F O R C L O C K M A K E R S
In the FB forum “clockmakers helping clockmakers” we had a story about a Kieninger long-case clock movement with a timing problem. Different theories were posted, some of us found the theorising a little quaint. So I put in my “penny’s worth” about a suspension spring not being the cause of great timing differences.
Having sold and tested – in my 35 years as CLOCKTIME in Cape Town – each of the roughly 2500 Kieninger and some Hermle movements – first just the works and then complete with dial – I have never had a serious problem with the time -keeping. I also checked every movement re. oil and grease, all functions via test on a stand and only found very occasionally a “Monday’s Production”
In the last few years – as I was not importing any more – I converted various regulator movements with 29 cm pendulum to the longer one, mainly 43 cm and 54 as well as long-case clocks from 80 cm to 116 cm pendulums.
For the conversions I made a spreadsheet, checking the various sets of wheels. See the download for the basic details.
The pendulum length and its basic time-keeping is dependent on the appropriate set of wheels, that is the 4th wheel and the escape wheel. With Kieninger, if you deal with the same movement type, say “P” as the first letter in “PK”, “PS” or “PF”, that denotes the same plate-size and lay-out and the same wheels, especially the two which you need to change.
