Hubert Herr - an adventure begins

Should you opt for rebushing or replacing a movement? This will very much depend on the movement and the cost?

Hubert Herr cuckoo clocks were a legendary, family-run Black Forest clockmaker founded in Triberg, Germany.

The family business began crafting local wood carvings around 1860 and officially established manufacturing before expanding production worldwide. A customer came in with a Hubert Herr cuckoo clock that was not working.

Back to business with a Hubert Herr movement.

With the back removed, I found the movement to be clogged with oil, dirt, and hair.

After removing and cleaning the movement I discovered nearly every bushing was badly worn.

You can see the pivots moving in the enlarged bushings

With this movement, the bushings in the plates looked to have been over-chamfered on both sides, leaving very little contact area for the pivots.

This causes the pivot ends to cut gullies into the plates, causing the movement to fail.

Deep chamfer on bushings with a plate only 1.1mm thick promoting excess wear to the plates

As an exercise, I replaced 12 bushings and polished the pivots. The result is below.

If I charged the customer for this, it would end up being a very expensive exercise with the other work that was required to bring the cuckoo back to an acceptable level.

Testing "free wheeling" after rebushing

Everything worked well, and my customer was very pleased with the result.

The next chapter covers the cost analysis of either rebushing a compatible one-day Hubert Herr or replacing the movement with a Regula 25.