American clock movement matching

American clock movement matching

American clock movement matching is to replace the antique unit with a modern equivalent. Americans fell in love with the eight day time strike units back in the 1920's through the 1940's. These units had a mass reproduction.

Subsequently, they are the ones seen in Kitchen clocks, gingerbread clocks, and in thes shelf clock series of Steeple clocks. Mantle clocks, short drop wall clocks and the long drop units were also popular in this time period.

The American movements mass production

Most of these units had a bar style outer plates instead of a full brass plate. The winding arbor distances between each other and also the hand shaft were often the same. All of these units have the type of suspension with the feather steel at the top and a hook on the bottom.

They all run for 8 days on a single full wind with the clock key. All the pendulum lengths were cut back to 4 lengths due to the mass production of the American units. The hand shaft length from the front plate and all the way out to the end had some consistency in later years also.

Advantages of movements in a mass production

With consistency in the production runs, the India manufacturers began producing replacement units for American clock movement matching. The India movement even goes as far as calling them replicas but this is not 100% accurate.

Although they do the trick and get the clock up and running for many years, it's not the same quality. Brass quality is not the same from when it was back in the 20's - 40's. The brass is thinner and also the quality of the brass is not the same as it was.

We do offer these units despite this because they do serve well as far as just making the clock work for a bunch of years instead of giving up. When an antique clock movement has a repair that has gone wrong or already has 20 bushings in it or something silly, it may just make more sense to stick one of these in there instead.

What has to match

These bar style movements are in many antique American time strike units. Some measurements have to match. The dimensions of the winding arbors in relation to each other and also the hand shaft hole in the dial.

These will all have to match the below diagrams. This is to be sure it will fit the old clock dial and line up with the key holes to wind the clock.

Then there is the hand shaft length from the front outer plate of the movement and all they way out to the end. The pendulum length is from the hand shaft and all the way down.

Matching the clock movement

Match the winding arbor measurements, pendulum drop and hand shaft length from the old unit to the new. The center shaft / arbor configuration will match up to many original dials.

The pendulum drop from the hand shaft and all the way down is available in variable drop lengths on some units. Please note the drop may fluctuate, the 13 inch drop unit may keep actual time anywhere between 12 1/2 and 14 inches.