Grandfather clock chimes on the 1/4s, but not on the hour

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 11:48 pm     Post subject: Grandfather clock chimes on the 1/4s, but not on the hour

Hello. We have a Howard Miller clock with the SKS13 movement in it. A few years ago, the center chain wheel gave out, and sent the weight through the bottom of the clock case. We didn't look into repairing it until recently, and were informed that the SKS13 movements had some kind of design issue with the chain wheels, and that this was a common problem with this cheap movement. The repair would have cost more than we could get for the clock, so we elected not to have it repaired.

I located the parts online from Timesavers, and replaced all of the chain wheels. The clock now runs, and keeps time just fine. The problem is with the hour chime. When the minute hand reaches 12, nothing chimes. When it reaches the :15, it will chime the hour. Everytime the minute hand reaches 12, it doesn't do anything. So the next hour, :15 will chime :45. Next time around, :15 will chime the half hour. It seems there is a release mechanism that isn't getting lifted high enough on the hour, but is getting lifted high enough for the 1/4s. I can manually raise it, and it will chime with the minute hand on the 12.

Yes, I know this is a cheap movement and maybe not worth the trouble. However I'd like to get this thing running again myself if possible.

Please forgive my lack of proper vocabulary, as this is my first attempted clock repair. I'd appreciate any hints or tips you may have for me!

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:48 am     Post subject: Found it (I'm stupid)

The behavior wasn't exactly as stated above. The clock would chime at :15, :30, and :45. Then when it hit the hour, it wouldn't do anything. At the next :15, it would chime the hour.

After this happened, ALL The chimes worked fine, except they were always 15 minutes behind. I didn't even think that I had the minute hand installed 90 degrees out of its correct placement.

Clock is all fixed and working 100%. Just an update for anyone that is as dumb as me.

Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2011 3:58 pm     Post subject:

Yeah, that is much clearer now that you stated that the chiming sequence was reset as they will do by themselves after one revolution around the dial. When your clock didn't chime on the hour, it had to go one complete revolution around the dial, chiming as it went, to reset its sequence. But it cannot reset the quarter hour that you had the minute hand pointing to so it seemed like it was still off chime sequence by 15 minutes.

You were smart enough to notice that the sequence was, in fact, correct but the time indicated on the face of the clock was 15 minutes off!! So it became an easy fix to move the minute hand to the correct position to coincide with whatever chime was next.

See, you're not as dumb as you thought you were!! Good catch on the minute hand position!!