running condition, but we will not warrant its running order once it leaves our custody. It is our hope that you will return the clock to its place of honour in the corner of your living room, with weights removed, stored neatly in the bottom of the case, silent for yet another two hundred years.

Again, we will do our best, but we can’t predict the fickle nature of unseen stresses in the grain structure of wood. We will proceed only on these terms.

Thanks for understanding.

Father & Son Precision Time

10/1/1978