Hi,

I recently acquired an antique Ansonia mantle clock; which I'm generally happy with, but there is one problem that I hope someone here can help me resolve; the chime is getting increasingly dim.

Sometimes it's so quiet that the mechanism sounds more prominent than the chime itself.

I've created this short YouTube video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuHoxYV4ozg to illustrate how the hammer moves at the hour mark; which appears not to actually hit the
wires. Is this normal?

Based on what can be seen, is there anything someone reasonably handy such as myself could adjust which might resolve this?

Thanks for your help.

CK

I'm by no means a clock repair man, but I've adjusted a lot of these simply by putting a little more bend in the rod to position the strike closer to the chime.
On your clock you also have the provision to loosen the set screw and slide the striker a little closer to the end, which might be all it needs.

Another trick is to put a drop of super glue on the leather striking tip .Makes it hard and loud.Sometimes you can put a flat washer under the bottom of the gong thereby raising it up closer to the hammer.Norm

You can bend the hammer wire gently and or move the hammer to a different location on the chime coil.
Just don't break the wire off of the arbor.
Then have it strike until you get the sound you like. Some have leather in the hammers and some don't. Your choice.

Back in the day, we did not have intrusive sounds such as TV's blaring all the time in the background and communication devices going off, and the children played all day long out of doors

Mantle clocks were in the drawing room or parlor where the only sound was generally peoples voices. The gentle sound of these clocks striking the hours was quiet and just enough to have us check the time when they went off if we were on a time schedule. They were made to not be obtrusive, just barely noticed.

When people try and change this by taking the rawhide out of the striker, hardening the rawhide, putting in a piece of hardwood, or moving the striker closer to the coil, then generally the "new" sound will be much too harsh to be a pleasant sound. Your youtube video sounds very nice and the way they were meant to be.

I was raised in "antiques" and my parents generally had 50-100 clocks of all types on the shoppe walls. When one is around clocks 24-7 they get an idea of how they were meant to be back in the day they were prominent.

regards,
bb