first flea market visit of the year

[Burkhard Rasch]

As You know I have a special fable for electro-mechanic clocks of the early post-WW II aera.On the first visit to a regional flea market this year I saw these three beauties,they cost me 2€ each and some hours of "work".
From left to right:signed Mauthe electric,containing a Junghans electrical motor remontoir,switching on and of every 2-3 minutes to wind a small standard mainspring powering a nice 7jewel pin pallet esc. balance movement.
in the middle:Emes kickwind mvmt,7jewels,pin pallet escapement,a long spiral mainspring like in a ball-pen spreading through the whole movement;
the right signed Blessing electric containing a Staiger Chrometron movement with a large balance wheel beating half seconds and an "escapement" with an electromechanic pivoted detent.Like in a chronometer the balance recieves impulse only once in a second while swinging in one direction,the backswing is allmost free when a "gold spring" let pass the impulse piece without resistance.This movement acutally was the precursopr of the first "affordable" quarz movement of German production.The balance wheel was replaced by a quarz crystal and a set of frequency dividers at the end giving impulse once per second the the electro-mechanic element wich advances a ratchet wheel once per second.It's all in plastic since Staiger originaly was a producer of plastic articles.
All in all a nice prey promising a good prosperous year!
Burkhard

 

[xrperry]

Hi burkhard, those are neat and i dont have any,gonna keep an eye out for them

 

[gleber]

Nice finds. Hopefully with your early luck, it bodes well for a good clock hunting season.

I'm not a fan of quartz battery powered movements, but these are an interesting marriage. I like the style of the blue one.

Tom

 

[Burkhard Rasch]

I don't like quarz clocks ,too,but my impression is that after WW II untill the late 70ies all german manufacturers re-invented every technical developement made in the last 500years of clock history to gain another patent to beat their competitors.These technical developement race came to an end when the quarz movements appeared.It is verry interesting to see in which direction the thoughts were going,re-inventing escapements,remontoirs,frequence sources etc. And these mvmts. still are cheap-if You´re interested and can id them.
I like the blue one,too!
Burkhard

 

[Tinker Dwight]

I like that these clocks that still depended on pendulums and balance
wheels as time references.
I have a couple with the Sully escapements. These are just about the
most accurate time keepers I've see.
A couple are Phinney-Walker and a couple Seiko world clocks.
I have a clock now with a Portescap movement that I expect to
do really well when I figure how to make new rubber tires and
do some motor pivot work. This should be quite a good time keeper.
I have a couple glass dome Kundos with the large swinging pendulum
and a couple pendulum Hallers ( one with recently broken suspension spring ).
I also have a couple pendulum clocks made by National/Panasonic,
One with the Kinglet label and the other with Honey.
I'd love to get some of the older battery powered clocks but most
of those are out of my price range.
Tinker Dwight