Time is up for the Wood County Courthouse clock.
The clock, which chimes every hour on the hour, has been out of service since Nov. 8.
In an update to the commissioners on Thursday, the buildings and grounds director said his department will do everything they can to fix it.
“I know it’s a landmark, so we’re on it. We’ll see what we can do,” said Steve Blausey. “It is getting increasingly difficult to find parts.”
He said there’s a motor in the clock that drives the works, and inside the motor, there are gears. This is the broken part that they can’t find, Blausey said.
He said he has checked with a company in Archbold that usually helps, but it can’t assist with this repair.
“So far we’re striking out,” he said.
Joe Simon, a maintenance worker for the county, said he is confident that the clock will eventually be fixed.
“Just got to get connected with the right company. It’s taking time. Somebody out there can do it,” he said. “The brass gear on the bottom is stripped. It’s a small part, but it drives the whole mechanism.”
Commissioner Craig LaHote suggested using a 3-D printer to make the broken part.
Blausey believes the clock is original to the building, which will be 125 years old in 2021.
The 185-foot tall clock tower features a very large hand clock with four faces each aligned with one of the four cardinal directions, according to the Supreme Court of Ohio website.
The E. Howard Watch and Clock Co. made the tower clock for $3,000, according to the Wood County Auditor website.
Plans to purchase the “second largest clock in the world” were announced Sept. 27, 1895, but the clock wasn’t ordered until July 20, 1897. The bell did not strike the time until Jan. 30, 1897, and the hands were not installed until later.
The bells weigh 2,000 pounds and the hands spread to a 17-feet diameter.
At the time, the hands were the second largest on an American clock, exceeded in size only by the 17.5-feet dials on the Chronicle newspaper building in San Francisco.
The clock has been guaranteed to vary no more than 10 seconds a month. A few months after it was installed a Bowling Green newspaper reported the clock “goes when it pleases and makes its own time.”
The original hands of the clock reportedly were made of basswood, not of wrought iron as spelled out in the contract, according to the auditor’s site.
The clock hands were reportedly frozen during the 1978 blizzard.
The clock also stopped working last year during a deep freeze.
https://www.facade-clock.com/outdoor-clock/facade-clock/outdoor-clock-with-thermometer.html
