Hermle 451-050

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:19 am     Post subject: Hermle 451-050

Hello,
I was given a hand built clock with a Hermle 451-050 movement. This is my first experience with a clock like this. I did learn online that the movement is dated as 1977. I want to cancel the hour count chime. There are two pivoting arms extending from the back of the movement that could touch the hammer rods. Is that the way to cancel chimes? It almost seems too easy and I don't want to cause any damage.

Thanks,
Gene

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:04 pm     Post subject: stopping the hour chime...

I believe the 451-050 has a chime/silent lever near the 3 o'clock position. If not, you could -carefully- bend back or remove the hammers from the hourly strike arms, providing that those same strike rods are not used in the quarter hour chime tune, if there is one on that movement.

One of our grandfather clocks had a very discordant sounding strike that used four chime notes at once as the strike chord, and I was able to 'tune' it to something much nicer by selecting only two of the chime rods that sounded nice together, and bending the other two hammer arms away from the chime rods so that they could not strike. The chime is so much nicer now.

If you find that you simply don't like the chord of the strike, you may consider the above as an option to simply silencing it completely.

All the best!

--Eric

Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 3:06 pm     Post subject:

Thanks for the reply Eric.
I had found some instructions that also mention the chime silence lever at 3 o'clock. I have seen pictures of movements with a lever that I assumed would be it. Mine doesn't have this. I like the quarterly chimes and may try your suggestion of just removing or bending the hour hammers.

Gene