My name is Jesús Ramón Rodríguez Burgo. I am the clockmaker of the City Historian’s Office, as part of its Restoration and Conservation Department. My job is to restore clock mechanisms. I began working with clocks with my father, a clockmaker who got me interested in the trade. Later on, I attended the Clockmaker’s School, which gave me the foundations I needed to work with antique clocks.<\/p>\n
At the age of 18, more or less, I fixed my first clock, a Russian alarm clock that was common at the time. Once, something very interesting and funny happened to me. I was working in a repair-shop complex and somebody brought me a Swiss-made alarm clock. It had a very tiny mechanism, almost wristwatch-size. I remember that I took it apart, cleaned it and made it work, and delivered it ready to go. But the next day, the customer came to complain. Just imagine, I had done everything right and I didn’t understand what the problem could be. So I opened it and found that an ant had gotten inside the mechanism and stopped the clock. It was unbelievable, and it was funny. <\/p>\n
The oldest clock that I’ve ever repaired is in one of the display cases of the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales (Palace of the Captain-Generals). It is an 18th century clock that has a chime system, meaning it gives a stroke or chime similar to that of a wall clock. It was not destroyed, but it had not worked in more than 100 years. I took it apart completely. The mechanism was quite complex, but I cleaned it, oiled it, adjusted it and got it running. I also had the honor of repairing the clock that belonged to Félix Varela.<\/p>\n
Monumental clocks, like those of the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, the Lonja del Comercio and the train station, are a bit complex to work on because of their size. You can’t sit down at a table with them. The tools used to repair them are very large, and sometimes it takes two people to handle them. Personally, the clocks I prefer to repair are grandfather or floor clocks. I like those clocks because I think they are prettier, more interesting and more complicated. For my personal use, I have a Seiko, but if I had my druthers, I would like one of the modern Cuervo y Sobrinos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Jesús Ramón Rodríguez Burgo. I am the clockmaker of the City Historian’s Office, as part of its Restoration and Conservation Department. My job is to restore clock mechanisms. I began working with clocks with my father, a clockmaker who got me interested in the trade. Later on, I attended the Clockmaker’s School, which gave me the foundations I needed to work with antique clocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":4104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,43],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[33559],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cubans","category-magazine-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n