Mechanical Clock Kit Styles Available

Mechanical Clock Kit Styles Available

Mechanical Clock Kit Styles Available include wall clocks, mantle (shelf) clocks, and floor clocks. Floor models includes the granddaughter, grandmother, and grandfather series. Mechanical Clock Kit Styles are in the list below.

Mantle clocks

Mantle clock kits are always spring driven and wound with a clock key. Moreover, it can come in a variety of chime types. Triple chime, Westminster only, bell strike, bim bam or gong strike.

If the clock has three places to wind with the key it is a quarterly chime unit. This means it is either Triple chime or Westminster only. In other words every 15 minutes it will progressively play part of the song. At the top of the hour it will play the complete song then strike out the hours.

Wall clocks

Wall clock kits may be spring driven or weight driven. There are more spring driven wall clocks in the world than weight driven. The weights are not light and it is a lot for a wall to hold.

So fastening it well is very important. The movement can have a pendulum or no pendulum but of course the pendulum is most popular. When a mechanical clock does not have a pendulum it has a balance wheel instead. This is a floating and rocking wheel on the top of the movement and operates more like a watch balance.

Mechanical Clock Kit Styles - Granddaughter or Grandmother clocks

Typically, granddaughters are spring driven with no weights.

The grandmothers are usually chain driven. The chiming units have three weights. Any other strike style has two weights. It is a shorter clock overall than a grandfather clock.

Grandfather clock kits

Typically cable driven with three weights and triple chimes.

This means the weights will hang on cables instead of chains, and plays choice of three songs. However it is not always triple chime because some are Westminster only. This is the largest and tallest of the floor clocks.

Chime types

All of the above mechanical clock kit styles, in the past, have been made with every chime type. In other words there are all these various ways to make the clock play a song or make a noise.

There is the quarterly sounds that play a tune ever quarter hour, the most common of the songs is Westminster. Or there is the triple chime that includes Westminster, St. Michaels, or Whittington.

As for the other noise makers, we call them strike clocks because they only strike out the hours and usually bong once on the half hour. These include Gong strike (coil gong on the back or below the movement), Bell strike, or Bim Bam (sounds like its name, on two or three strike rods).