Cuckoo clock with no night shutoff

Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 5:16 am     Post subject: Cuckoo clock with no night shutoff

Hello everyone. I just received a cuckoo clock as a Christmas gift. The friend who gave it to me bought it off of Ebay, so I don't really know too much about it. I can't find a brand/company name on it anywhere, but I assume it is a few decades old since it says "West Germany" on the dial. It also says 1971 on the back, and I'm assuming this is the date it was made. Other than that, I don't really know much about it.

It works fine, but I can't find any sort of night shutoff switch on it. Perhaps it is too old to have one. Anyway, I live in an apartment, so I'd like to find a way to shut this thing up so it doesn't bother my neighbors at 3:00 am. I know some clocks have a little wire on the outside of the cuckoo door to stop it from cuckooing, but this one doesn't.

Other than stopping the clock every night before bed, which I don't want to do because it would be a pain to get it going again every morning, I've come up with 2 ideas. One would be to simply put a piece of tape over the door at night, which would keep it closed and function the same as the piece of wire. However, I don't know if this would hurt the clock, or cause the cuckoo to get out of sync.

The other idea is to take the cuckoo and music box weights off at night, and just leave on the weight that runs the clock, but again, I don't know if this would end up damaging the clock or causing the cuckoo to get out of sync.

I know I might be able to get a night shutoff switch installed, but I can't afford that right now.

Can anyone here give me any advice? Thank you very much

Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 10:51 am     Post subject:

the way i would do it is to take the weights off.

The way you can tell if it will go out of sequence is looking at the back of the mechanism and if you see a wheel on the back plate it means it possibly will go out of sync.

If it doesn't have a 'countwheel' then it means it won't go out of sync.

Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:38 pm     Post subject:

Okay, I'll try doing that tonight. Will taking two weights off and leaving one on hurt the clock at all? I don't really know how delicate such clocks are and if only having weight on one side is bad for the mechanism or something.

Thanks for your help

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 10:45 pm     Post subject:

shouldn't do it any harm.
operate the clock with the other weights on too every now and again to keep it 'operative'.
all it should do is wear the time side more than the others over the years.