I have to restring an old clock. Unfortunately I have to dismantle the clock mechanism to restring with new cat gut. Felix turned up today!

While at it I thought I would re-blue the hands, they were looking tied & now after initial sanding I realised how second rate the original quality was. Never tried this before. So just a quick test with the heat gun & it worked a treat. Very uneven, purple a bit under heated & grey green a bit over heated, but this was simply pointing the gun at the clock hand. I will make up a brass bed to even the heat. 

Have got the acetone for final cleaning & some oil to drop the heated clock hands in.

To get the best finish, I will continue with 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000 & 5000 grit paper to polish the steel. The more an even mirror finish the better the refractive effect for an intense blue colour. With a bit of luck I aim to get the blue as intense as the hands on my watch.

What does  re-stringing a clock mean.

There are 2 batteries (weights) 7 days & 2 hours capacity. 1 to power the clock mechanism & the other to power the chimes. The string which the weight hang off has broken. The strings wind up on each of these barrels. Unfortunately to anchor the string I have to remove the barrel. Will do both while at it. Some clocks, the barrel has a second hole to feed the string through, but this one doesn't have this.

It is a Vienna Clock, probably roughly around 1870, so not old, but it looks nice on the wall, has a nice chime tone. It has quite a few dings here & there, probably chucked in an attic at some time in its life. But will come up looking new with a bit of character.

I liked the brass unpolished, but it needed cleaning, so I have polished it & it actually looks good, but then the hands looked crap. That's the problem when one starts cleaning, where does it stop!

A good video on bluing clock hands. Mine are a lot lighter thickness so it going to be more challenging to get even colour.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NhjiIPohUyw

so " how long is the piece of string? ", could get an accurate answer for the first time

The 2 half pieces of string required are about 1m each. So an offcut too short for anything. It actually looks like translucent fishing line.

I wanted to do it properly.

I have now polished, about 6 hours work, & blued the hour hand. It has come up really well. I will try to finish off the minute hand & the second hand (actually 1 & 1/3 revolutions per minute) this weekend. Then get some photos in good light.

I might need to increase the pendulum a whisker as I have polished off a bit of metal & it may run a touch fast.

Finally there. The photo is with a soft photographic light to clearly show the colours. The hour hand is a bit overheated, being a bit grey. The minute hand slightly under heated, a bit purple. The back of the second hand a bit overheated. With normal lighting on the wall it's all not so noticeable & more of a dark colour.

I would need to set up a much better oven for nice steady even heating. But I'm happy with the result.

The obligatory 10 past 10 photo!

 Close up of flame blued screw on weights.

I have seen a few of the episodes. A brilliant bunch of people.

I knew of bluing & have done a bit unintentionally with the angle grinder. I did plenty of research on the internet, so much easier to learn new skills than last century.

My brass swarf bed for heating should have been a lot better. So if have another go that will be one of the upgraded tools to refine.

Also I would get some 7000 grit paper, maybe also some 10,000 - 14,000 equivalent as well. It really is about preparation for a perfect surface.

I found a very similar clock in England, about equal to $1,500 so it's going to cost more for maintenance & repair than what the clock is worth.

I couldn't face it at the moment, but the clock will need all the bearings looked at, also cleaned & re-oiled. Could be a few repairs needed like machining in new bearings. No serving has even done on it for decades.

Photos of the mechanism so I can get the jigsaw back together. Maybe next time I will blue all the steel bits, even though you can't see the parts. A couple of screws were already blued.

The clock has a single chime on the half hour & the correct number of chimes for each hour.

A couple of photos with a point light and a soft light. This is more indicative of how the hands look like. The bluing imperfections still show, but under more typical viewing the hands are reasonably acceptable.

The hands in general look a lot darker, typically almost black due to where I have the clock mounted, but I get glimpses of blue over the day due to changing lighting conditions.

It was a lot of effort preparing the roughly finished and rusty hands, although fundamentally good quality hands, but I feel it has been worth the effort upgrading a rough bluing finish to bluing on a highly polished surface.

The hands in this photo are the above blue, it just depends on the lighting in relation to the oxide layer and refraction.