Expert: Martin Meyer - 7/1/2009

Question
Just had a 20's Miller Grandmother clock professionally moved to my home from my folks. I can't remember the deal with the two chime/silent levers adjacent the nine and three crank holes. Ideally I would like to have the clock only chime the hour.
What is the correct way to set these levers? Is there an optimal hand position to set them?
Thanks for whatever light you can shed on these questions

Answer
Hi Doug,

There is really no right or wrong way to set these levers, except I would not recommend that you set them while the clock is in the process of chiming. The position of the hands when you change these settings makes no difference.

The settings and operation of the levers vary depending on what movement is in your clock. For some clocks, you can set the Chime Selector on the right (near the 3:00 position) to Silent, then set the Strike Silent lever on the left to Strike, and the clock will then only strike the hours, and will not chime on the quarters. On other clocks, you can achieve this same result by using a setting on the Chime Selector (near 3:00) which is labeled "4/4 Silent". On many clocks, when you silence the chime, you also silence the hour strike, and there is no way to set the clock to strike the hours only, but not chime on the quarters.  http://www.clockmasteronline.com