How to Silence a Ticking Wall Clock

Got a wall clock that you like everything about, except for the ticking noise it makes?

The hands of your clock are likely driven by a battery-powered motor mechanism known as a movement, and the ticking sound is caused by the gears inside the movement turning once per second.

There are several ways to address the noise. One option is opening up the movement and oiling the gears, which may or may not be sufficient.

A second option is to replace the ticking movement with a sweeping one. Unlike a ticking movement, a sweeping movement's gears turn more gradually, making them practically noise-free. The rest of this article will explore the process of replacing your clock's movement.

Replacing the movement

1. Sweeping movements are sold in abundance online. You'll want to find one that closely matches the dimensions of your current movement. Probably the most important detail is the shaft length - too short means you may not have enough reach to mount the hands, and too long means the hands might protrude too much (or even hit the front cover of the clock if there is one).

2. If you're reusing your old clock hands, you'll want to make sure that the shaft widths on the new movement will be compatible with the old hands. More on this in the next section.

3. Once you've obtained the new movement, you'll need to remove the old movement from the clock. Undo the screws in the back of the clock in order to open up the clock and gain access to the hands.

4. Gently pop the hands off each respective shaft of the movement. If your clock doesn't have a second hand, it might have an end cap affixed to where a second hand would normally go, so gently detach that too.

5. Unscrew the retaining nut on the front of the movement. Now you should be able to free the movement from the clock - it'll probably be held in place with clips or adhesive. If the latter, pry off the movement carefully in order to preserve the adhesive.

6. Now you can insert the new movement, fasten down the retaining nut, and press the hands (and end cap if you're using one) onto the respective shafts. Close up the clock, fasten the screws holding the backing in place, and you're done. Pop a battery in and enjoy the sound of silence!

What if the hands don't fit?

There doesn't seem to be any standardization for the width of the shafts on clock movements, so it's possible that your old hands won't fit on the new movement due to the holes being too big or too small.

Some movements come with replacement hands. In case yours doesn't, or the replacement hands are not quite the right length, or you just like the look of the old hands better, then some elbow grease might be necessary.

When buying a movement, you'll obviously want to look at any dimensions listed and try to find one that has shafts close in width to the one you're replacing. If the individual shafts end up being slightly too wide, you can try filing them down until the hands will fit. Do this evenly and gradually until the hands fit snugly without forcing.

On the flip side, if the shafts are slightly too narrow, you may have to use some filler material to make them wide enough for the hands to fit securely.

Bonus: how a clock movement works

If you're just swapping one movement for another, you can do so without having to open them up. But if you're curious, you can open up a movement to see how all the gears inside interact and ultimately drive each respective shaft (hour, minute, and second) at different speeds. A clock movement really is a simple yet ingenious device.

Below is a picture of a ticking movement (left) and a sweeping movement (right) with the covers removed:

Most clock movements use a quartz crystal to keep accurate time. When electricity is sent to it, the crystal vibrates at a very precise frequency (32,768 times per second). Why that exact number? Turns out the crystals are grown that way!

An integrated circuit (IC) counts these oscillations in order to keep accurate time, and it sends an electrical pulse through an electromagnet (the spool of copper wire you can see in the picture) at precise intervals. The interval is once per second for a ticking movement and many times per second for a sweeping movement.

The electromagnet produces a magnetic field, which turns a gear that has a magnet attached to it. That gear drives the next gear, and so on. And that is how a clock movement turns electricity into precisely timed motion!

Taking all the gears out and putting them back together can be a fun puzzle in itself. But you might want to take some pictures as you go, just in case!