Great! See you there.

Ours has been working for quite a number of years now with no problems at all. The units do get serviced, along with the clock mechanism, annually.

It is all built into the mechanics of the clock, running just the same as it did 100 years ago. The timekeeping side of the clock on the left triggers the striking mechanism as the hour ticks through, and that side will strike 1 the first time, 2 the second etc and so on until 12 hours later it starts again.

@@bamptonhumph Right, that makes sense. But what, then, determines how many times the clock chimes for the particular hour (once for 1 o'clock, twice for 2 o'clock and so on)? Is there some kind of rotating wheel or something like that which determines that? Like maybe this wheel has pins, or holes, or something else which somehow regulates the number of times the bell should ring? I'm imagining that wheel or whatever would have to be first locked in place somehow so that it refuses to rotate, via some kind of "catch" or "locking pins" or something, until a gear or cam in the timekeeping part maybe pulls a lever that releases those "locking pins". That's what starts the striking process... that wheel that was once prevented from spinning can now finally spin. The opposite would then have to happen when it's time for the striking process to halt. This is probably rather complex and therefore difficult to explain, so I do apologize if I'm maybe asking too much. But I'm simply interested in trying to understand how this works. I should also mention that I'm visually impaired to the point of complete blindness, so that's likely the biggest reason I don't quite get how this works yet.

@@justinnaramor6050 You are right, it is very difficult to explain! But what you say is basically how it works. The chimes are worked very much like a giant musical box with a cylinder with spaced pins, and levers and links to the bells above. After the hour chimes, the strike mechanism is triggered by a lever which allows a large cog wheel to rotate, and in the side of this wheel there are pins spaced so that another wheel can be released to create a bong every time it goes around. The spacing of the pins gives time for it to turn once, twice, three times, etc until the next pin arrives. Hope that helps.

@@bamptonhumph So, your description gives me the impression that this thing uses a "count wheel" to determine the number of strikes on the bell for the hour. I did some reading on how a chiming/striking clock works a little while ago and this is what was explained. Basically the count wheel is a wheel which has little notches cut into it. When the bell is not striking, a lever sits inside one of those notches. This essentially holds the gear train for the striking mechanism in place so that it cannot rotate. My understanding is that there's a complex system of levers in the timekeeping part which ultimately leads to this lever on the count wheel. When it's time for the hour strike, this system of levers essentially pulls the lever out of the notch in the counting wheel, allowing it and the gear train to rotate. The lever rides along on the top of the counting wheel. As the counting wheel continues to rotate, eventually another notch comes into contact with the lever; the lever is allowed to then slide into the notch, either because of an attached spring or simply because gravity takes over and allows it to naturally slide into the notch. This once again restricts the count wheel and the gear train from rotating. So it's the amount of space between these notches, along the circumference of the counting wheel, that determines how many times the bell rings; if there is a longer time between when the lever is pulled out of one notch and when another notch comes into contact with the lever and allows it to drop, the bell would ring more times, because the large wheel with the pins that activate the hammers which hit the bell is allowed to rotate for longer. Obviously the opposite thing happens if the space between the notches is shorter. So the amount of space between the notches only increases as the clock goes through its 1-to-12-hour sequence of operation. This kind of mechanism is actually fairly easy to understand, if you think about it. But I've also been made aware of another method for determining the number of bell rings for the hours, which is called a "rack and snail" mechanism. The way that works is a little more complex though. It has one particular advantage over the "count wheel" method though: part of this mechanism, the "snail" part, is attached directly to the shaft of the hour hand on the clock, so that any time the striking process happens, it's synchronized with the timekeeping mechanism. A downside of the "count wheel" mechanism is that it's entirely independent from the timekeeping part of the clock, so the 2 parts can become unsynchronized.

@@justinnaramor6050 Your first description is pretty much spot-on for our church clock. And if the two sections of the clock do get out of sync it is quite easy to correct by manually flipping one of the levers to make it move on to the correct alignment. The rack and snail I do have in one of my wall clocks at home and presumably they don't work as well if scaled up to big machinery!

Our clock seems to carry on quite happily for a few hours during power cuts! Obviously if it were a very long outage we'd have to go and swing the pendulum to restart it...

Thanks!

It will run for a good while without electricity, the motors keep the weights near the top of the tower, but there is a fair reserve drop.

I am pretty sure we had permission from all those concerned including the video recordings - I remember spending some time contacting various publishers. Most of the old pictures used were from the collection held by Bampton Heritage Centre and a few from Tiverston Museum - I'm not sure which Peter Gray's photos might be. Apologies if I missed any.

@@bamptonhumph Peter W Gray pictures are quite recognisable from his style - as with the snowscenes.