Charlbury Church Clock - Latest
Church clock latest
The generous donations that many people? ?" and particularly the Charlbury Beer Festival Committee - have made to the Town Clock Appeal has allowed work to begin on the major overhaul of the clock on the tower of St Mary's Church.
Steady progress is being made on the repairs to the clock. At the moment the focus is on the clock faces and the drive mechanism to the hands. After taking the hands off, (the reason for the current scaffolding) various problems were discovered including corrosion and bent drive rods. Here are a before and after photo showing the outside end of one of the rods to which the hands are fixed.
All this created stress on the drive mechanism and "floppy" hands. There was even a concern that one of the hands may become loose enough to fall off! Now all four faces have been repaired I can report that the hands move smoothly and rotate with no resistance. Give them a spin and they go round and round for ages! It remains to be seen whether when re-connected to the clock it will run faster and need adjustment to compensate for the lack of friction - we need to ensure that the people of Charlbury can catch their trains from the station on time!
We hope the internal drive train to the faces will be completed in the next two or three weeks, thereby allowing the scaffolding to be removed before Christmas. Thereafter the repairs will be concentrating on the internal workings of the clock where considerable work is still required.
Thank you everyone who contributed. We hope soon to have a reliable and accurate clock for all to see and use.
Mike Summers · Wed 2 Dec 2015, 18:03 · Link