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My Dad's Elgin 8-Day Clock

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  • My Dad's Elgin 8-Day Clock

    This is possibly of completely zero interest to anyone, but if you ever run across one of these WW2 Elgin 8-Day clocks, buy it. It is a great piece of affordable history in my mind.
    Over the 40+ years in my custody it has had a dozen homes, been opened, cleaned, stored, lost, found, broken, no doubt dropped, you get the drill.

    It had a broken balance wheel and bent fork much like it's 2nd owner, which I had refurbished by an certified aviation instrument rebuilder. Anyway, it is running like an clock and yes, lasts 8 days between rewinding.

    I was given all his military service belongings after his death from my stepmom. The story is Dad "picked it up" at maintenance after his last B-17 mission flight. Hmmmm.

    The clock was with all his uniforms and flight gear from his time in England with the 8th Air Force serving as a Bombardier Pilot with The Reich Wreckers-306th BGrp/423 BSqd at Thurleigh.
    Note: that is not my Dad in the picture. It is me wearing his flight jacket circa '88. Tamms says I was never that young, so what can you do?

    There were rumors from my Mom that he had pieces of his Norden bomb site duffel-ed in my grandmother's basement, but that was never confirmed.

    He finished his service with the 13th Air Force stationed in the Philippines 1945-46.

    Pick up one of these if you can. I've seen these go for like $80 and running, but that was some years ago. I paid "Bobby" in RI $130 for the refurbish. A bargain to me.

    Best, LB
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    I solemnly swear to "over-celebrate" the smallest of victories.
    ~Lucky B*st*rd~

    You'll never be good at something unless you're willing to suck at it first.
    ~Anonymous~

    AMA#116446

  • #2
    A heart warming story. I'm not into heirloom sorts of things but I am interested in clocks. I built my own grandfather clock from one of the old Healthkit products. I gave it to my father-in-law many decades ago and when he and his wife passed, they willed it back to me. So, in a way, it's on the road to being an heirloom
    I also recently bought one of these from MotionRC:

    At Motion RC we carry the largest selection of electric and gas powered radio control (RC) planes, boats, buggies, cars, helicopters, tanks, trucks, and much more. We also offer a huge selection of lipo batteries, chargers, ESCs, gas engines, motors, radios, and servos. Shop our lowest prices with free shipping.


    This will be my next winter's project and with luck, it'll be a keeper.

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    • #3
      An antique clock I recently rebuilt. 1950 graduation award. My step dad found it when we lived in Japan in the mid 70’s.

      Click image for larger version

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      • #4
        Originally posted by xviper View Post
        A heart warming story. I'm not into heirloom sorts of things but I am interested in clocks. I built my own grandfather clock from one of the old Healthkit products. I gave it to my father-in-law many decades ago and when he and his wife passed, they willed it back to me. So, in a way, it's on the road to being an heirloom
        I also recently bought one of these from MotionRC:

        At Motion RC we carry the largest selection of electric and gas powered radio control (RC) planes, boats, buggies, cars, helicopters, tanks, trucks, and much more. We also offer a huge selection of lipo batteries, chargers, ESCs, gas engines, motors, radios, and servos. Shop our lowest prices with free shipping.


        This will be my next winter's project and with luck, it'll be a keeper.
        Well how cool is that. Bravo Zulu, Sir, Best, Steve
        I solemnly swear to "over-celebrate" the smallest of victories.
        ~Lucky B*st*rd~

        You'll never be good at something unless you're willing to suck at it first.
        ~Anonymous~

        AMA#116446

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Evan D View Post
          An antique clock I recently rebuilt. 1950 graduation award. My step dad found it when we lived in Japan in the mid 70’s.

          Click image for larger version

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          Is that electric? Presume so. Good story. I do not have any clock building skills; I do have clock breaking skills. At 6 years old, I took apart my grandmother's wind-up alarm clock.

          Got it all back together except I could not manage rewinding the mainspring, so I gave up and apologized. Not sure she ever really forgave me for that one.

          Best, Steve
          I solemnly swear to "over-celebrate" the smallest of victories.
          ~Lucky B*st*rd~

          You'll never be good at something unless you're willing to suck at it first.
          ~Anonymous~

          AMA#116446

          Comment


          • #6
            All mechanical, two big main springs. One for the time side and one for the chime side. It keeps really good time but I need to revisit the chime side as it doesn't do the right number of chimes all the time. There's a tiny hair spring that needs to be just right.

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            • #7
              Holy moly, that's incredible. You have skills and patience, my friend. How do you wind it? Man, truly well done.
              I solemnly swear to "over-celebrate" the smallest of victories.
              ~Lucky B*st*rd~

              You'll never be good at something unless you're willing to suck at it first.
              ~Anonymous~

              AMA#116446

              Comment


              • #8
                If you look at the first picture above the Seikosha there are two holes. Right one winds the time spring and the left the chime spring. I like this stuff and teaching myself new skills. People ask how I know things, by doing... :) I'm very adept at looking at something and being able to tell if it's right or not. I took all the parts out of the clock without pictures the first time and after putting it together again thought it might be a good idea to take pics in case I needed to take it apart again which I did have to do a couple times...

                While I was an electronics/ RF microwave tech in the Navy I did calibration and ran calibration labs, both military and civil service standards labs before I got out and did the same commercially for years after that. My comfort area was high end dimensional calibrations down to 0.000,000,1" and I pretty much taught myself. After that I worked for an accreditation body running their accreditation programs (17025 and 17020) and was on the ISO writing committee for ISO/IEC 17025 as well as several international committees for accrediting. Since retiring a bit over 5 years ago my only connection back to that is teaching classes for getting accredited and calculating measurement uncertainties for laboratories doing testing and calibration measurements.

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                • #9
                  Yeah, you have the innate talents, but also that tacit knowledge that comes from just doing it. It is a good skill set, Sir, those spatial abilities. Best, Steve
                  I solemnly swear to "over-celebrate" the smallest of victories.
                  ~Lucky B*st*rd~

                  You'll never be good at something unless you're willing to suck at it first.
                  ~Anonymous~

                  AMA#116446

                  Comment

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