tick tock, an aaron willard clock

4/12/2011vvi spent parts of the last couple of days reconstructing the base of a client's aaron willard tall case clock ... aaron died in 1844 so it's been around for a while ... i love a good repair. they are challenging and engage the creative process in powerful ways ... like a good puzzle, you can, and often have to, work on them over time, allowing your concentration to wonder off to other more pressing things ... perfect for the ay dee dee mind ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
my client emailed to tell me that one of the the 20 pound weights that drives the mechanism had snapped it's string (or, as it looks by the red arrow in the photo above) or the weight's hook broke. regardless, it crashed to and through the floor of the case and smashed the base of the clock ... it was easy to see upon disassembling the base that it had been poorly repaired several times in the past ... just cleaning the clots of glue off the pieces was a real challenge ...
everyone else in the shop was doing their thing and as this was an unexpected project, i squeezed it into my work week, working a couple minutes here and a couple hours there until today, it was 'back on its feet' ... ha ha ... above i started with the biggest piece and did some small glue ups to the obvious pieces monday ...
tuesday i puzzled out the side pieces and added back a few missing pieces
planned my strategy ...
until it was ready to go below at the end of the day .
wednesday i added the sides
and clamped the front feet to the rest at the end of the day
this morning i added the back foot supports and the missing glue blocks
and it was ready to go .... somehow, and it is still a mystery to me why, i needed to add a 5/16ths shim to the front right foot and an 1/16th " shim to the front left to get the case to sit level and plumb ... i measured all four feet; all were 3" tall ... but i knew it wasn't a new thing because in the container of broken pieces there were two newish shims with my handwriting on them that i added to level the case when the clock originally arrived several years ago ... now they are officially attached to the feet ... the last thing i have to finish tomorrow is to fit up a new brass piece that was missing in action ... fortunately we had some 3/16ths x 1/2" stock on hand and with a little patience tomorrow, it will be fitted up and in place ...
we'll deliver it next week and meet with the british clockmaker, ray bates and/or his son sometime soon to fix the weight and set the works and bonnet properly ...
in closing, i can say that a good repair to a worthy piece is a fine thing to take on ... there's the challenge to execute it properly, to get it to look right and function correctly, and to change what you are working on from 'not so good' to 'good for another 100 years' ... most rewarding ... and, highly recommended as a study of classical construction methods ...
all done ...
4/20/2011 ...
the clock is home now, in this beautiful room ... we made two pairs of the fancy old glass doors for this same room a few years ago. i started a blog post about them but the process was soooo complicated, it was, in the end, undescribable. at least for my writing ability ....

the worksthe dial

Remodeling an English Breakfront

This Just In


All Done 10/24

We met with a client recently who asked us to remodel an antique breakfront that had been in her family for a while. It is a nice example of simple, classic, 19th century English cabinetry. Frame and panel English oak doors, with a pine case, cornice and interior. Her request was to put the paneled doors in the center where the glass was, (flat screen tv moving in) and move the glass doors to the outside. This would have been easier if all the doors were the same size, which, unfortunately, they were not, the paneled doors being 3" narrower than the glass doors ... We had at it anyway and should finish tomorrow sometime. I'll let the pictures tell the story ... Click to enlarge ....

The cabinet as we found it

Doors off .. shows early "adjustable shelf" detail

A disassembled door waiting to be cut down, re-coped and reglued

My man Jim, heating and chipping off the ROCK HARD old putty after he knocked the doors apart with a hammer and block. He was able to save all but two of the unbroken wavy glass pieces. Fortunately, we have a small stash of old sash with similar glass.

This photo, when enlarged, shows the pieces we cut off, the shaper set up for recoping the cut rails and muntins, and the contoured backup block ( a negative of the molding and rabbet shape of the muntin and rail profiles ) we made so that the coping cutter does not blow out the existing molding. When making doors like this, it's best to run the cope on the ends of the rails and crossbars before we add the molding detail so we can skip this step usually..

The clamped up doors with the newly coped muntins and rails, note the old protruding tenons ..

Where we are today ... 10/23
We should be able to recut the old glass and reglaze the 'new' doors tomorrow, polish the whole thing up and send it on its way ....

Restoring a Handmade Box

A friend and local antique dealer, Richard Latour of Millstone Antiques in Manchester, VT brought us this box to repair last week. It was missing some of the diagonal top edge inlays and some others pieces, including the heart shaped keyhole. He wanted it to be saleable, didn't want to have the gaping holes where the inlay was gone or spend a fortune on it. We agreed to do what we could for what he wanted to pay and once we got started it came out ok for everyone ... Check it out, it's a cool one ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Getting started .. Gluing up a strip for the replacement parts

Patching in with the angled pieces we made form the strip for the edge inlays seen in the photo above

The 'finished' end repair

The front of the box ...

We even discovered what we think is some valid history. We had speculated that it might be English, late 19th century, but while we were working on it, the frame holding the mirror in the lid came loose and when we removed the mirror for safekeeping, we found this 1884 Schenectady Gazette under what apeared to be the original mirror ... Who knew?