Cuckoo Clock Repair

About This Build

On Sunday March 10th, 2019, I bought a broken cuckoo clock at an estate sale for $2. Now, I'm trying to fix it and documenting as I go. This write-up is an active work in progress and will be added to the archives once complete. Disclaimer: There is no guarantee I will fix the cuckoo clock, but I'm hopeful.

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Part 1 - The Find

Written 3/11/2019: For a period of time in 2017 (2018?) I got really into the idea of fixing up old clocks. I bought all sorts of rusted out and damaged clocks from the past 5 decades or so from estate sales and thrift stores, and these clocks included a mix of quartz movements and wind-up/mechanical styles. Of the ones I bought, I was only able to successfully repair about three of them. Here are two clocks I took completely apart, cleaned and fixed (spoilers in the background):

The clock on the left was in a "free" bin at a yard sale. In addition to not working, it was also filthy. I took the whole thing apart, cleaned it, put it back together, and managed to successfully fix timepiece and (sometimes) the alarm.

The clock on the right was a Value Village find and has an alarm that sounds like very electronic cats. It had a lot of battery corrosion that I cleaned and removed. I can't recall what else was wrong with this clock, but fixing it involved my first ever adventure in soldering. I was mediocre at the soldering but the clock works now, so there you go!

In any case, after a few repairs and a few very difficult attempts/failures I sort of gave up on my amateur clock-fixing dream. That, however, all changed yesterday (3/10) when I found an old cuckoo clock hidden among the towels at an estate sale. It was in pieces, and I paid a very generous $2 for it.

I didn't think to take any pictures of the clock prior to starting the dismantling process, but the above photos give a pretty good idea of the shape things were in when I found this wooden wonder. The clock face was intact (the first photo shows it with one small cap piece removed) but the back panel, pendulum, weights, and top decoration thing were all separate. On the right: Very faint stamp on the inside of the back panel says:

WILLY NEEF KG.

Triberg / Black Forest

Germany

Online, the closest example I can find to this one is listed here, which seems identical aside from slightly different coloring.

I am by no means a clock expert let alone a cuckoo clock specialist, so I only hoped that this thing had all the necessary pieces when I bought it. The only things that seemed immediately absent were the chains that the weights hang on. No problem, I thought. Maybe all this clock needs is to have chains reattached. How hard could that possibly be?

Well, as it turns out... hard! I removed the back panel of the clock to take a peek at what I was dealing with, and I discovered that the workings of the cuckoo clock are both ingenious and complex. The white slabs near the top of the photo are actually tiny bellows, and they blow air into the two chunky things on the sides, which look like solid boards but are actually hollow whistles. You can see in the photo that the left whistle is L-shaped and therefore has more volume than the one on the right... that's because it's the "coo" in "cuckoo". In other words, it's longer because it has a lower pitch.

After doing some reading, I learned that some cuckoo clocks have convenient access hatches for re-chaining or repairs. This one, however, does not. In order to put a new chain on this thing, I realized I'd have to somehow take the brass mechanism out of the wooden housing. This did not prove to be an easy feat.

Although I was wary of breaking the little clock, I knew that without taking it apart there was no hope of fixing it. Knowing much could go wrong but hoping much would go right, I grabbed some tools and got to work.

Continue to Part 2 - The Tear Down

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