Posted 8 years ago
SpiritBear
(813 items)
Walking into a thrift store a few weeks ago, my eyes immediately espied this cute little alarm clock. I picked it up, tested it in a couple plugs, found it to not be working, and had them knock a few bucks off.
Getting it home, I set it away for a while and an hour ago decided I would try to fix it.
The interior was okay, all except for a few pieces that looked covered in black wax (just years-old gunked-up oil). I was able to clean out the gunk and cautiously tested it (my exploding fan has left me very cautious) in the breezeway.
The motor whirred to life at a high speed, but the seconds hand wasn't working. I took it back to my room and adjusted the seconds hand and plugged it in to my own outlet as I thought it was safe. The seconds hand began moving, and I was happy.
I held it only a few seconds, when suddenly the hand stopped moving.
I was momentarily confused, then I pushed the hand a little, and suddenly a loud pop rang out from the motor that was held by two fingers as sparks flew into the air toward my face.
My room went dark and the sparks disappeared into oblivion on my brown blanket as I sat there stunned in confusion for a second before blindly pulling out the plug and resetting the circuit.
Now I will need a new movement, which I will likely steal from a battery-operated quartz alarm clock. (It has to be an alarm clock as this was an alarm clock).
Its beautiful great find!
Mechanically, no. LOL. Aesthetically, it will be once I put the face and a new movement in the big, gaping hole. I searched today but couldn't locate a movement with hands that would fit the face, and I cannot use the old hands as they won't fit modern movements.
I tried trimming the modern hands, which worked, but it still doesn't fix the movement issue. Worse, with modern movements I cannot put the glass back in due to how they stick out. LOL.
Is there room for a washer under the movement to move the whole thing closer to the face? just a thought.
(2nd thought) with your record on turning harmless items into nukes I would stick with AA power rather then lithium ;}~
I had the same thought to keep the length down. A rubber washer or three. LOL.
Still, the nipple (in plumbing that's what it is. Not so sure in horology what it's called) would be forced to stick out too far due to the hands, thus making me keep the glass off.
I'm never sure what goes wrong. Things just go boom. (I do have an odd habit of causing radios to turn to static, though. Sometimes the signal gets stronger. Usually just goes to static.)