The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors is a big tent, but it clearly has “watch people” and “clock people.” I’m one of the watch people—I own a lot of vintage and collectable watches but not a single collectable clock.
But my favorite clock in the house needed repair, so I figured I’d take a break from pocket watches and dabble in the dark arts of cheap quartz clock movements. Here is the patient.
This is an Umbra “Ribbon” wall clock in brushed stainless steel. It’s inexpensive, selling for around $25 online these days. Some people—surely none of this blog’s readers—would think, “Hey, I’ll just toss the old one and get a brand new one.” The classic virtues of caring for what you own aside, this clock was the first thing I bought for my first house, and I’d like to keep it.
Like old watches, this clock’s symptom was keeping bad time. It was running a few hours slow a week. The movement is a basic AA-battery quartz movement.
There isn’t much you can do for a slow quartz movement like this to nudge it slower or faster. Fresh batteries didn’t help, so the clock movement was at the end of its service life. Fifteen years might not be bad for a quartz timepiece, but I have watches from the 1880s that keep better time than than this and can be serviced.
Like repairing a watch, you need to identify the movement. Just as a watch usually has model-number markings on the plate beneath the balance wheel, this movement is marked beneath the battery (and elsewhere). It’s a 12888 movement, a ubiquitous engine for basic clocks.
The movement is attached to the clock with a brass nut. The nut screws onto a threaded shaft, thus securing the movement tight against the case. Umbra took the trouble to paint the washer and nut black to suit the steel case—a nice touch.
Here’s the movement out of the case. It has only 3 parts.
Young Town movements are much like Chinese watch movements—cheap and usually non-repairable. Since I’m doing a “movement swap,” I thought I’d upgrade during the repair.
My old clock had a standard dead-beat quartz seconds movements that made a loud, gritty “tick” with each beat. And the seconds hand would backlash wildly at each tick, a classic sign of a cheap movement. The newer Umbra clocks come with a silent, sweep seconds movement, so I looked for one of those.
These 12888 movements come in many dimensional variations, so you’ll need to measure. The depth of the threaded post is crucial. It won’t fit your case if it is too short, and it will look weird, with the hands suspended far off the clock’s face, if it is too long. And, of course, the diameter of the hour, minute, and second posts need to match your hands. You can find the dimensions online.
The one that fits my clock is the 1288STC1.
It’s an exact match and came with an extra rubber washer.
While we have the clock stripped down, it’s a good time to clean the case. It’s solid stainless steel with a nice brushed finish. I’m tempted to refresh the brushed finish, perhaps with an abrasive block, but the steel ribbons are welded together in a way that would make it tricky. Discretion is often the better part of restoration.
A basic cleaning, though, would help. The steel has some old finger prints, almost certainly mine. I hope they aren’t etched into the material.
Glass cleaner, like Windex, is a good option for stainless steel.
If that doesn’t do the trick, Simple Green diluted 1:1 with distilled water works wonders. I used both on this clock.
Installing the movement was easy—stick the post through the hole and attach the washer and nut. Huge clock hands are so easy to replace compared to 14/0 wrist watches that it will be hard to go back.
And here it is—tuned up, shiny, and ready for at least another 15 years on the wall, I hope.
