Attaching a Grandfather clocks face to the movement

We service over 700 Grandfather clocks per year in the Atlanta Metro area.  Our company gets many calls and emails from people all over the country, that asks us for help on some of the repairs to their Grandfather clocks. We will put together several short instructional blogs to help everyone that can't find a clock repair person in their area, or would just like to do their own repairs. 

When someone purchases a new movement from us, there are a few things that will need to be performed, prior to re-installing the new movement. One of the tasks to be performed will be to re-install the old Grandfather clocks face to the new Grandfather clock movement. I have posted a few pictures to help you understand how this is done. The first picture is of the face, upside down. You will notice the 4 posts on the backside of the face.
​These post will line up with 4 matching holes in the movement pictured second. 

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There are several ways to get the face to fit on the movement, However I will discuss the way I was tough and the way that is easiest for me. Feel free to try other methods that might work best for you. 

First and most important.  Before you touch the face of your movement, you will need to put on a pair of either latex or cotton gloves. You do not want to touch the face with your bare hands. If you already have, wipe the Grandfather clocks face with some Windex or some type of glass cleaner. Please use it sparingly and do not wipe hard, you could remove the lettering on the face. Once its clean and  you have your gloves on,  place the movement face up toward you.  Look around the face post holes. On the inside of the front side of the movement, you will see silver locking levers at each hole.  The picture below will show you what you are looking for.  There are 4 of these locking tabs, 1 for each hole. Before you try to line the face up to the movement, study these locking tabs, notice that when you move  them one way, they will cover up the face post holes on the movement. Move them so that the holes are not being blocked. 

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Once the locking tabs are clear from the face post holes, you are ready to install the face onto the movement.  Place the face upside down in one hand. Bring the movement over to the face , lining up the hand shaft with the center hole on the face,
lower the movement down to meet the face.  The face post will move a little and sometimes will not line up perfectly with the face post holes in the movement, You will have to move the face posts to meet the face post holes. One challenge to installing the face is the moon gear will sometimes not line up with the face gear, so you will have to move the moon gear around as well to help the face posts to drop down into the face post holes. Once the face posts are seated into the face post holes, you will need to move the locking tabs over so the locking tabs will lock into place and hold the face onto the movement. 
Once the locking tabs are in place, your Grandfather clocks face is installed onto your Grandfather clock movement.  You will be able to install the Grandfather clocks hands onto the movement now and re-install the movement into your Grandfather Clocks case. 

We will post additional information as questions come in to our shop that we think will help with repairing your Grandfather clock yourself. Please feel free to ask us questions and we will try to post instructions to help. 

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