Mechanical cuckoo clock is powered by the gravity of the weights and is regulated by adjustable pendulum. Adjusting is done on the back side of pendulum, by moving the screw up or down, depending wehter you want to slow it down or speed it up. Mechanical cuckoo clocks also have a manual switch for the night time. Only exception with automatic night off are 8 day clocks with music.
Mechanical Cuckoo Clock Variations
There are 4 different versions of mechanical movement:
• 1 Day Running Time movement
• 8 Day Running Time movement
• 1 Day Running Time with Music movement
• 8 Day Running time with Music movement
1 day clocks have to be wind up once every 24h and have smaller size weights, while eight day clocks have to be wind up once a week and have large weight attached to them. So the best way to tell them apart is to pay attention to the weights.
Since each weight has it´s own function, musical clocks would have a additional weight to power extra features such as dancing people, music and waterwheel.
Clock that has only 2 weights won´t have music, therefore 1 weight operates mechanical movement while second weight operates cuckoo calls.
Mechanical Cuckoo Clocks
Materials and parts
It is well known that German Black Forest cuckoo clocks are made out of hand carved and hand painted wooden parts. Wood used for carvings is local Black Forest lime wood (also named bass wood / linden wood in different parts of the world).
It is very soft and good for carving, but it has to dried for about 3 years before it can be used for carvings, as wood would split during carving if not dried properly.
German mechanical movement is made out of brass and stainless steel to prevent any rust affecting the mechanism. All our mechanical movements have Made in Germany quality tag.
Cuckoo whistles are made out of wood, nylon and cotton. Back in days they used goat skin instead of nylon and cotton combination, but it would dry out and crack in short time, that is why they started using synthetic materials.
Chains are made out of stainless steel and weights are made of cast iron.
Music box is the only part that is not made in Germany, as our neighbors in Switzerland have a huge tradition of making those.
