The really boring and totally pointless snippets thread IV

[Pontius Navigator]

Wandering minds, from Biggles to MP Matt Braddock VC.
I looked to see if it might be in Kindle but sadly not. I see you can get second hand copies, on in Grimsby even, from £55 and up to £110. To think there was a copy kicking around 201 Sqn crew room in the 70s. I hope it wasn't thrown out.

[Undried Plum]

At this time of year my favourite long case clock runs a wee bit slow. That's not because it's 230 years old, but because the warmth of my study causes the pendulum to lengthen and thus slow down the period of the tick and of the tock.

One of my more unlikely heroes is a great hydrographer of the past. A fellow Scotsman, he became the Hydrographer of The East India Company where he earned vast riches by surveying viable cargo routes in the Far East and selling his charts to shipowners and to sea Captains at fabulous prices. Upon his return to the UK he became a leading light in the Royal Society, with the ear of the King.

He was a brilliant hydrographer, but he was a poor, in my opinion, geodesist. He convinced himself, and therefore many other people who really ought to have thought better, that the land masses of the known Northern hemisphere must be counterbalanced by similarly large land areas in the Southern Hemisphere. It was he who commissioned Captain Cook's voyages to the Southern hemisphere to find that Great South Land. Prat! (Dalrymple, not Cook).

Here's a film clip in which he features:



He was peripherally involved in the heated discussions about the best way of determining Longitude at sea. He was betwixt the Astronomer Royal Maskelyne, and John Harrison the clockmaker. Dalrymple tended towards Harrison, but was on very good professional terms with Maskelyne. In fact, the first written record of the word "chronometer" was in a paper written by Dalrymple.

In 1791, by then an already very wealthy man, he ordered a long case clock to be made by the then finest clockmaker in Scotland. It was made just 4.15nm from where it now ticks and tocks in my study.

I bought it at auction four years ago, for an embarrassingly low figure (much less than the cost of lunch for two at a decent restaurant in Edinburgh) because neither the rural auctioneer in England's West Country nor any other bidder had a **** clue about the man whose name is so clearly shown on the face. I subsequently spent months painstakingly restoring it to its former glory. I hired the best cabinet-maker of whom I know to restore the woodwork of the case and I did the movement and face silvering restoration work myself.

I'm immensely proud of it and I love to listen to it. He had it in his study in London and listened to its beat every second, just as do I. I greatly doubt that he would have trusted his housekeeper to wind it up every Sunday. I suspect that he would have performed the task himself, just as I do.

[Pontius Navigator]

UP, mine is a mere 210 years old, made in Morpeth and the workshop still exists though not as a clock smiths.

It keeps good time and was beautifully restored by a retired RAF instrument fitter. He even restored the face that had been wiped and largely erased over the years. Since its move here 3 years ago, having been in our last home the previous 28, it is not entirely happy.

If levelled perfectly it will tick but not tock. I have placed two 2mm wedges under the movement bracket and it will tock for an hour or so. A further 3mm wedge under the case is needed before it will tick and tock.

Do you have any suggestions?

[Undried Plum]

Yes, but it needs a wee bit of skill to do.

There's a wee bendy bit (I'll not use technical jargon here) which you need to ever so slightly bend sideways to get the time period between the tick and the tock to match.

I can so easily do it, but putting it into text is beyond my literacy.

Chocking the thing to level is important, so you were/are quite right to do that. You also need to secure the whole longcase to the wall very firmly. That's important too.

[ribrash]

It is easy to assume that couriers are routed direct to your address.

I recently followed online (with maps) a delivery that was due to arrive at my address, however it circled around visiting numerous locations near and distant.
At stages it was very near before diverting away before arriving at the specified time (actually ten minutes early).

Supermarket deliveries usually arrive within a 1 hour time frame. The driver told me he was passing and took a chance.I awarded the driver the boy scout badge for initiative.

[ribrash]

UP, mine is a mere 210 years old, made in Morpeth and the workshop still exists though not as a clock smiths.

It keeps good time and was beautifully restored by a retired RAF instrument fitter. He even restored the face that had been wiped and largely erased over the years. Since its move here 3 years ago, having been in our last home the previous 28, it is not entirely happy.

If levelled perfectly it will tick but not tock. I have placed two 2mm wedges under the movement bracket and it will tock for an hour or so. A further 3mm wedge under the case is needed before it will tick and tock.

Do you have any suggestions?

Hit it with a hammer.

[Undried Plum]

UP, mine is a mere 210 years old, made in Morpeth and the workshop still exists though not as a clock smiths.

In rural areas of Scotland, and no doubt elsewhere in Britain too, it was common for men with blacksmithing skills to make a bit o' money on the side during the long dark winter months by making clocks. The metal-working skills are the same, just on a different scale.

The Falkirk Trysts were a huge cattle market for the whole of Scotland for a coupla hundred years. Caterans would drive cattle to those markets from all over the Highlands. Up to 80,000 beast at a single fair. There grew up a huge support industry, including making and fitting cattle shoes. Each cow had two shoes per hoof and there were tens of thousands to be made to replace the ones worn out on the long slog from the far North, in preparation for the next journey onward to Smithfield.

This meant that between Trysts Falkirk had a significant pool of skilled craftsmen who could easily turn their hand to clockmaking.

That's why Falkirk became such a centre of excellence for clockmaking.

[PHXPhlyer]

It is easy to assume that couriers are routed direct to your address.

I recently followed online (with maps) a delivery that was due to arrive at my address, however it circled around visiting numerous locations near and distant.
At stages it was very near before diverting away before arriving at the specified time (actually ten minutes early).

I had the same experience with a delivery last week.
Lesson learned.
Better not to watch.
Mine was in the area for 3-4 hours before actual arrival approx. 30 minutes late.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

UP and PN:
Pictures if you please, please.

PP

[Undried Plum]

I thought I'd already bragged here with a piccie or two of that clock.

Go back in the archive and you'll prolly see it/them.

Else, I'll take a pic in daylight.

I thought I'd already bored everyone here to death with pix of me doing the silvering of clockfaces and of doing magical things to clock mechanisms which started off looking like pieces of coral-encrusted junk.

[Undried Plum]

I see that I've already uploaded part of the face of Dalrymple's/my clock here:



ISTR I got a bollocking for doing so due to household insurance risks. This evening I've been chided, but as this one is already in public view, there's no additional risk by doing a wee linky now.

[ExSp33db1rd]

My Grandfather Clock is about 180 years old, purchased in rural Dorset 50 years ago for the immense ( then ) sum of £400. Not investigated the current value in NZ. Inscribed H.Peach, Beaminster I was told by the specialist clock retailer that local cabinet makers made the case, the works were bought from Clerkenwell, and a local artist painted the dial. Mine has a picture of the end of the outer limb of the harbour at Lyme Regis. My pendulum is wood, so doesn't vary in length with the seasons.

A local clock guy has kept it going with occasional maintenance since we brought it to NZ with us 25 years ago, but he is past it now, and 2 hours is about all it will tick-tock for. Unwilling to attack it with WD-40, so will have to look for some specialist clock oil and have a go myself.

Also brought a family heirloom, a " Viennese Regulator " wall mounted clock that belonged to my Great-Grandparents in Yorkshire. No idea of the age, but probably similar to the G'father. Nice.

[TheGreenGoblin]

It is easy to assume that couriers are routed direct to your address.

I recently followed online (with maps) a delivery that was due to arrive at my address, however it circled around visiting numerous locations near and distant.
At stages it was very near before diverting away before arriving at the specified time (actually ten minutes early).

I had the same experience with a delivery last week.
Lesson learned.
Better not to watch.
Mine was in the area for 3-4 hours before actual arrival approx. 30 minutes late.

PP

Many years back I worked on contract for Total fuels writing and implementing logistics and fuel delivery algorithms and systems and soon became aware of The Travelling Salesman Problem.

I suspect my biggest contribution to their cause was my rhinoceros thick South African hide, when helping "negotiate" with the logistic company's drivers who threatened to work to rule, and then go on strike when we introduced early technology telematics systems into their cabs. Try talking sense to a brood of bloody minded bowser drivers, particularly when their errant and erratic paths and irregular gear changes and speeds were on the point of being monitored by Big Brother for the first time. Amazon has this down to a fine art of course, and I have more sympathy for their drivers and contractors in this Brave New World!

[TheGreenGoblin]

I have had it with this awful weather. Low cloud, lurking, dark grey and miserable at 300 feet. No real rain, no pyrotechnics, no life, no interest, just gloom and unending dark monotony and dank mizzle, like some bloody awful depressing relative, who has visited and who won't leave.

EGSS 200131Z 2001/2106 05006KT 9999 BKN016 TEMPO 2001/2008 5000 -RADZ BKN004 PROB30 TEMPO 2001/2002 2000 RADZ PROB40 TEMPO 2002/2008 1200 RADZ MIFG BKN001 TEMPO 2008/2011 4000 -RADZ BKN004 TEMPO 2011/2018 8000 SHRA BKN012 TEMPO 2018/2103 4000 -RADZ BKN004 PROB30 TEMPO 2020/2101 1400 RADZ BKN001

All those words, codes and numbers and symbols to sum up "crap"...

No wonder the British colonised the world, they did it to get away from this misery!

[OFSO]

Very interesting writings about clocks. Thanks for the postings.

Looks like another hot day arriving here. Possibility of much-needed rain in our locale as it's bone dry on the coast, although inland last week some places had 15cms of hail and needed Bobcats with blades to clear the streets.

[Pontius Navigator]

ExSp, it seems you have they typical long case clock. When you start research it is fascinating to see that it was very much a cottage industry with case, face, hands, pendulum, weights and movement all coming together.
A London clock will be close to its age with its design. A similar country clock will be newer as newer fashions reach the country later.
We live not far from the Horological Institute which is a fascinating place.
A cousin, now deceased, had one made by an ancestor. Well he thought it was. Then of course we found it had a much earlier movement and the case design earlier still.
The clock could not have been earlier than about 1840 but the case design was late 18th. The hands and weights were much later so we guess the case might have been a simpler copy, an apprentice piece. We knew the movement maker's name, one of 3, father and sons and a cousin. Dating narrowed it down to one son or the cousin. My money is on the cousin. He lived in the same village as our common ancestor, a joiner, publican, brewer and imbiber. He made clocks only for 5 years or so and this one had features from about the time. We think it was the fitted to the case about 20 years later.

PHXP, I have yet to master the technique for posting pics.

[OFSO]

Rain arrived early. What a marvellous thing is rain, if you haven't had it for months. Breakfast on the terrace, listening to it on the sun-awnings.

[Ibbie]

Morning folks,

Clear blue sky out ther today. 21c with a high of 28c slated for later.

Off to daughter's bar for lunch.

Already been for a 2km walk with Ed in campo.

[handsfree]

Miserable here too but not quite as bad as TGG's miserable.
Looks like it spent the night raining. Chilly too, only 12°C at present.

All in all it suggests a day of quiet contemplation, gazing at the navel, Sunday lunch,
wine and perhaps a bit of snoozing thrown in hither and thither.

[EA01]

Hmm, I have a clock that in comparison is probably worth nothing, but worth a great deal to me in sentimental value.

I fixed it once in the late 1990's, and I think had it fixed again once. The problem I think is if it ever tilts to horizontal, as in moves etc.

If it had a cabinet around it....I guess you would call it a 'Long case', but is does not.....2 weights, chains and a pendulum, I was never allowed to touch as a child and it belonged to my Grandparents and is stamped 'Made in West Germany'

It has been sitting in a spare room for sometime now....I need someone to repair it....but I'm afraid of the cost.

It was my Grandparents, and something I remember well from my childhood, at some point (30+ years ago) it stopped chiming the correct hours, it would chime on the hour & half hour...but the hour chime, would then chime the number of hours.....and no one here (at least at the time) knew how to rectify that....

It