Saving a Wall Clock With Warped Hands

I have - among other things in my collection of Braun design objects - a beautiful, radio controlled, analog wall clock (ABW32). It worked very well for several years. A while ago, however, it stopped running, the cause of which was that the hours hand had become, for whatever reason, warped upwards, and the minutes hand got stuck on it, although it was warped upwards as well. Not good.

For repair, you need access to the hands. When there is no glass (or transparent plastic) protecting them, no problem; if there is, you need to find out how to remove the glass without damaging or scratching anything. A suction cup, such as the one from your GPS mount, might be helpful.

Caution: In case of a radio controlled clock, you need to

- Remove the clock's battery/ies

- Memorize the exact position of the hands (or, even better, set them to a defined position, such as 12:00)

before removing the hands.

The hands can in most cases simply be pulled off their axles.

I tried to carefully bend the hands back in order to get them straight again. Of course I didn't use excessive force, because I didn't want to break them. However, they remained warped (no picture available, sorry - but I'm sure you can use your imagination).

I attached the hands on my workshop table using adhesive tape so that they were straight again. I heated them with my hot air gun set to a moderate temperature (approx. 80° C) in order to not melt the plastic. However, after having cooled down, they still remained warped (no picture again, sorry - see above).

I concluded that the hands needed something at their rear side pulling them straight - in a similar way as reinforced concrete works. The first idea was glueing some wire at the rear of the hands using superglue. I used a drop at every end of the hands in order to glue a piece of 0.6 mm dia. bare wire on them, with the help of some mineral filler material (which is, I've been told, simply some fine silica sand), as shown in the upper part of the 1st picture above. This worked in so far as the hands became more or less straight again, but the hours hand still was somewhat tilted upwards.

Next try: I glued a narrow strip of white polystyrene to the back of the hours hand, using polystyrene glue. I even bent the hours hand a little backwards by supporting its ends by two layers of gray cardboard and fixed the whole thing on my workshop table with some adhesive tape (see the 2nd picture above - ugly but simple and functional). After the glue had cured, I removed the adhesive tape - but even pulling the adhesive tape away made the polysterene strip come loose. I assume that the hands themselves are made from ABS, a plastic that is rather resilient, but unfortunately very difficult to be glued.

One more try: I glued the polystyrene strip to the hours hand, using the same contraption as shown above, but with superglue along the whole length of the strip. This seemed to be successful indeed, the hours hand remained straight for several days now (lower part of the 1st picture above). As the minutes hand seemed to be straight enough and worked well, I let it be with its glued-on wire, as shown in the picture - never touch a running system :-)

In case of a quartz clock, this is no problem at all - you just fit the hours hand pointing to the '12' position, then fit the minutes hand pointing to the same position - and the same with the seconds hand, if any. You insert the battery and set the clock to the current time - either by rotating the minutes hand, or by turning a little knob at the rear of your clock. If there was a protective glass/plastic cover, reinstall that too. Done.

Several years ago, when trying to clean another radio controlled clock, I had to learn the hard way that installing the hands is tricky. They only indicate the correct time if the hands are at an exactly defined position with reference to the clockwork. I provided a separate instructable on how to do this correctly; you can find it here: https://www.instructables.com/Re-Installing-the-Hands-on-a-Radio-Controlled-Cloc/