While it's hard to come up with genuine innovations in a 400-year-old craft, sometimes you can make small ones. Instead of making a conventional pendulum rating screw and nut, I decided to regulate the clock's timekeeping by intalling a small sliding weight on the pendulum rod above the main bob. Sliding the weight up and down will change the pendulum's center of gravity and thus its rate. The slider must move smoothly on the pendulum rod. At the same time, it must maintain its grip. A sliding adjustment of the main bob, like a cuckoo clock, would be too coarse.
I made the slider from a disk of 3/4" brass. First I made a 3/32" through hole, the diameter of the pendulum rod. Transverse to this I drilled a 1/8" hole. I watched carefully when drilling the 1/8" hole, making sure that the larger hole went no deepen than to just break through into the smaller hole.
Into the 1/8" hole I dropped a 1/8" ball bearing which I salvaged from an old bearing by using a large hammer. On top of that I put a length of homemade compression spring, made as I have previously described, wound on a 1/16" mandrel. (The spring winding mandrel must always have a smaller diameter the spring to be wound on it.)
Over that, I fit a 1/8" plug which closed the hole, compressing the spring and trapping the spring and ball bearing inside. I managed a tap fit on the plug. Had I not, a drop of Loctite or Superglue would have held the plug in place. (Soldering would anneal the little spring.) Then I trued the outside of the slider, so that the plug is flush with the surface. Time will tell how satisfactory is the innonvation.
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