Troubleshooting
Sometimes a mechanism just doesn't want to run or strike correctly - despite pretty much everything looking like it should want to run. On those occasions I set up the mechanism, with its pendulum, on a bench next to my main bench and hook up both a beat amplifier (Time Trax), as well as a beat monitor (Bryan Mumford's Microset) that allows me to plot the beat and/or strikes on my computer monitor, which sits above my main bench. This gallery gives you an idea of how I set all this up.
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Strike Train that is counting correctly
This particular mechanism's strike train adjustments could be the subject for a rather long and involved tech article all by itself. Between grooves in wear surfaces in the levers that control the two strike trains, levers that were made wrong by the original maker, levers that have been bent by subsequent repair folks, and springs that were bent numerous times to try to make up for weak strike trains (due to poorly-restored pivots), these two strike trains were a mess. The plot above suggests I am nearly there on getting this mechanism to strike correctly!
Another option is to set up the piece of wood so only one hammer hits it - which produces the patterns shown in the next two slides.
