Time to resurrect this old chestnut.
We bought a wall clock at the second hand store to hang in our quilting room. At $2 it didn't seem like a bad deal, except when we got it home we found it lost an hour every day. I could have thrown it away and gotten a new Chinese clock for $18, but, well, I didn't. I ordered a new US made battery movement and set of hands that cost $28 with shipping and fixed the bugger. It feels good to save something rather than pitch and replace, but in the end I spent probably an hour on it and a good $10 more than I had to. At least now it is partly American made.
I had already fixed it when I took this picture. I just put the useless decorative "halo" on it to show what it looked like when I started.
I took the old motor apart to see what was in it. Plastic gears and a circuit board.
The new motor and two sets of hands were $18 - $28 with shipping. New chinese clocks are $18 to $20 on Amazon. But - Chinese .... Amazon .... No thanks.
All done, works great with American made motor!
About three years ago Vicki bought this Chinese wall clock at ReHome for $10. It doesn't work, but it looks pretty nice except for the cracked glass. She had me hang it on the dining room wall where it has been sitting silently, mocking me for three years.
After the success with the little guy I finally took it down to fix it.
The clock is about 3 feet tall and the woodwork is pretty nice. When I tried to wind it I knew right away the mainspring was broken.
The mainspring for the time keeper was broken, as suspected, but the spring assembly that powered the chimes was identical and in good shape. Hmmm....
Just as I suspected. This clock was made with too many parts! Neither one of us wanted to listen to the chime sounding, so I swapped the spring assembly from the chime side of the movement into the clock side and got rid of all the junk assosiated with making the chime work.
It's a pretty crude mechanism, but it will work for as long as I need it to.
It is kind of soothing to hear the old clock ticking away, and more pleasant than I expected.