OT? The Drexel Rittenhouse Clock

MrStretch · Mar 11, 2020

Really just want to toot my horn, but my proposal to restore and document the Drexel Rittenhouse orrey clock was approved today. The "most important clock in America" will finally be restored and properly documented. The guy who wrote the monograph with the above quoted title is a retired engineer who based the entire work on photos of clock and complete ignorance of traditional clockmaking. If you want to see real bodgery in action, there is video on line of him and a similarly sausage fingered friend adding a modern coil spring to the movement behind the dial. Can't wait to remove it and really fix the problem.

L Vanice · Mar 11, 2020

MrStretch said:
... Drexel Rittenhouse orrey clock was approved today. ...

You probably meant orrery clock. Sounds like a great challenge.

Larry,
NAWCC member since 1962

MrStretch · Mar 11, 2020

Not a huge challenge, really. I have worked on many 18th century tallcase clocks. The two big things are unbodging it and documenting it properly, which can only be done by somebody with real antiquarian horological knowledge.
More than 10 years ago now i applied for, and declined the job offer for the head clock instructor at the NAWCC school. I knew it wouldn't work when i saw the classroom. Sher**** "lathes" and "mills" with watchmakers benches and vises, none of it appropriate for professional clock restoration. They have since resorted to complete frauds like Gregg Perry to teach short courses after losing their accreditation

SIP6A · Mar 11, 2020

MrStretch said:
\Sher**** "lathes" and "mills" with watchmakers benches and vises, none of it appropriate for professional clock restoration.

They have since resorted to complete frauds like Gregg Perry to teach short courses after losing their accreditation

Glad I'm not the only one to know that.

Gregg Perry isn't the only fraud teaching there.

MrStretch · Mar 11, 2020

Yeah, much better not to get involved. Guy claimed to have West Dean horological training which is completely false.
Joke's on him as not that many people actually care about or know the difference. The clock program at West Dean is post-gradute and applying involves submitting an application and then, if they think you might be ok, passing an all day practical exam in the clock workshop. I guess i did pretty well as they asked me back for a second year.

rivett608 · Mar 11, 2020

How about some links to this clock? I think I know which one it is but let’s let everyone know.

What kind of issues will you have to deal with?

L Vanice · Mar 11, 2020

rivett608 said:
How about some links to this clock? I think I know which one it is but let’s let everyone know.

What kind of issues will you have to deal with?

Hear Masterpiece Rittenhouse Clock's Chimings | Now | Drexel University

Larry

MrStretch · Mar 12, 2020

One thing i will most definately fix is the music. Right now, it sounds like a bag of hammers. It just needs to be carefully sorted.

How does one post a picture? "Go advanced" is no help, just more weird obscurity.

northernsinger · Mar 13, 2020

I'm glad to have good work on this.

Just about across the street from this clock is Rittenhouse's orrery. When a student at the Univ of Pennsylvania in the late 1960's and early '70's, I was more interested in the orrery--then housed around the corner from the main circulation desk in the Van Pelt Library--then in about anything else in the place (except maybe, the Library's books). I should have paid more attention to classes, but I did notice that interesting work.

MrStretch · Mar 13, 2020

The orreries in the arches of the 2 tallcase orrery clocks are considerably simpler than the 2 stand alone ones. The Penn orrery is probably the best preserved of the lot. The Penn hospital clock was significantly modified in the 2nd half of the 20th century and the Princeton orrey was found broken in a crate and motorized ( oh, the horror ). As for the Drexel clock, all i know is that it sat in bits for a while and was last worked on by Eric Wilson ( oh, the horror ), a typical bushing machine jockey, over 20 years ago.

MrStretch · Jul 23, 2020

Yeah!
Getting started on this Tuesday. The movement was removed from the case this week and is waiting for me in the store room/work area adjoining the curator's office.
Super excited, if this works out i will end being hired to be the clock keeper for Drexel and will get to consult on the Atwater-Kent collection and do all the clock restoration work.

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

The Rittenhouse is finished!
Here's a pic of me attaching the dial the other day. The clock is striking properly for the first time in many years. I wonder if Mr. Hoppes is going to be mad when he discovers that I know his description of the strike work in his book is fiction. It is a variety of a grande sonniere mechanism that strikes the hour on one bell and the quarters on a smaller one every quarter. The extra clever part is that it counts 0-1-2-3 quarters so that if it set to hour strike only it automatically works correctly since it counts 0 quarters at the top of the hour.

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

The music will be re-recorded next month. The last person to take the clock apart made absolutely no effort at all to set up the music. The existing recordings sound really bad. Turn out there was no spring tension on the music pin barrel so it was just bouncing or shifting aimlessly, so it wasn't playing any song in particular. Sadly, a critical part of the music change mechanism is missing, so the clock will be set to repeat the best sounding tune. I will be assisting the music prof by manually setting & adjusting the mechanism for each of the 10 songs ( which are unidentified, but at least now the individual tunes have some coherence. )

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

Here's my bushing tools and me hammering a bush. Mainly just wanted to post a pic of me swinging a hammer at the most valuable clock in the states.

Joe in NH · Sep 19, 2020

I would imagine "Westminster Chime" is one of the musical sequences?

It may even be set up "quarto" - where at 15 minute a partial stanza is played, at 30 minutes the next stanza, at 45 minutes another - and at the hour the entire musical phrase followed by the hour strike. Westminster Quarters - Wikipedia

I grew up in Bridgewater, MA almost directly across from the Administration building of Bridgewater State College (now "University".) This clock tower played the quarto version of Westminster Chime. I think done with loudspeakers. And for two days after moving into the house in 1960, the chime was all we could hear - then nothing. It's amazing what the human mind can adapt to.

The last chime of the day for that very public steeple was 9 p.m. That event marked I had to be in bed as an 8 year old.

That hour I mostly DID hear. Mostly...

Joe in NH

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

No, it won't do any kind of quarter chiming, just quarter stiking with the grande sonniere mechanism. The dial controls on this clock are another thing that has obviously confused people over the years. One can set the music release for every 2 hrs, hourly, half hourly or quarterly and then there is a seperate lever for how many times the song is played (1-4) so it gives the illusion that there might be a quarter chime configuration but there is not. I believe that some of the alterations of the movement were caused by this misunderstanding. None of this matters as long as I'm alive and working in Philly because I'm the only person that will be touching the clock. The dial controls are explained in my treatment report so future generations hopefully won't be confused.

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

Back in the 18th century, barrel pinning for musical clocks was a seperate skill and the barrels might have been brought in already pinned. If the songs on a musical clock are labeled at all, it's usually generic like 'waltz' or something. I think most of the songs are copies of current popular songs known these days as classical music. Hopefully the music prof will recognise some of them. On this clock, the tunes are simply numbered 1-10.
Btw, the Westminster chime is derived from an aria in Handel's Messiah. There are also extant examples of automatic music machines ( mostly spring-driven barrel organs ) that have music specifically written for them by a composer. There is one in the Musical Clock Museum in Utrecht that has tunes written by one of the Haydens.

Joe in NH · Sep 19, 2020

And I see from the Wikipedia entry that Westminster Chime is a relatively late convention - originally about 1793 or even later in the Big Ben application.

Big Ben was probably the biggest promoter of this theme. It's application in the US was likely done after the 1851 origin of Big Ben. As a steeple chime it appears that the first US steeple installation was at Trinity College PA after 1875.

It is a remarkable sequence both in its simplicity - and its application to clockworks. How to make something appear more complex when in reality you make it simpler.

Funny you should bring this all up now. My 8 day Forestdale, CT Ogee clock (mass produced brass clock circa 1860ish) in my shop staggered to a halt last week and the works is currently on my workbench getting it's "10 year" flush out, cleaning, and oiling.

I don't expect the makers EVER expected it would still be running 150 years later.

Joe in NH

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

Yes, definately be suspicious of an 18th clock that plays Westminster chimes.
The Westminster chime is very clever. There are 5 sets of 4 notes on the barrel, so it rotates 2x per hour (1+2+3+4), but still gives one the illusion if it somehow completing the song at the top of the hour. Clever.
Sorry to be pendantic, but Big Ben is actually the name of the hour bell. It's called (only the English...) "the great clock at westminter". It is huge, about the size of a flatbed truck. I was up there twice and both times got to stand 10-15 feet from Big Ben at noon. Remarkable.

MrStretch · Sep 19, 2020

Personally hoping that one of the songs is the Star Wars theme. Or maybe Mission Impossible. Or the beginning of Thus Spake Zarathustra.

OT? The Drexel Rittenhouse Clock

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