Repairing Antique Clock Hands

Clock hands are one of the most important visual elements on a clock. They are usually made of fairly thin, and delicate steel, blued, and abuse suffered from mishandling them, or forcing them, can wreak havoc on them over time. The hands from this longcase clock are no exception.

As a general rule, heavy steel hands are easier to repair, since they are thicker and sturdier than very thin (more mass-produced) examples. Both types of hands, however, can be repaired in the same manner.

Repairing hands is relatively straight forward: Mend the break with a supporting piece on the reverse. Actually executing the repairs, however, can get very tricky.

In the case of the hands on this particular clock, we have two repairs to make (one on each hand). The hour hand was broken in half at some point, and simply repaired with an overlapped solder repair. The minute hand is missing about 3/4" from the tip.

As received:





To start, you will need to find suitable "patch" material. Ideally, you want thin steel with a good carbon content (such as spring steel, which isn't very flexible). Any usable scrap steel can be used. Thin saw blades, taper pins (which would need to be filed flat on two surfaces), or strong sheet metal. Keep in mind that the patch steel will now be taking the job of transferring the force applied to the hand, so you want a stiff metal. Try to stick to something relatively thin. A hacksaw blade could work, but it's getting a bit on the thick side. For this hand, I used a piece of relatively thick spring steel (scrap metal).

Coarsely cut or grind your patch to the correct width. You will want to cut it long enough to hold a good solder bond on each side of the break.

In this photo, you can see the patch piece, and the hand, which has been taken apart, and had the excess solder scraped away.



File, or otherwise abrade and clean the 3 surfaces to be joined (one surface of your patch, and a portion on each side of the hand - on the back).

Tin all 3 surfaces separately, and THINLY. For this type of repair, I'm using regular solder (mine happens to be silver bearing low-temp solder: 98% tin, 2% silver).



To make soldering all 3 pieces easier, I tie all the pieces tightly together using old window screen wire (visible in the photo above). This works well because the screen is aluminum. Aluminum will not stick to solder.

I also use one of those "helping hand" tools to hold the hand while it's heated.



As I mentioned earlier, these hand repairs can be tricky, and parts can move easily. Here was my first attempt:



If this happens, just desolder, re-flux, and redo the repair.

Once your pieces are properly aligned, sturdy, and cooled, you can start filing the repair. Start by squaring the edges. Once that's done, you will also want to taper all the other edges on the back in a pyramid shaped fashion. This can be done entirely by hand with files, or you can cheat and combine hand filing with the use of a grinding wheel on a Dremel tool (which is what I did).

Aim for something like this:



The purpose of tapering the repair is simply to make it look less visible from a slight angle when you're viewing the hand(s) from the front.

The front on this particular hand is not 100% perfect (especially if you're looking at an extreme close-up), but the repair came out quite well.



To finish the repair, you will need to use a cold method to colour the repair and solder, such as Gun Blue, or paint.

Here is the completed hour hand:







I didn't photograph any of the repairs to the minute hand, but I'll explain what I did.

For the minute hand, I decided to cheat and make both a beautiful, solid, and easy repair. Since the hand terminates in a very gradual point, I simply chose an appropriately shaped steel taper pin for the repair. I did not need a 3-piece repair here. I simply filed a notch into the end of the pin until the hand fit into it flush on the top surface. Once soldered, the front and back of the pin were filed down, and the repair is nearly invisible.



Back:





I have used the same techniques described above to repair other hands with equally good results.

Quickie Tutorial - Wax-Filling

Wax-filled engravings can greatly enhance the look of clock components. Although this is not something that you use very often, it's quite a simple process, and it's very easy to do. This is not usually a skill that's practised or used by beginners, but at the same time, it is not an advanced skill to learn. Anyone can learn this technique.

For this tutorial, I will be showing wax-filling on a simple brass beat plate. This is not a finely engraved example, but rather a cheaply mass-produced one that is easily available for a few dollars.

The tools needed for wax-filling are simple and inexpensive. You will need:

- Alcohol Lamp
- Alcohol (Denatured/Ethanol/Methyl Hydrate)
- A burn-in knife (or an artist's trowel)
- Dial "wax"
- Various sanding and polishing sundries



Before we begin, a few additional notes:

Alcohol Lamp: These lamps are easily found from clock parts suppliers, and are equally easy to find on eBay. I have this one (above, which can sit at different angles) as well as 2 other antique ones (with flat bases). They will often have a wick-cap because the alcohol will evaporate fairly easily from the lamp. If you're not planning to use the lamp again, empty the alcohol back into your container, otherwise it will be gone by the next time you need the lamp again.

The reason for using alcohol in these lamps (rather than oil or kerosene) is that the alcohol will give a clean flame that will not leave ugly black soot or oil residue on the pieces you're heating. It also burns with a blue flame that produces a lot of heat, but nearly no visible light (so you can stare directly at what you're working on, without blinding your eyeballs).

Knife: No particular knife is essential. You can use no knife, and simply rub the dial wax onto the heated piece to be filled, but the advantage of using a thin, flexible knife is that you can "squeegee-off" a lot of the excess wax, which (as you will see later) is difficult to remove in the finishing stage. The particular knife that I use is a dollar store item, but art supply dealers, clock parts suppliers, and specialty woodworking supply houses also carry them.

Dial "wax": The dial wax is actually not a wax at all. It is a deeply coloured shellac or lacquer product, and it is sold in sticks. For the purposes of this tutorial I'll simply refer to the product as a wax. Depending where you buy it, it may be called by different names (shellac stick, lacquer sticks, dial wax, dial shellac, etc), but it will always appear as a shiny fragile black stick. Clock parts dealers carry these, but be aware that you can also find them cheaper from woodworking suppliers. The place where I bought mine (Lee Valley Tools) sells the shellac sticks in about a dozen different colours, including clear and amber colours, which could be used for case repairs. I have also seen some rare and unusual engraved clock dials that used red or blue as an accent. The sticks generally cost around 5$ each.

General Safety Note:
When working with fire, be sure to work safely. Do not overfill the lamp, make sure to work on a clean, safe work area, and as a general safety measure, know where the fire extinguisher, first aid, and other such items are in your home, should you need them.

With that out of the way, let's get started. You will want to make sure that your engraved item is clean. I would not advise to highly polish and scour it in this case. Simply wash it and make sure there are no traces of oils or dirt on it.



When filling the engravings, you have several techniques that you can use, and they will depend strongly on your preferences. In my case, I like to heat the knife, and melt a small blob of the wax onto the tip. To help the wax "grab" the metal better, I also gently heat the piece that is being filled (use not-marring pliers). The rest is just a series of back and forth actions, heating the piece, the spatula, trowelling, heating, etc.

Note: Do not overheat the knife or the piece being filled. If you overheat the piece, you will notice that the wax gets too liquid and it will start to flow out from the engravings. If this happens, simply remove it from the heat, wait for it to cool slightly, and redistribute the wax. You need to hit just the right balance. If the wax is too cool, it will stick everywhere like honey.

You want to make sure all the grooves of your design are filled, but you also want to try to keep as little wax on the rest of the surface as possible. If you can completely avoid large flat areas, DO SO. On a very small item like this, it was easier to just cover everything thinly. On a large item like a dial, you want to do just the numerals and divisions.



Once your filled piece has cooled (don't put it under cold water as this could crack the wax), you can start the finishing process.

This is the only difficult part of the whole process. The excess surface wax must be carefully sanded. It will not want to come off easily, but have patience with it. You can use a combination of whatever abrasives you like, including steel wool, wet-dry sand paper, wet-sanding, etc. Try to use a sanding block to get a nice flat surface, and avoid coarse grits that could deeply scratch your finish surface. You will want to avoid any kind of power tool or wire wheels, as these will tend to pull the wax out of the engravings, or overheat/melt the wax from friction.

Once all the excess wax is removed, you can go over the surface in one direction. In the case of this beat scale, a "side-to-side" direction along the length of the piece worked fine. If you're working on a longcase clock dial, however, you will want to build yourself a circular sanding pad/platform. More on that in the future (or you can search the web for others' setups/tutorials for this).

Finish with a brass polish to buff the surface of the metal and the wax.





And that's it! This entire process took me less than 10 minutes (start to finish). It actually took 10x longer to edit and write this post than to actually do the wax filling. If you are after a silvered surface instead, you would do it at this point (more on this in a future tutorial), and follow with a clear spray lacquer. This finished beat scale is being left "natural" to tarnish/patina. You will note that the black shows up nicely with the addition of a clear lacquer.