Real-Life Communication
It's your first day on the job at a clock and watch repair shop and you are waiting to help your first customer.
You're in luck! A woman brings in a clock that just won't go. The pendulum swings freely, but it won't tick. She leaves the clock. The boss agrees to let you try and figure out what could be wrong.
Just to be safe, you read up in a manual to see what you should do first.
"A lot of the work we do is technical, so we have to do a lot of reading," says John Hiew, a watchmaker. "We have to know how to fix old models and also keep up with how to repair the most modern watches."
Manual
First, examine the hands. If they are crossed or rub each other, that may in itself be the trouble, as may a second or minute hand which rubs the dial. If the hand points to between 12 and 1 o'clock, then it is more than likely that the clock has failed to strike 12 correctly. This will stop many clocks.
Push the minute hand back to just before 12 and wind the striking. If it's fully wound, the clock may strike in the normal course of running. If the strike appears to have been nearly unwound, it may well be that it has not been properly wound and that this is the cause of the failure. Either way, if the clock now goes, the source of the trouble is on the striking side, which has interfered with the functioning of the other side.
Far more difficult to diagnose are faults concerned with known intermittent running. The clock goes for a few days and then stops. If it's helped by a turn on the spring or by advancing the hands, it will run again -- but only for an uncertain period. As a rule, the root cause is insufficient power, owing to some temporary increase in load due to undesirable friction. Again, the hands are the first place to inspect.
(Excerpt from: How to Repair Clocks by Eric Smith. Tab Books: Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, 1980.)
Now that you've read the manual, answer the questions below:
- How could the hands stop the motion of the clock?
- What does it mean if the clock has stopped just after 12?
- What will happen if you manually advance the hands on a clock that stops intermittently?