Page - 1 UNPACKING YOUR CUCKOO CLOCK by Lloyd Lehn, PhD CC lloyd.lehn@verizon.net www.cuckooclockhospital.com 703-256-2684 PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to tell you how to unpack your cuckoo clock once it is shipped back to you. In general the clock will arrive in a box with a large amount of packaging around it to prevent it from being damaged in transit. This paper deals with the clock after you have it out of the box and packaging and are looking at the clock itself. I will explain this to you by showing you how I packed the clock. You will unpack it by reversing the process. WHY PACK IT THIS WAY: I pack the clock a special way for two important reasons. a) to keep the chains from falling off the sprockets and forcing you to send the clock back to me to put the chains on again, and b) to reduce the noise from the clock as it travels across the country. UPS and Postal Employees are unnerved by a box that makes cuckoo sounds or has a gong chiming away inside the box. Their culture is that if it makes noise that is probably not very good. It s probably broken. EXAMPLE CLOCK: The clock I use in this paper is simply an example. Your clock will probably look a bit different but same approach will apply. PDF FILE: A PDF file of this paper is at: www.cuckooclockhospital.com/tools/unpack The first thing I do to pack the clock is take off the back of the clock. I also lay the clock down on its face on a sponge pad. This photo shows the clock in a hanging fixture.
Page - 2 The inside of the back door will look something like this. The spiral wire is the gong which makes noise when hit by the hammer on the movement. It also makes noise when carrying the clock around. I try to silence that noise. Getting rid of this noise is relatively easy. One simply weaves a paper into the spiral to dampen the sound. I try to take advantage of that for a little bit of advertising and use my business card as is shown here. The other item we must silence are the bellows - two of them. They look like this. This one is out of an old clock. (The three small holes are from the screws which hold it in the clock.) The vertical tube is much like an organ pipe or a whistle. When air blows through the slot, it whistles or in a cuckoo clock, it coos. The actual bellows which sucks in air and then blows it out is sitting on top of the whistle. It opens like an alligator s mouth sucking air in through the slot. Then it closes and blows the air back out through the slot and it coos. The way to stop the noise is to make sure it cannot open its mouth. We will do that now.
Page - 3 An alligator wrestler holds or tapes the mouth of the alligator shut. We will do that with the bellows. This photo shows two wire clips that I will put on the bellows to make it keep its mouth shut. The threads attached to the clips are bright red and I will leave them hang out the back door of the clock to make sure the owner takes them out. The clock will not run if the clips are left on the bellows. This photo shows the clips installed on the bellow tops. I simply slid them over the top and bottom parts of the bellows to hold them shut. The wires are springy enough to stay on the bellows until the owner pulls them off with the threads. This photos shows the door reinstalled on the clock. I actually put the door on later on in the process but show it here for completeness. I left the threads (bright red) hanging out so the owner will think something is wrong and take off the clips. One can also see a portion of the business card threaded into the gong to silence it.
Page - 4 The next step is to make sure the chains do not come off the sprockets. We will accomplish this by tying them with a simple string - dental floss. Then I make sure the clock is laying on a soft object like a sponge or a pillow. I use a sponge. Each chain in the clock comes through the bottom twice. I want to tie both halves together. This photos shows my starting to tie the chains together with a simple square knot. This photo shows both chains tied. Note that in one case I tied chain to chain but in the other I tied chain to hook. It doesn t really matter as long as the chains remain tight on the sprockets up in the clock itself. This is the same shot zoomed out a bit. The chains are hanging down. That can be a problem if one is walking about the house or shop with long chains dangling - especially if one accidently steps on them.
Page - 5 We can solve the dangling chain problem by putting the chains in a plastic bag as shown in this photo. That keeps one from stepping on the chains and causing harm to you and/or the clock. You might find one other item when unpacking your clock - a piece of sponge and a stick holding the pendulum hanger wire as shown in the photo. I don t put these on many clocks but occasionally I do when I think the hanger wire might come loose or cause other problems. It is easy to put on and take off. This is all of the special things I do to a clock prior to shipping it. When you receive the clock you must do the reverse of what I have just done before hanging it on the wall. Follow the steps on the next page. Refer to the pictures if you need help.
Page - 6 Steps to unpack the clock. 1 - The first thing you do once you get your clock out of the packing is to find a soft pillow or a sponge and lay it on a table or other flat surface. 2 - Lay the clock face down on the pillow. 3 - If the stick and sponge have been used to hold the hanger, remove them. 4 - Cut the dental floss holding the plastic bag with a sharp knife, razor blade or small scissors. 5 - Take the bag off the chains. 6 - Let the chains hang over the edge of the flat surface so that they will maintain some tension on the chains when you straighten them out and cut the dental floss. The chains usually get a bit tangled but are easily untangled. 7 - Cut the dental floss tying the chains. The weight of the chains hanging over the edge of the flat surface should now maintain the tension on the chains in the sprockets. 8 - Open the back door of the clock 9 - Take the paper out of the gong. If it is my business card, you may want to hang on to it. 10 - Pull the clips off the bellow. You can keep the clips for future moves or put in the trash. 11 - Put the back door back on the clock. 12 - One other thing I have not mentioned is a small little wire often used to hold the bird door shut during transportation. Make sure that wire is turned so that the bird s door swings open easily. 13 - You are ready to hang up the clock and enjoy it. But first! You should be aware of two other things as you put the clock on the wall. 1 - Make sure you have a good, solid anchor for the clock. Even small clocks may have six or seven pound of weight hanging on them. After many hundred of times pulling up the chain the anchor should remain solid as a rock. Small picture frame hangers are unacceptable. Clocks hung on them fall and become pieces of a clock. Ideally the anchor should go into a wall stud or if none are available use a good sized molly bolt anchor. 2 - When I worked on your clock one of the last things I did was to make sure the clock was in beat. That means the clock sounds like tick & tock with equal time intervals between each sound. If it is not in beat, the time interval will be shorter between one set of sounds. I use a level and physically level the bottom of the clock. I then bend a wire called a crutch to make sure the clock is in beat. I used a small $400 timing instrument and a laptop computer to help me. I get it as good as I am able. Thus if the case on the wall is level, it should be in beat. However, you should NOT look at the case an try and level it. Instead, hang the clock on the wall and CLOSE YOUR EYES and LISTEN to the clock. Tilt it one way or the other until the tick and tock are equally spaced. The clock will be in beat. It may not be perfectly level physically, but that does not matter. What matters is that it is in beat. Enjoy the clock Lloyd Lehn PhD CC, www.cuckooclockhospital.com lloyd.lehn@verizon.net 703-256-2684