Can clock be saved?

The kitchen clock said 12 minutes to 3.
Which made no sense at all.
It was a weekday morning. I’d started a pot of coffee. I’d brought in the morning paper. I’d awakened the computer so it could check for email. And I’d poured two glasses of V-8 juice.
That meant it should be almost exactly 6:15 a.m.
(I’m pretty much a creature of habit in the morning.)
But the kitchen clock said 12 minutes to 3.
And the hands weren’t moving.
Battery, I thought, then realized I’d put the last AA Duracells in my camera the day before. Fixing the clock would have to wait until the household battery supplies had been replenished.
I mentioned it to my wife at breakfast, after she’d looked at the 12 minutes to 3 face on the clock, and she said she’d pick up some batteries.
Trouble is, a new battery didn’t do it. A second new battery fared no better.
The clock was dead.
Now, this is no ordinary clock.
No. Scratch that. This is indeed a very ordinary clock. Except to us.
We’re not sure where we bought it. But we remember that it wasn’t expensive.
We liked it for its simplicity.
It’s a round ring of cherry, with an inner band of black, and a classic clockface of black on white. It’s capable of looking modern and antique at the same time.
We’ve always thought of it as a Shaker style. But the Shakers were never known for manufacturing battery-powered clocks, now were they?
We also can’t remember how long ago we bought the clock.
But about eight years ago, when we undertook a major kitchen remodeling project, the designer from Pennville Custom Cabinets in Portland asked us what we liked about our pre-remodeled kitchen. The answer: The clock.
Everything else in the remodeling — cabinetry, hardware, you name it — flowed from that inexpensive but treasured clock.
And now it sat on the kitchen table, still reading 12 minutes to 3, having rejected the juice from two batteries.
At lunchtime, having a bowl of soup, I turned the clock over and examined it.
At that angle, it looked far less Shaker than ever. Mostly, it was black plastic, with a small clock motor in the middle.
Studying it, I realized that the motor could be removed.
If it could be removed, it could be replaced.
I grabbed a small screwdriver and set to work between spoonfuls of soup.
Within a few minutes, I’d popped the motor assembly out of the middle of the back of the clock.
“Check it out,” I said to my wife, clearly impressed with my own efforts at clock repair.
And she might have been impressed just a smidgen momentarily, until I moved the upside down clock a bit and heard something rattling.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Those,” she explained, “would be the hands.”
Sure enough, I now had a clock motor and a partially disassembled clock, with the hands floating around like castaways beneath the clear plastic cover on the face.
Is it possible to replace the motor, reattach it to the hands properly, and put the whole thing back together without breaking any of the brittle plastic?
Maybe. But I’m going to entrust that to more skillful hands.
Can this clock be saved? Ask me again after I’ve dropped it off in Dunkirk and let Bill Blankenbaker take a look at it.[[In-content Ad]]