When I stayed with my Grandparents in school holidays (mid 1980s), I always loved his IBM grandfather clock, it was what’s called a Master Clock which he saved from the skip when he worked at Dulux (Balm) Paints in Panmure, Auckland New Zealand it used to drive the clocks and punch card clocks and apparently sat in the Manager’s office, also synced the horn for start / finish / smoko etc.
Anyway, loved it oak case chrome pendulum and electro mechanical nature, often played with it unofficially and stuck my hand into it one time and electrocuted myself which might have seared it into my memory. I think he had a transformer unprotected on the inside floor and I crossed the live mains supply terminals.
Been looking for one but obviously only a small number survived from the 1980s and not being a true grandfather clock in that sense have very limited appeal, also his IBM was huge (from memory) and does not really fit our house.
Anyway picking my way through an online auction is spotted this Gents Masterclock and it was sold in my mind as soon as I noticed it and recognised what it was, its smaller and I have a space for it, the wife is going to hate it but I don’t care. I got it for $15… Obviously its state is unknown and probably never had any electrical juice on it in 30 years.
The only fly was an earlier auction had ten slave clocks, I had to keep these together but winning the Slaves but loosing the Master was going to be a real cluster…. Anyway for reasons I still cannot understand someone else wanted these Slave Clocks, badly, my only thoughts were A they were like me gunning for the Slave and later for the Master or B they had no idea what it was they were bidding on and thought they were nice deco large format English clocks not realising they cannot be used without the Master Clock to Drive them, so I had to chase these and got them for $150 which was a lot more than I wanted to pay, but got these and scored the Master Clock, so yes might ring the house in Clocks or at least a couple in the garage.
Seems this one was overhauled in Aug 1994 and prior to that Oct 1980, I suspect somewhere in the early 2000s a business shut or moved on to more modern equipment and it as sold at auction, serial 20206 and another series of numbers 10850 which I assume is 1/8/1950.
I have had it running on a lab power supply at around 19V and 150 milliamps, I know this is low but probably because no other slave collects were connected. My aim was just to get it started on the lowest voltage and milliamp rating and run for a couple of weeks just to see if everything was basically functional.
During this period I found that this has additional components for a seconds complication contacts and additional circuits and capacitors but no seconds hand on the master clock slave itself which was disappointing. If I could just find a seconds slave in the future.
Initially I intended to move this into the lunge but living in NZ our 1960s house walls have no insulation and is rather small and I am already getting comments on the clunking sound every 30 seconds so I have built an intermediate home for it in the workshop and hard mounted it and a couple of slaves over workbenches as a bit of a test.
After a week I have oiled the pivots and purchased a 12V battery and charger and its now running on a more permanent power supply. I have connected one slave and now going to wait another week or so for it to settle before trying to bring the Master and Slaves into Sync and then trying for time setting so this is the plan for the next month or so. June 2025.
