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Widget Of The Week
Blick Time Recorder Clock, 1940?
 This handsome Blick Time Recorder card stamp clock currently
holds the record for being the largest, heaviest and slowest to be restored
item ever featured in dustygizmos. The reasons for the delay in getting it working
we’ll get to later, but first a few words about what it is and what it does.
If you’ve never seen or used one of these, or
its modern equivalents, count yourself lucky. ‘Punch card’ time recorder clocks
like this were, and probably still are, the bane of the British -- and many
other nationalities -- working men and women. Its purpose is simple, to record
the precise time of arrival and departure of employees at their place of work.
In times past it was also a fairly obvious sign that an employer didn’t trust
their workforce, and it has to be said, often with good cause, if my
recollections of working in a factory in the late 1970s was anything to go by.
Anyway, clocking in and out was a twice daily and sometimes four-times a day
ritual. So critical was the act of ‘punching’ in and out to your wages and
employment prospects that much effort was put into cheating the system. Over
the years these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, and nowadays
employers have much smarter and more sinister ways of monitoring their workers,
but the Blick model featured here harks back to simpler times. Provided no one
was looking a friendly workmate might clock you in if you were going to be bit
late. On old, unsophisticated and very well used machines like this one, which
were still in widespread use until the 1970s, opening the case could be a
fairly simple job. The locks were relatively crude and often so worn it could
be done with an old key or screwdriver allowing you to fiddle the clock; at
least that’s what I heard…
 Time recorder clocks like this vintage Blick
have just two main components; later designs tend to be a lot smaller with more
integrated and compact mechanisms. The upper half of this Blick time recorder --
and most of its contemporaries -- is taken up by the all-important clock. This
one is a relatively late model, dating from the 1940s, or thereabouts, with the
clock movement driven by a mains synchronous* motor. Before that clockwork
mechanisms were the norm. The latter are considered more desirable and
generally quite easy to spot with a swinging pendulum visible through the glass
door. Either way accuracy and reliability were essential so the movements tend
to be high quality designs.
 Beneath the clock is the equally robust card
printer (or puncher). Two metal rods, driven by the clock, connect the clock to
the printer mechanism. Their job is to advance the day/date printer rotors,
shift the card holder up and down so the print head stamps the day and time in
the correct box on the card and turn a wheel, behind a little window that shows
the day of the week and whether it is morning or afternoon. To use it the
worker simply takes their card from an adjacent rack and inserts the card into
the slot beneath the clock. It was important to check that brass lever below
the slot was correctly set to ‘In’ or ‘Out’, then the large lever on the right
is depressed, to operate the printer. A bell sounds to confirm the action, both
to the user and equally likely, to anyone monitoring the worker’s comings and
goings.
The quality of the materials used, from the
solid oak case to the mainly brass and cast iron components in the two
mechanisms, is most impressive, and very heavy. This model, which is fairly
typical of the classic wall-mounted upright design, weighs almost 25
kilograms!
 I found this one at a large antiques fair
a good few years ago, probably around 2005. It was complete but
the case was in a shabby state and the works looked gummed up with stale oil and dirt. It's condition reflected the price I paid for it, which
I recall wasn’t very much and almost certainly less than £20. It looked like a
relatively straightforward restoration project so after lugging it home I set
about stripping it down to its bare bones, carefully putting all the parts into
several boxes; I must have been sidetracked by something more pressing because
I promptly forgot all about it.
Over the years the boxes of parts became
submerged and finally disappeared from view into the depths of my garage. In a
rare fit of spring-cleaning earlier in the year the boxes re-emerged. Seeing
all the parts once again inspired me, or rather made me feel guilty enough to
finish the job I’d started over a decade earlier. After all, it only took a few
hours to take apart, so it shouldn’t take more than half a day to clean it up
and put back together again. Two months later and it’s almost finished…
 I started with the case, which overall was
solid and in fairly good condition, apart from the base. This had probably been
left standing on a damp surface and was badly rotted in places. It needed
replacing but finding a suitably sized slab of hardwood proved quite difficult.
Eventually I found a manky old mahogany tabletop going cheap (£5.00) which had
a large enough section of sound wood to make a decent base for the clock. Several other case parts had to be replaced,
the back needed strengthening, the paint on the clock face stabilised to
prevent further flaking and a new case lock fitted. All these little jobs had
to take their turn and it was a couple of months before the case was wearing
its final coat of Polyx oil, and, though I say so myself, looking rather
splendid.
As it turned out that was the easy bit.
Stripping down the clock and printer mechanisms all those years ago had been
fairly painless. A coating of oil had protected them whilst in storage so
cleaning and checking them wasn’t too difficult, but remembering how it all
fitted together turned into a nightmare. Here’s a handy tip for would-be
restorers. If you haven’t got access to original plans make notes and take photos,
lots of them, before you remove a single screw. More importantly, store them in
a safe place! As it happens I did follow my own advice and take a few pictures
before disassembly but they must have been on a film or memory card that had
vanished without trace…
 Rebuilding the clock wasn’t as bad as I feared,
and it helped that I had kept the parts separate from the printer but it came
to a shuddering halt when I discovered that the ancient Synclock mains
synchronous motor wasn’t working. Finding an original replacement was going to
be next to impossible, replacing it with a modern motor was theoretically an
option but it would involve a lot of fiddling and fettling, mating the old and
new parts, so fixing the original motor seemed to be the best course of action.
It checked out electrically so the problem had to lie in the small gearbox
module. This is an intricate sealed mechanism and incredibly difficult to get
at.
Over the years the oils used during manufacture eventually turn waxy,
congeal and then harden, seizing the gears. The word on the web was that taking
it apart non-destructively is very hard to do. It was the sort of thing only a
skilful and well-equipped watchmaker would dare attempt, and justifiably charge
you handsomely for doing it. Luckily I also found some references claiming that
it is sometimes possible to free up a frozen Synclock motor gearbox with a
week-long soak in fresh oil, but warned this was likely to be a temporary
remedy. With nothing to lose I decided to have a go, but instead of clock or
watch oil, squirted a shed load of WD40 into a small access hole, waited an
hour then tried to turn the output gear with a pair of pliers. Eventually it
started to move and within a few minutes the gears were moving freely. After
reassembling the motor I hooked it up to the mains and it actually worked. I
know this is a far from satisfactory solution and I will get around to draining
the gearbox and refilling it with quality watch oil, but for the moment, and
providing it’s only used for short periods, it is protected against further
seizure and working well enough to test out the rest of the mechanism.
The printer took a very long time, and much
guesswork to put back together. It was fairly obvious where all the larger
parts went but there always seemed to be several springs, a lot of small screws
and odd shaped bracket or rod without a home. Eventually after taking it apart
at least half a dozen times the left over component count was down to a few
washers, but with all of the moving parts seemingly doing their stuff I decided
it was fit for use.
The final hurdle involved aligning the parts.
Positioning the printer mechanism on the baseboard turned out to be quite
critical so that all of the levers and rods lined up with the holes in the case
and the rods with the clock mechanism. Eventually, after much trial and error
(and the attentions of a chisel) it all fitted, and worked. Final tip: if you
ever feel inclined to do a top-to-tail restoration job on one of these buggers,
don’t, unless you have masochistic tendencies!
What Happened To It?
Today’s time recorder clocks – the few that
haven’t been replaced by Big Brother electronic identity, management, security
and access control systems -- are mostly small, soulless black or grey boxes, of
no interest to anyone except the people that control them, and the poor sods
who have to use them, so the less said about the current state of the art in
employee monitoring the better.
Although it says ‘Blick Time Recording Ltd, 188
Grays Inn Road, London W.C.’ on the clock face and embossed into the cast
iron case parts surrounding the card slot, it was actually made by the UK division of an
American manufacturer called the National Time Recorder Company, probably in
its Blackfriars factory in London, or possibly Orpington in Kent. Blick changed hands
several times throughout the 60s and 70s and in 1982 it was acquired by
International Time Ltd,. The brand eventually disappeared in 2005 following ITL’s
takeover by the Stanley Security Solutions Group.
Outwardly the design has hardly changed from
the very first National Time Recorder models, which appeared in the 1920s, to
what you see here. I haven’t been able to find out much about when Blick switched from clockwork to electric timekeeping so the date of 1940 is a bit of a guess but, as
always, clarifications are very welcome. For those who want to know more there
is a very informative website all about time recorder clocks at www.workclocks.co.uk.
Valuation of any sort of vintage timepiece,
especially one as specialised as this, can be a tricky business. The only
reliable real world guides to what people are actually prepared to pay is ebay,
public auctions and what is sold at antique fairs and markets. As
it stands there appears to be very wide spread of prices, from under £100 for
working but tatty specimens to well over £1000 for rare types and pristine
examples sold by dealers. I’ve pitched this one at £350, taking into
account the fact that it has been well used throughout its long and eventful
life and the replacement base. The good news for anyone hoping to acquire one
is that they make regular appearances in online and at local auctions. However,
if you want one for anything other than a static ornament you would be well
advised to do some homework before buying, or seek advice
from a reputable clock or antique dealer. They look great and even earn their
keep as practical and characterful timepieces but within the wooden case lurks
a big, heavy and complicated collection of mechanical bits and pieces that may
will need a lot of time, expertise and possibly deep pockets to get working,
and regular maintenance to make sure it stays that way.
* Synchronous motor – a
type of electric motor commonly used in mains powered clocks that relies on the maintained
stability of the 50Hz AC mains supply to ensure accuracy. In practice mains frequency
can vary slightly over a 24-hour period but power grid operators attempt to
average out the variations in order to maintain overall long-term accuracy.
DUSTY DATA
First Seen: 1940
Original Price: £?
Value Today: £350.00 (0919)
Features: Mains synchronous motor
driven analogue clock, 240mm clock face, user lever operated day/date time
stamp mechanism, operator accessible time, day/AM-PM adjustment, user
selectable In/Out AM/PM lever, solid
oak case
Power req. 240VAC 50Hz
Dimensions:
850 x 330 x 270mm
Weight: 24.8kg
Made (assembled) in: England
Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 7
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