You are in the clock tips set of pages.
- You Are Here: Exploring Your New Old Clock
- Winding Your Clock
- Is Your Clock Ticking Evenly?
- The Winding Schedule: Living with a Wind-Up Clock
Exploring Your New Old Clock
Carefully determining if your clock will run. Above all, do no harm.
Let's imagine you came into possession of an old family clock and you want to see if you can get it to run. Your first inclination might be to wind it up to see if it works. Please don't wind it yet.
To Wind or Not To Wind?
When exploring an unfamiliar old clock, let's start with not winding the clock, because:
- In general, old clocks are put away because they stopped working. That means there is probably still power wound on the springs, so you probably don't need to wind them more before you see if it will run.
- Maybe someone else, years ago, tried to get the clock to work and wound it all the way up.
- If you are new to clocks, you might put your hand on the key, apply winding pressure to a fully-wound clock, think it's stuck, give it a bit more "juice", and break something.
- Maybe the mechanism is stuck or jammed in just the wrong way so that when you turn the winding key something gets damaged.
See if the Clock Will Run
Open the back (or front) of the clock and give the pendulum bob a little push to make it swing. The clock should start ticking. If it keeps ticking, and ticking evenly, congratulations! At this point you might let it run for a while and when it stops, read Winding Your Clock, wind it a few times, and see if it keeps running.
If it keeps ticking, but is not ticking evenly, follow these instructions to make it tick in a regular fashion like a metronome.
Once you have a clock that looks like it is going to run, you might be interested in reading The Winding Schedule: Living with a Wind-Up Clock to figure out how to wind it fully.
If ticking doesn't last for long or not at all, there are other things that are preventing proper operation. In this case, we hope you contact us to help you with your clock.