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Limit Pocket Watch

oli

By oli
in Your Walkthroughs and Techniques

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oli WRT Addict

oli

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Posted

Hi all
I have put together a couple of pics of a recent project. This was my first pocket watch. This is my first post in this section of the forum, so I feel slightly intimated by all the knowledge around me!


Limit was a British company, established in Lancashire in 1912. The 15 jewels movement in this watch was swiss made, and from my research I gathered that it was probably supplied by Thommen in Switzerland, and cased in the UK by Limit.


It turned out to be very easy to work on. My previous projects have all been wristwatches (mostly Seikos!), so the slightly larger diameter here definitely helped. It also turned out easy to put it back together.

Here is a summary of what I did with this watch, I hope you enjoy reading this! 

First the “before” picture – I bought the watch on an ebay auction for spares or repairs, not really knowing what to expect.

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Upon receipt of the watch, the first good surprise was that the watch was running after my first attempt at winding it. 

The mineral glass dial was very cloudy, so this needed to be addressed.


I also wanted to completely strip, clean and lubricate the movement.
Upon opening the case of the watch, the movement looked very grubby, with traces of heat having been applied to some parts of the movement in the past.

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 I am not too sure why this would have been done, perhaps to heat up Shellac for a repair of the balance jewel? Or to burn dust residue in the watch. I was quite puzzled by this because the marks are definitely not localised to one area of the movement.

 

I proceeded to strip the movement, no snags were encountered during disassembly.

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After a bit of manual cleaning, all the parts went in the ultrasonic machine for a good clean.

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I was not quite happy with the look of the visible parts of the movement after the Ultrasonic clean, so I gave some of them a polish, and back into the machine.
 I did not want to achieve a perfect result, but just wanted to make the movement look a bit more presentable. The superficial heat marks came out. Note I did not polish the balance cock as I did not want to interfere with anything there!

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I put the movement back together, and lubricated it. 

 By that point, I had received a new crystal from our favourite supplier. I would normally use my crystal press to push out the old crystal, but I did not have a suitable die for this diameter, so had to do this manually. With a bit of persuasion, the old crystal came out, but not without a minor injury (cut on my thumb from the bezel edge, it was quite **BLEEP**!) so I will definitely wear gloves next time!

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And here it is, the watch completely re-assembled. I did not do anything to the case as I like a bit of patina, I think it gives this watch character.

I put it on my timing machine, and with an accuracy of approx. 10sec/ day I am very happy with this, so will not do anything else to this one.

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I hope you found this interesting, comments welcome (positive, negative, or advice!)

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bobm12 Distinguished Member

bobm12

Posted
Posted

Wonderful job, oli, and a good watch to keep!

20 hours ago, szbalogh said:

Those burning? marks are really interesting. One of my pocket watches has also some under the balance. It would be great to know why someone is burning that place...

My take on it is probably a previous watchmaker had to deal with a broken screw or similar and used vissine which is normally boiled with the part under an alcohol lamb...or more into thinking about it, how about rust treatment? It tends to mark those parts like that....and I believe there is some old pitting on the plates from that....but my computer doesn't show the pictures well.

But, any other guess? I'm interested too.

Cheers,

Bob

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    • Neverenoughwatches
      Commando special

      By Neverenoughwatches · Posted

      Looks that way, if it had any amount of significant jewel count it would say so on the dial.    Looks that way, if it had any amount of significant jewel count it would say so on the dial.  Same answer as Mike regarding the dial, its often just a slapped on name of a retailer but i thought you were way above this understanding Pete ?
    • Neverenoughwatches
      Gamblin Gamsol for cleaning?

      By Neverenoughwatches · Posted

      Light naptha is what you need to be looking for. The carbon to hydrogen ratio is high with heavy naptha, it doesn't evaporate as well as light naptha and is prone to leaving more residue. Try tom's suggestion of the mirror test.
    • Neverenoughwatches
      I'm going to be setting up a decent little workshop here at home.

      By Neverenoughwatches · Posted

      Its a big item Michael and a lot that could go wrong with the process of getting it to its new location. I once helped install one of these units into a conservatory that i had built. It was big and bloody heavy and took six of us to get it in safely. If you have sliding doors and you need to remove the whole frame then that may or may not go well. But i would advise getting a professional in if you have little knowledge on the installation of them. The glazing of the doors could well be 6mm laminated glass which again will be heavy very heavy if the glazing units are big. The glass would also need to be set up and packed correctly to open the doors properly more so if they are unframed and the sliders are upvc. Seems a shame but if no one is biting and that may be due to having no warranty i guess the only takers might be someone that installs them for a living and knows how to repair. If its fibreglass just be careful, i sometimes have to cut fibreglass baths out and they are nasty to work with . Thick gloves are definitely recommended,  not fun picking out fibreglass spells two days later that have started to go septic. Good luck with it all matey.
    • tomh207
      Gamblin Gamsol for cleaning?

      By tomh207 · Posted

      I don’t know anything about this product, however assuming you have it if you put a drop on a mirror or piece of glass lying flat on a table and leave it to evaporate if it leaves any sort of residue it is not really suitable for watch part cleaning.   Tom
    • Michael1962
      I'm going to be setting up a decent little workshop here at home.

      By Michael1962 · Posted

      Well I put the spa on Gumtree (selling service) to try and sell it as it only needs a recirc pump to get it going. However, it weighs circa 250kg, so there's 4 fairly strong guys, and I would have to remove the sliding door in the room completely to be able to get it out, as well as clearing out a multitude of potted plants and the Alfresco outdoor setting to be able to get it out. Then move nearly everything in the back of the garage to be able to push it through to the front of the house. I would also need to hire furniture skates to be able to shift it around as carrying it is out of the question. Then someone would need a trailer to get it to their place as you won't get it on the back of a ute. So, the only answer is, out with the reciprocating saw and cut it all up into manageable pieces. Crying shame as it is in really good nick. I was only asking $1,500 and only got two bites, but it would only take something to go wrong with removing the sliding door etc that everything I make on the sale could go out the door on repairs etc. It would have been nice to be able to turn it into tools etc, but que sera sera. I don't know about the rest of the world, but there just seems to be very little interest from people wanting to buy things secondhand.  
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