This is a Seth Thomas Clock sold by the Larkin Soap Co. it was referred to as model No. 35 in their catalog.
I've had this clock since 2008, notice when I got it that the front feet are missing and replaced by what should be the rear feet. There were a lot of white paint specks all over the top of the clock where someone didn't bother coving it up. "Who does that?" The person I bought it from said that it had been down his father's basement for as long as he can remember and his father had planned on restoring it but never got around to it. Who knows how long its been since it ran.
Doesn't look like anyone has serviced it in eon's Not too many inside coils on the springs so no need to replace them. It needs a bath...
After a trip though the cleaner, now that's looking better...
Polished the pivots, and installed a couple of bushing to line things up again.
Ran it for a week to make sure there were no hidden problems after reassembly.
Time to start the case work.
Disassembly
Have some delamination problems that will need to be corrected, probably from sitting down that gentleman's basement for who knows how long. Must have been damp?
This isn't going to be fun.
So far I've gotten rid of all the white paint specs and a bunch of scratches.
Now its starting to look more like it did back in 1907
That's were I am right now, more to come on this restoration. Correcting all the issues with the front piece is taking a lot of time.
The repair to the split and separating Adamantane turned out good I'd say
Next to redo the gold in the incising designs.
Here are all the pieces minus the feet and columns, ready to go back together.
I worked on the metal ornaments this weekend. I've noticed that a lot of people on ebay that restore clocks will paint everything metal on a Seth Thomas gold no matter what color they were originally from the factory. These were copper plated and then sprayed with a coat of orange shellac originally. I cleaned them up and only retouched the bad area's. Then I coated them lightly with lacquer to give them that factory shine.
Below is the main front piece. I cleaned out all the wax form the incising in the process of redoing the gold. I noticed the more wax and dirt I pulled from the grooves, the more of the original gold was appearing. Kept on cleaning and was able to get 90% of the original gold from the factory, looked almost new.... so I decided to leave it alone than risk my paint not matching the original stuff.
This weekend I put the case back together. Now I have to concentrate on getting the dial, bezel, and hands into shape, but so far so good.
