Blog Archives

Clock Wont Stop Chiming

7/5/2017

We had a customer call us out for a Grandfather clock repair today. Along with some other problems, one of her main issues was the clock would not stop striking on the hour, it would just chime until the weight would run down. There are a few reasons this happens on not only Grandfather clocks, but all clocks. This Grandfather clock was a modern day Grandfather clock made by King Author Clock company, back in 1985. King Author Clock company is now longer in business, however, they used a Urgoes movement that is still available today. The problem for the non stop striking was the "locking pallets" stop pin was broken off. With the stop pin broken off, there was nothing to stop the locking pallet from stopping. We do carry several Locking pallets on our service van, so I was able to replace the locking pallet without any problems. If we don't have the correct locking pallet on our vans, we have been able to repair the stop in with a tapered pin. Simply tapping out the reaming parts of the stopping pin inside the locking tablet, then installing the correct sized tapers pin and cutting it off to the correct size always works fine.

The pictures to the right will show the process of replacing the new locking pallet. There are just 2 small screws that will hold the locking pallet on to the shaft on the movmeent.

Once the old Locking pallet was removed, I installed the new locking pallet. Lining up the new locking pallet can get tricky sometimes, you have to make sure the stop pin will stop the levers at the correct time. If you are unable to, the stop pin will not catch correctly and the clock movement will not stop striking, giving you the same problem as if the stop pin was broken off.

The picture to the right shows the old and new locking pallet. The locking pallet on the right side is the old one. You can see the new locking pallet on the left side with the stop pin in tact.

As you can see from the picture to the right, the new locking pallet was installed and adjusted. After I cleaned and re-oiled this movement I re-installed the movement back into the Grandfather clock case, calibrated it and got it up and running for our customer.

Her Grandfather Clock was back up and running in less than an hour. She was very happy and was glad to hear her Grandfather clock ticking and chiming correctly.