How the Rack and Snail Bell Striking Mechanism on a Tower Clock Works. 

Clock mechanisms are fascinating! Thank you for making this video that makes the mystery and complexity of tower clocks easier to understand!

Hi Trevor, I'm working on a quite large E. Howard Clock that hadn't been run in a very long time. I fixed the bent escape wheel and made new bearings for the escape pinion shaft. I found the rack frozen and cleaned it up. Today, the last day of the year, I'm going in to see if I can get the hour strike to work for the New Year. I pretty much figured out the operation but your video helped a lot on the pawl mechanism. Best for the New Year, Rob

We had some good times. You remind me that I should send you a picture of that quilt I finished.

It also occurs to me that I've seen a similar amount of grime and dust on smaller clocks and the movement stops after a few minutes of fighting the friction of the dirt. These big clocks with a hundred or more pounds of weight powering them can overcome quite a bit of dirt.

I've never seen a rack like that before. Usually they are pivoted, not sliding like this one. I have a French Comtoise mantel clock with a tiny vertically-sliding rack, which is different again.

I really appreciate your efforts to educate us, thank you so much. More grease to your elbow and more wisdom always.

Great explanation...

Its an excellent video but i still cant completely understand the mechanism. Maybe the style of presentation of the video on "How tower clocks work" made it easier to understand.

I think you are seeing a 100 year old clock with 100 years of exposure to the elements. I think I have spent 10 hours cleaning it, but not polishing it. I worked to remove dirt and grime that might add friction and I added oil. Some parts do look really dirty, but they resisted my best cleaning efforts. The actual movement behind the dial was the most weathered part of all. I was surprised it still worked.

Thanks for the comment. It is a really neat mechanism and I don't mind saying that it took me a good long while to understand it well enough to write the script for this video. I also had good help with filming and editing. I've put some hours in to restore this particular clock to regular duty. It is close now. Your enthusiastic response is encouraging.

Fascinating!! Thanks for posting this!!

Clockguy2, right you are! Thanks for your careful attention. I'll fix that soon. The clock is not running regularly just yet. It has a pulley issue that we need to address. We hope to have it running on a regular schedule in the fall. Thanks again.

You make a fair point. One of the difficulties is that it isn't clear what part I'm talking about in the video. I will try to add annotations. Thanks for your comment.

Need to tighten the screws that hold the hammer lift lever at 2:44.

nice work. thanks

HOW DOES A CLOCK TOWER STRIKE ON HALF HOUR

What clock tower is it and where is it?

Very nice. I've been trying to find videos of Big Ben's chime and strike trains running, but there's very little out there. This is very similar (but smaller) except that Big Ben uses a countwheel instead of a rack and snail. Do you have access to a clock with a chime train that you can show us?