Jump to content

Tinkering with a Verge Watch


Recommended Posts

Around a month ago a good friend of mine, Bernard, who’s a watchmaker, gave me a, circa 1800, verge watch to have a go at restoring; he figured I had the patience for it :D
The case is a much younger brass one, and it was missing hands and a crystal. I’ve since made a pair of brass hands to tide it over, make it look more complete, and to see how it’s going in regards time keeping. Yeah… about that :D

It would seem that sometime in it’s past a healthy chunk of the hair spring got broken off, and it was gaining 1/4hr per hour. I’ve reduced a length of music wire to approx the width of the original, by about .0015” thick, and hope to wind up a 4 coil test replacement (the current one has 3 coils, which some of the old watches made do with, but I’m going to give myself a bit of room to move). But that’s a story, and experiment, for another day.
The verge has had problems with getting enough depth, sometimes going into ‘palpitations’ and running double speed, and the ‘scape wheel has no spare end-shake to increase pallet depth. I remembered that the verge’s top bush (in the balance cock), apart from being quite worn (making a suitable sized drill bit was one of my, unsuccessful, excursions today :) ) was drilled a little off centre, whether by design or sloppy workmanship I don’t know. Double checking it’s placement showed that it was about an hour’s rotation off being in line with the ‘scape pivot and closest approach.
The drawings roughly show where things were before adjusting.

IMG_1736.thumb.JPG.144b532e43e1dc79d7e3c94ad0d6f86e.JPG


I carefully scribed a faint reference line across the top surface of the bush, going ‘North-South’ in relation to the balance cock foot, whittled a bamboo press pin and tapped out the bush into a little hollow in a block of wood, re-aligned the bush and pressed it home.
The end result is that the watch is running again (seems not quite as fast as earlier), and in all positions; recently it had stopped working in ‘pendent up’ position, kind of the most important position for a pocket watch :)
So, did a new thing today and it’s not as scary a prospect making a new bush for it in the near future (once I’ve successfully made a suitable drill bit), a bush that I think I might put a screwdriver slot in the top of to help with adjustments. I would like to make, at some stage, a two part bush with a ‘dead hard’ steel ‘end stone’, similar to some they did back then.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed my little discoveries today.
Cheers
Duncan

IMG_1733.thumb.JPG.24d2a0b2843ccf5be080a33c713f61b9.JPG

IMG_1735.thumb.JPG.f84981bff1c6794619231ae85683ca08.JPG

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The verge was ether to shallow or worn to start with, that is why it was skipping a lot. Do not expect it to keep time like todays watches. If it varies by 10 minutes in 24 hours that is expectable. Parts that are worn in a verge will have a considerable effect on its time keeping.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nicely done.

If you have to replace the hairspring the link below may interest you.

It is a post I did a while back on Facebook for Guenter Best who is a master watchmaker at the school I study at.

He had to repair a Verge watch that amongst other things needed a new hairspring.

He found a Waltham pocketwatch hairspring close to the right size, shortened it and then carefully rubber it on fine wet and dry paper to reduce the spring height until it was of the correct strength. He also had to make a new hairspring collet and fit a replacement balance staff

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=685132705015586&id=284491725079688&__xts__[0]=68.ARBZQ-pilMoqwnfYH3Iqtq8fVnFWIp_km-CUe3yonMmv8Hvl6Lld57RMNgg2dz8dPqG5ndXE7xuvFxxfiOYuXY8hRZRPFViHunHITPnaqGl_dQpBAgsX79DOWVOwwgsNvnSAVm-y_dPYnPVC6_hYXJVIOKd7J4gue1ziruvZ5cmnpgqVktPKG2PrLRmDvyZKmPkeQAEg-HXjjkjB3Di-H-aU4HN-RuRz4qfMGR7CGNTbbraG5tqWpwWZIGWkkBebTUc2aSwaKW6Jy0c4G73wAffEG2yQ51Yo5wn48I1uITU8Qto0ZahHFa4VJ6h9PyOmMgZILCXFNfPEQXJfnCpHdvg&__tn__=K-R

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

G'day @Oldhippy, Yes, I know it won't keep time anything like a lever watch. Bernard said that if we can get it to within 15mins a day, then we've got a good one. But at the moment it's gaining nearly 5 hours a day! I have two other, mostly complete, verge watches that I'm practicing on for fusee disassembly/clean etc. I love working on/with very old tools, mechanisms, watches because of the large amount of hand work that went into them, and the much simpler tools used in their creation.

Thanks @Tmuir. Glad to see there's a watchmaking school over there. All the best with your studies.
Cheers
Duncan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • This seems to be complicated case... We have many variables here and we need to exclude some of them to make some progress. We have plots that show amplitude variations, but we don't know if this variations are significant, as they can be 'amplified' or 'smoothed' by the software. So, some observation of the amplitude by eye will be of help. Then, if we really have not isochronical work, then the main reason for this would be the hairspring being not 'linear'. And not linear may be sometimes not only because 'touching', but because bad hairsping material structure. Some of the advanced watchmakers claim that repairing badly bent hairspring is useless, because this springs will never be isochronic again.  Well, my own observations are that such thing happens, but not in all the cases and it depends on the case if the result is acceptable or not. I will not suppose here that this spring has been repaired, but it has some strange behavior watching at it's work. It will be good if it is possible to test the movement with another balance or thest the balance on another movement...
    • The more common Jewel hole diameters are from about 0.07mm to 0.50mm. Those are the sizes in the Seitz jewel gauge tool.
    • Hello and welcome from Leeds, England. 
    • OK, several things to say here. The thought thay if with the old spring the movement works 16 hours, then replacing the spring will solve that - is totally wrong. With a new spring the movement probably will work for 17 hours. The power reserve is practically not reduced when the spring gets weak with the age. It is rather something wrong with the movement. As You worked on the hairspring, we need to  confirm that it is OK now before everything else. So, thake the lever out and do the free oscillations test. What is the result? I expect numbers, not only 'it is good' or 'it is not good'. Then, this is no jewels pin lever movement, so this is not unusual to have not well regulated or even worn escapement, this is the main reason that this kind of watches doesn't work as long and reliable as the jeweled escapement ones. You can find many of them with no wear at the crown and case, and this is because they stopped working normally pritty soon after purchase.
    • Welcome 🙂 Inherited watches are very tricky. Some of them, or all, do have sentimental value, perhaps not to you but perhaps to others in the family. Ruining them doesn't make you popular. Start on innocent watches who do no harm, not to your wallet nor to others 😉 BTW; for in the future it would be helpful to others to mention your location in your profile. Success 🤗  
×
×
  • Create New...