18th Century Fusee Dial Clock with verge escapement

This clock arrived in a completely non-functional state. Repairers marks on the plate indicated that it had been problematic for a long time and had been repeatedly in and out of workshops without a solution being found. The lack of functionality was mainly down to the escapement - the verge and crown wheel were positioned too far from each other and the drops were very excessive, resulting in loss of power. A previous repairer had attempted to rectify this by replacing the mainspring with a newer, stronger one - a solution which fortunately had failed, otherwise would have resulted in heavy wear to the gear train. In fact, the clock was displaying little wear - an advantageous side-effect of it not having worked for a long time.

Numerous past repositionings of the crown wheel and verge were evident. It was clear that at some point the crown wheel had been moved lower, seemingly by forcing the collet down the arbor to accommodate the turning of a new pivot. The traditional repair for a heavily worn pivot is to drill down the centre of the arbor and insert a new friction fit pivot - this is the much better solution since it does not result in any shortening of the arbor. By not using the correct method, this earlier repairer had initiated a domino effect of tail-chasing repairs, none of which had resulted in a functioning escapement. A later repairer must have recognised the problem of the excessive drop caused by the lowered crown wheel, but their solution of moving the verge front pivot lower with a steel half-bush had not fixed the problem, and was likely to cause heavy wear to the pivot if it had. The V-block that the verge knife-edge runs on had also been replaced with a steel substitute, which would equally have caused extreme wear on the knife-edge had the escapement been functioning. The crown wheel depth-adjusting screw was also a modern replacement that was unfit for purpose.

The original verge front pivot hole was too close to the plate edge to be rebushed in the usual fashion, so a new section of brass was dovetailed into the plate, and a correctly positioned pivot hole made. The steel V-block was replaced with a hammer-hardened cast brass piece more suitable for the job. The crown wheel collet appeared to be historic and was aesthetically valuable, so rather than re-collet the crown wheel back into its original position (the traditional solution to incorrectly positioned wheels, but one that would have resulted in the loss of the original collet), the bottom of the crown wheel arbor was repivoted with a longer pivot, to increase the height of the wheel.

A new, functional depth-adjusting screw was also manufactured, matching the existing thread of the hole to prevent loss of historic material and design. With the escapement issues addressed, the overpowered mainspring was replaced with a lighter spring in order to reduce future wear on the train.

The bezel key had also been lost, so a new one was manufactured.