As a kid, whenever I saw an old clock at a jumble sale or going cheap, I would buy it and take it apart to see how it worked. I don’t think I ever got one back together again, but I enjoyed tinkering with them.
Twenty years later when I was getting married, now living in the USA, Auntie Florrie wrote to me saying I could now have my Grandfathers clock.
I arranged to have the clock shipped over and it was proudly placed in the entrance hall to my home. It was built in about 1880 in Maghull England by a local clockmaker, [before the electric light was invented], had a stately mahogany case, hand-painted dial and ran nicely.
After a few years, it stopped. I was frustrated that I didn’t know what was wrong with it or how to get it going. I ended up having it serviced by a local repair shop and it ran again. I was fascinated with the clock.
In 1995, my family decided to spend a year in England including putting the kids in school. It was a big challenge to arrange to swap houses with an English family. Finally, we were settled, and the kids started school, my wife was volunteering at a local charity shop and suddenly I had time on my hands.
I read the paper that morning and came across an ad for a clock course starting nearby at Manchester City College. I called the college and they told me it was a three-year course, one day per week. I explained I was only in the country for one year, so I persuaded them to let me take the course, coming all three days.
I enjoyed the course and did very well. The final exam took several weeks, making a ‘suspension bridge’ from scratch to exact specifications, restoring several old clocks and watches. I documented the process and took the extensive final written exam all set by BHI [British Horological Institute]. I did pass the exams and became a Horologist.
25 years later I teach clock repair classes and ‘pass it on’. This is the class workbook.
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