Troubleshooting the Dial Train when the clock runs well but the hands are not turning correctly

Modern Times Clock
(just some eye candy unrelated to this post)

Berry writes:  I have everything completed now on the clock but having issues (I bet you hate letters like this). The motor drives the Center Wheel just fine. The Third Wheel and Escape Wheel and Pallet chug along day and night. It looks great. Unfortunately the Minute and Hour hands don't keep the time. I marked the Center Arbor Tube and Hour Arbor Tube with a spot of ink at the top. After one hour they were at the 9 o'clock position. Fifteen minutes later they're both back at 12.

I've no idea if you can help, but I'm hoping you can.

Best wishes - stay healthy, Berry

Aloha Berry, if I understand correctly, it sounds like something is slipping or some glue joint may have come apart.

Here are some of the places that slippage may occur in the dial train of these wonderful mechanisms....

Check to make sure that the center wheel tube is pressed tightly inside the center wheel.  That tube should travel with the center wheel and make one revolution every 60 minutes.  

To that tube is added the cannon pinion and its tube.  The cannon is held to the center wheel tube by the leather plug system that allows for synchronous movement of the minute and hour hands.  The minute hand is attached to the other end of the tube that is tight inside the cannon.  Make sure that the tube is tight inside the cannon and minute hand and they are not slipping.

The clock will run like that and show the minutes, but we need to also see what hour it is, so take off the minute hand from the cannon tube and slide the intermediate wheel onto its rod.  The cannon can now drive the intermediate wheel.  The intermediate wheel has glued to it a pinion.  Make sure that glue joint between the intermediate wheel and it pinion is tight.  

The intermediate pinion drives the hour wheel.  The hour wheel has a tube pressed tightly into its center.  Make sure that tube in the hour wheel is not slipping.  On the other end of that hour tube the hour hand is pressed on tightly.  Check to be sure that hand it tight to the hour tube as well.  Once you have slid the hour wheel/tube/hand assembly onto the cannon/tube assembly then you can press on the minute hand.  The minute hand should be tight to the tube.

Somewhere in that system from center wheel to minute hand, something is slipping...OR...

OR, it may not be slipping at all, possibly just the opposite.  

There is a possibility that the three tubes are binding somewhere and not running freely with each other.  The center wheel tube, and the cannon's minute tube and the hour tube must all be able to turn smoothly and easily on each other, and the center wheel tube needs to turn freely on the center wheel arbor.

If, for example, you forgot to put the leather plug in the cannon pinion and screwed the set screw directly into the center wheel tube then that tube will be dented and it will not move freely on the center wheel arbor.  That dent will cause the tube to stick to the rod and not move freely.

Sometimes tubes get dented or bent in other ways and will not turn freely on the rod or tube they mate with.  Test all tubes for free motion.

Sometimes after the rod or tube has been newly cut there are residual barbs and metal fragments on their ends that need to be cleaned up and removed.  Polishing the arbors and cleaning up the cut ends of the rods and tubes helps this tremendously.

All of the rods and various tubes must run easily on their mating rod or tube.  

Hopefully this gets your clock running nicely.  If not, send me a video showing what's happening and I can probably make a better diagnosis.

Enjoy! and send pix when you get your project completed.

Aloha.  Clayton