Manufactured by Gordian Hettich Sohn around 1870, this came to me for repairs to the carvings on the outside, and a movement service, including a new pendulum.
The first job I tackled were the mouldings, colour matching can take a long time, so carving the mouldings and starting the stain process was a must. I use oil based stains, as the water based ones tend to fade in the sunlight over time, but they take longer to dry, so you have to wait 24 hours between each application. The carving was accomplished using a traditional knife, fret saw and my faithful Dremel.
Turning my attention to the inside, I new I needed to order in some new parts, replacement bellows, covers for the pipes and a pendulum for starters.
With the guts taken out, I started by stripping the movement down and putting it through the ultrasonic cleaner.
Fractured mainspring
Taking the mainsprings out of their barrels, I found that one had a fracture, so this was replaced with a new one.
Whilst I had the movement in parts, it was a good time to give the cuckoo a spruce up. I did not want to repaint the bird, after all, it had lasted over 100 years, so it was throughly cleaned, taking it from almost total black, from dirt, soot, smoke etc. to bringing out its original paintwork.
The movement was thoroughly inspected before re-assembly, especially the pivots and bearings, oiled and put on the test stand for a few days. I took a couple of days to get the replacement pendulum to the right length, some movements give you a pendulum length, this one was trial and error…
There was a lot of fiddling with the linkages, once the movement was back in its case, as the bellows tops were not the same shape as the originals (the owner was not prepared to pay for the original bellows to be restored), but we got there in the end.
A final wax and polish and we have a fully working table top cuckoo clock again, ready for another 100 years of service.
19th century table top cuckoo clock