So you have a beautiful, elegant Swedish antique mora clock resplendent in your house. It is your pride & joy and gives you great pleasure every time you see it.
How do you look after it? There's videos aplenty for fixing the clockworks (even if it is not nearly as simple as the youtube 'experts' make out) but precious little on caring for your antique mora clock.
So first you need to understand the nature of wood.
In general, Swedish antique mora clocks are built in panels made of pine that are glued and pinned together to create the unique body and hoods shapes that we all love. Very occasionally you see a mora clock where the entire body has been sculpted out of a single log a bit like a dugout canoe. These are especially heavy compared to a usual Swedish antique mora clock.
Wood is alive, unlike manmade products, and it responds to changes in its environment. This is due to the cell structure of wood and the addition or reduction in the moisture content of the wood. Things like the age of the wood when it was cut and type of wood will lessen and increase the chances of wood movement but overall most woods except the solidest of hardwoods will bend and flex over time to some degree.
The culprits here are the fearsome duo of Humidity and Central Heating.
Where you live in an area where the humidity changes drastically across the span of the year, this can have a drastic effect on wood, making it more moist and then it will swell which can cause joints to pop, paint to loosen, hinges to move and doors to stick.
It can also change the way the clock stands as the various panels will move in different ways in respect to each other.
So if you are one of the few people who still use the original clockworks, you may find that the pendulum swing changes and the clock stops, thus requiring a fresh set up - this is why we believe the battery chiming mechanism is a much better option. A client recently told us she was quoted £1000 for a clock repairer to reset up and work on her clock!
Central Heating has the opposite effect to humidty. The constant high temperatures cause the wood to dry out and shrink. This means you may find gaps suddenly appearing in between previously tight panels, paint lifting as the wood loosens the paint bond and the structural integrity of the clock becoming less solid as the elements pull away from each other.
So what do you do to combat these issues?
Well first of all you read our next blog where we make some suggestions about how to control the environment your clock lives in and then the final instrallment of how to care for your Swedish antique mora clock on a day to day basis.