Tid-Bit 12 - Tips for Working on Vienna Regulator Winding Drums
It is a good idea, when servicing any weight-driven clock, to remove the gear from the winding drum arbor so you can restore all of the pivots on the winding arbor. When servicing a Vienna Regulator mechanism I always remove the gear, and then remove the spring, and the pawl from the gear before cleaning the parts in cleaning solution. I then stone and burnish all of the bearing surfaces on the arbor – including the section of the arbor on which the gear rides.
While removing the gear is often a fairly straight forward proposition, the mechanisms made in Vienna tend to be not quite so simplistic, at least at first glance. The gears for both German and Viennese winding drums are typically held onto the arbor by a slotted washer. While many of the German factory-made Vienna-style mechanisms use a screw to retain these slotted washers (see Figure 1), the Viennese recessed these pesky little washers into the gear (Figure 2). The first time you see one you might just decided you don’t need to take it apart. None the less, with the simple technique that is the first subject of this Tid-Bit, you too will be able to laugh at this technical challenge and slip the washer right out!
Figure 11 – The washer ready to be slid the rest of the way off
Take care when working with sharp objects and this entire procedure will take very little time.
While on the subject of winding drums, I also want to share my method of retaining the end of the weight chord to the winding drum. When I take apart Vienna and German Vienna-style regulator mechanisms I usually find that the chord has been knotted several times so that it will not slip through the notch in the edge of the winding drum when the end plate is installed. Of course, there is always the concern that the knot will slip through the hole – and drop a weight. And, with some of the fine braided lines available today, it is a bit of a challenge to get a large enough knot to really believe the knot will not slip through the notch. I have found that the most effective way to retain the line is to tie a small loop in the end of the line and slip the loop around the arbor. Figures 12 and 13 show such a loop in place around an arbor.
