Problems with striking clocks

[dougie_monty]

For about ten years now, we've had a table clock, wound with keys, that strikes on the quarter hours. Recently, however, every time I try to set it (it can only be set by moving the hands) the minute hand will not move forward at all until I move it back a few minutes. I sense that the hands mechanism is somehow sensitive to the wound or unwound status of the chime springs, but they are both fully wound up: the clock uses one winding spindle for the time mechanism and two other spindles to wind up the chime springs. All three spindles are driven by the same key.
I wonder whether this matter--I consider tinkering with the clock's innards to be beyond my ken--is best left to a professional clock person...

[Myron Van Horowitzski]

My wind-up clocks will do that occasionally, and moving the hand back a little does fix it.

I suspect it has something to do with moving the hands, but haven't quite figured it out. It seems to happen less often if, when setting the time, I move the minute hand veeeery carefully past the chime times. Like I'll get to 6, stop and then gently move till I hear the little click, instead of just whipping it round and round. It *is* sensitive to the chimes.

A couple times the hour hand got stuck, too. It just stayed at 1:00 while the minute hand kept going. So I had to move it backwards a little to unstick it.

I'm not sure if it makes a difference whether the chimes are wound or not. I don't always wind our chimes. (They're so freakin' loud, and I have insomnia sometimes) The hands still sometimes get stuck.

Shrug. Since I always get it going again, I'm not too concerned about it. Not enough to tinker with it anyway. If I couldn't get it going (happened once) I'd take to the clock shop.

Guess I'm not much help, sorry.