Good “Grandfather” clocks are not now often made. The last place I remember to have seen them being manufactured is at Morez, in the district of the Jura. An excellent clock, enclosed in a dust-tight iron case, with a tall painted case of quaint old design, can be bought for about 55s. The wheels are well cut, and the internal mechanism very good.
I visited the town of Morez in the year 1893. The clock industry was declining. The farmers of France seemed to prefer small clocks of hideous appearance, made in Germany and in America, to the excellent work of their own country. Probably by now the old clockmaking industry is extinct. One I purchased at that time has gone well ever since.
CHAPTER IV.
It is now time to give a description of the various parts of an ordinary pendulum clock. We will take the “Grandfather” clock as an example. We shall want an hour hand and a minute hand in the centre of the face, and a seconds hand to show seconds a little above them. There will be a seconds pendulum 39·14 inches long, and the centre of the face of the clock will be about seven feet above the ground, so as to give practically about five feet of fall for the weight.
Fig. 45.
In the first place, we have to consider the axle which carries the minute hand, and which turns round once in each hour. This is usually made of a piece of steel about one-sixth of an inch in diameter. Clockmakers usually call an axle an “arbor,” or “tree,” whence our word axletree.
This “arbor” is turned in the lathe, so as to have pivots on each end, fitted into holes in the clock plates, that is to say, the flat pieces of brass that serve as the body of the clock. The adjoining diagram shows S T the clock faces, and C, the arbor of the minute hand.