How does a 400 day clock work?
Beside this, how do you clean a 400 day clock?
Dennis, Over the years I've found most 400 day clocks clean up very nicely by simply striping the lacquer. The lacquer gets scratched, dirty and rubbed off over time and looks bad. Strip your case with lacquer thinner, dry it, wash with a strong ammonia, dry again and lacquer it.
Similarly one may ask, why does my 400 day clock stop?
Let the Anniversary Clocks Pendulum balls settle down from jiggling around and notice where they stop. Now rotate the balls 1/2 of a revolution and gently let go. When it's time to repair a 400 day clock, two things usually need to be done. The suspension spring gets replaced and the movement gets cleaned.
Unwind the carriage clock in half turns and release / apply the ratchet between the turns so that the spring pressure is always managed by either your fingers with a firm hold on the key, or by the ratchet being allowed to stop the backward movement.