Chime sync for a Seth Thomas mantel clock, model 119.

[David Farber]

We recently had our Seth Thomas 119 mantel clock serviced. It was inherited
from a family member. The clock wouldn't run. After servicing, the time now
works properly and so do the chimes, sort of.

In the evening we turn off the chimes via the lever on the side of the
clock. The lever has two positions, "C," and "S." We figured out that "S"
stands for silent mode and it does indeed quiet the chimes when the lever is
moved to that position. However, when we move the lever back up to the "C"
position the next morning, the results are unpredictable. Before I go into
the sometimes crazy things that happen when the chimes are re-enabled, I'd
like to know, when the lever is in the silent position, is the chiming
mechanism supposed to continue operating except for the fact that the
hammers are blocked from hitting the pipes? What is happening is that after
the lever is put back to the "C" position, it's as if the chime
synchronization picks up where it left off the evening before. If you turn
it off at 10:20, then turn it back on at 8:00 in the morning, the next
hourly chime will be the 11:00 chime. Also, this clock has a quarter hour
chime as well. Sometimes when the lever is moved back to the "C" position,
the quarter hour will immediately chime whether or not it's in one of the
quarter hour positions of :00, :15, :30, :45. And then sometimes in addition
to the immediate quarter hour chiming after it's reactivated, it really gets
crazy when the hourly chime sounds at the same time the quarter hour chime
sounds. It's quite dissonant. At the end of all this tone wrangling, you
then can sync the quarter hour and hour chimes with the two trip levers
located in the mechanism. Then it's all good until the next morning. Again,
this only happens after moving the lever from "S" to "C". So back to my
original question, should the chime mechanism be totally disabled during the
silent hours? Or should the mechanism still be cycling, keeping sync with
the time, but only disabling the hammering of the pipes?

Also, can someone tell me what the three windup springs are for? Someone
penciled in "clock" over one of the openings. So does that leave the other
two springs to independently power the hourly and quarterly chimes?

Finally, is it ok to move the minute hand backward?

Thanks for your reply.
--

David Farber
Los Osos, CA

[dAz]

something similar to this
http://ticktocktony.com/Antique-Clock-Products/Other/599.php


different companies have different systems, mostly when you shut the
chime/strike off it just blocks the chime and strike trains, so yes it
will just continue from where it left off, normally take about an hour
to reset itself, however what you have is an american 2 train movement
which is normally a locking plate strike, unlike a rack strike, locking
plate strike is not self correcting and has to be manually reset, in
addition unlike a more modern 3 train 4/4chime and rack strike your
clock has an added separate chime movement which also has to be manually
reset after stopping or allowed to run down.

http://ticktocktony.com/Antique-Clock-Images/Other-Antique-Clock/599/599movement.jpg

so yes, each and every time you shut the chime and strike off, you have
to manually reset it

personally I would not bother to shut the chimes off, learn to live with it

>
> Also, can someone tell me what the three windup springs are for? Someone
> penciled in "clock" over one of the openings. So does that leave the other
> two springs to independently power the hourly and quarterly chimes?

well the clock has 3 functions with 3 trains and 3 mainspring, the hole
near the 8 is the strike, near the 4 is the time and the hole at the 3
is the chime, you probably have another small keyhole right under the
hands, that's for regulation

>
> Finally, is it ok to move the minute hand backward?

no.

>
> Thanks for your reply.

[David Farber]

Hi,

The picture of the mechanism you showed differs slightly from my clock.
Perhaps it's just the chimes themselves. They have a much deeper tone than
the one demonstrated on the ticktocktony website. Here's what I have:
http://webpages.charter.net/mrfixiter/images/Mantel_Clock/Back-view-mantel.jpg

Thanks for the detailed explanation of the mechanism. Given the fact that we
can agree the clock is a p.i.t.a. to sync, does the intermittent,
simultaneous hourly and quarterly chiming when the chimes are reactivated
indicate some sort of impending failure?

[dAz]

yours has gong rods, the other struck on bell.

>
> Thanks for the detailed explanation of the mechanism. Given the fact that we
> can agree the clock is a p.i.t.a. to sync, does the intermittent,
> simultaneous hourly and quarterly chiming when the chimes are reactivated
> indicate some sort of impending failure?

nope, just the nature of the locking plate strike, the strike locking is
normally released by the time train and locked by the chime train while
it is chiming, once the chime finishes, the hour strike will sound, the
shutoff lever blocks both chime and strike trains, but the time train
will continue to release the strike so yes strike will sound on whatever
the next hour is when it was shutoff,

this clock was a solution for Seth Thomas who wanted to market a chiming
clock but were primarily making 2 train striking clocks like most of the
American clock makers did and their solution was to add a chime
movement, later they did make a proper 3 train chime movement which was
a complete new design for them.

sounds to me your clock is working as it should with all it's quirks :)

look after it, they are nice clocks and will last for years