My first pin lever and I’m curious....

[bsoderling]

Hi,

 

Picked up what I thought would be another standard watch with a regular 17 jewels movement to work on. Dial looked kind of cool, I thought.

 

But when opening I find my first pin lever movement, EB 8202 is stamped on the base plate.

 

And to my surprise there’s quite some efforts going into the thing; there are jewels everywhere, even one in the base plate for the center wheel. There is shock proof of some elaborate kind and cap jewels on a couple of train wheels.

 

So I’m curious as to why they went through allt the efforts and money spending on the design and parts and then went for a simple pin lever escapement that should pull down the precision and durability significantly, if I get things right?

 

Always curious to learn about the industry, so if there are thoughts out there I’m interested.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[nickelsilver]

They probably wanted to hit the "17 jewels" mark which customers had come to relate with a better quality watch. Since there are no pallet jewels they got creative and put extras elsewhere. Jewels were commodity items at the time, and not expensive. Makers have long added unnecessary jewels to lower grade movements to boost their appeal, in the mid 60s and more strictly in the mid 70s the Swiss created standards which prohibited mentioning nonfunctional jewels, so some makers just added them in functional areas where they were nonetheless unneeded.

All that said, pin levers can be surprisingly good and reliable timekeepers.

[Tmuir]

This post on another forum gives very good examples of what was coins 'The Jewel Wars', lots of pointless jewels added to watches just to up the number of jewels written on the dial in the hopes it would sell more.

See the 64 and 100 jewel watches in all their glory..............

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/seikoholics/the-jewel-wars-winners-orient-vs-waltham-t565.html

[Nucejoe]

Early stones were made of real gemstones and holes were painstakingly drilled in them, expensive pieces only wealthy folks could afford. Breaking the jewels must have been a costly mistake.

One can imagine the revolution brought about by the invention of synthetic jewels, cheap, easily reproducible, uniform, risk free ....etc.

Here is one, with extra jewels set on ratchet wheel, spare jewels, one of each implanted for balance,fork, escape....

On the other side the barrel looks rare and interesting, no grease I think.

 

[bsoderling]

I have heard about those cases where jewels appeared in creative places without function just to get the stone count up.

But that’s not the case here, all jewels are functional and in places where I would have expected them to be in a decent movement from the time. There’s even an Incabloc-like shock protection for the balance.

So why stop there and save up on the remaining few parts in the escapement?

Strange....





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[clockboy]

22 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

Early stones were made of real gemstones and holes were painstakingly drilled in them, expensive pieces only wealthy folks could afford. Breaking the jewels must have been a costly mistake.

One can imagine the revolution brought about by the invention of synthetic jewels, cheap, easily reproducible, uniform, risk free ....etc.

Here is one, with extra jewels set on ratchet wheel, spare jewels, one of each implanted for balance,fork, escape....

On the other side the barrel looks rare and interesting, no grease I think.

 

The second pic shows how these watches control the friction. This part once worn has to be replaced. I have tried to tighten but failed. 

[AndyHull]

I knew I had something from 'the jewel wars' in the junk pile, and today I tripped over it while looking for something else.

This is a "49 Jewel" Mortima "SuperDateomatic" mechanism. It actually states 50 Jewels on the rear plate. But despite all of that bling, the actual movement is somewhat crudely engineered, and I might add completely filthy.

Unfortunately this particular example is suffering from a really bad attack of hair spring salad, so I may not actually be able to get it to run. It is pretty low down on the priority list, but I may have a little fun with it eventually.

The slightly odd shock protector also looks damaged, so there is every chance that this particular version only has 48, or perhaps even 47 jewels. If there is ever a world jewel shortage, just give me a shout.

Excuse the slightly blurry images, I appear to have breathed on the magnifier while taking them, without realizing it at the time.

I can only see six or seven jewels from this side, so I suspect we would need to take the dial of to find where they hid most of the rest.

Edited April 3, 2019 by AndyHull

[saswatch88]

You could take all those unnecessary jewels and make a nice ring or necklace for your wife, i actually did that one for my wife. and I said to her, this ring was made from all the senseless watch parts i buy. Now she doesnt complain anymore when packages come to the door everyday lol

[clockboy]

8 hours ago, AndyHull said:

I knew I had something from 'the jewel wars' in the junk pile, and today I tripped over it while looking for something else.

This is a "49 Jewel" Mortima "SuperDateomatic" mechanism. It actually states 50 Jewels on the rear plate. But despite all of that bling, the actual movement is somewhat crudely engineered, and I might add completely filthy.

Unfortunately this particular example is suffering from a really bad attack of hair spring salad, so I may not actually be able to get it to run. It is pretty low down on the priority list, but I may have a little fun with it eventually.

The slightly odd shock protector also looks damaged, so there is every chance that this particular version only has 48, or perhaps even 47 jewels. If there is ever a world jewel shortage, just give me a shout.

Excuse the slightly blurry images, I appear to have breathed on the magnifier while taking them, without realizing it at the time.

I can only see six or seven jewels from this side, so I suspect we would need to take the dial of to find where they hid most of the rest.

I have  actually serviced one of these movements a few years ago. They are poor in design very clunky but work remarkably well. 

[bsoderling]

On 3/28/2019 at 5:41 PM, bsoderling said:

I have heard about those cases where jewels appeared in creative places without function just to get the stone count up.

But that’s not the case here, all jewels are functional and in places where I would have expected them to be in a decent movement from the time. There’s even an Incabloc-like shock protection for the balance.

So why stop there and save up on the remaining few parts in the escapement?

Strange....





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Couldn't leave this question and googled around a bit and found what might be part of the answer!

On the Oris website I found a passage talking about the "Swiss watch statute" that was apparently and strangely enough a Swiss law that prevented watch companies from introducing new technology without government permission. The law was set in place in 1934 and some companies that weren't on the Swiss lever design at that time were in many cases prevented to do so. Oris was one of them and maybe the company behind my movement as well. I suppose the law was pulled back at some point but maybe some companies just went on with what they were good at?

Regarding my watch, it's now serviced and running again. And to my surprise very well! Less than 10 sec. deviation and fairly nice curves on my Timegrapher Iphone app. Better than I am able to get on many of the oldies I tinker with.