Bushing nightmare/Depthing tool

[Orologi67]

Hello friends

I joined this forum a short while back because i want to teach myself watch repair.  Ive been repairing clocks for about 17 years.

I have always been interested in older European clocks so i have encountered this dilemma before.

I am working on a verge pocket watch from approx 1830.  The pivot holes are a mess and need bushings.  Luckily, the plates are 1mm in thickness so i bought the KWM bushing assortment made specifically for pocket watches.  The oil sinks in this movement match the OD of the bushings as well.

HOWEVER, what looked to have been measured out, then drilled pivot holes in the plates are actually larger holes which are nowhere close to being round.  Theyre egg shaped. Every pivot hole seems to have been much larger at time of manufacture.  Then plugs of brass were installed.  I assume the plates were some type of stock, made by another shop, and the watch maker purchased this and finished it off to a specific gear train??

On top of that, the pivot holes are not centered in these plugs.  So i will have to purchase a watchmakers depthing tool, in order to find the correct pivot hole location. Some of the holes are so close to the edge of the plug, custom bushings will be very thin walled and possibly colapse when i tap them in or the plug will loosen as i try to ream it for the bushing

Am I correct that the pivot holes were plugged like this at inception?

Why are they obviously out of round?

And how would one go about bushing this craziness?  Round out the holes to true circles then depth to find the center of the pivot locations??

What should i look for in a depthing tool? Im rather hesitant buying one on ebay for fear it will be a waste of money.

Thanks in advance for any advice or history

And yes, i have seen this type of thing only in biedermeier era vienna regulator or table clock movements.  Although there was enough edge to put in a bushing.

 

 

[rodabod]

My understanding was that brass plugs were used of a better quality of brass than the main plates in some cases. You see different grades of brass used for different parts within clocks too. 
 

Is there any trace of original scribe marks left on the plates at all?

[Orologi67]

No scribe marks.  Plates were high polished probably by the maker.  

Im probably going to enlarge the holes just enuf to get them in round.  Add 1mm thick plugs.  Then depth it.   And drill new pivot holes.  I see no other way.  I could custom fit out of round plugs (if i want to pull my hair out) but thats a lot of filing and banging and i dont want to mess up the plates. 

 

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, Orologi67 said:

The pivot holes are a mess

What is your definition of a mess? Remember this is not a precision jeweled watch so it may run just fine with what look like crap for pivot holes.

5 hours ago, rodabod said:

My understanding was that brass plugs were used of a better quality of brass than the main plates in some cases.

Another variation of using solid plugs is for people who don't like premade bushings. So for these a solid plug is used the plate is refinished then a depthing tool Is used.

My understanding of these early made watches is that a whole variety of people made the components. Somebody would cut wheels somebody else made the plates conceivably somebody else fit the wheels to the plates. It was a cottage industry of a whole bunch of different people all coming together to make one watch. This unfortunately from a repair point of view means that every single watch is unique.

[Orologi67]

They are a mess from the standpoint of what you just said.  It is , for lack of a better word, an artisanal mechanism.  Cottage industry, yes. And one cannot efficiently and simply bush the damn holes.  Whether they be lathe made in the shop bushings or bought.  However, It needs several bushings.  The main reason it needs this is because nobody wanted to expend the time and coin to do the job with these funky plugs and the pivot holes are quite sloppy.  So i will plug the holes and redrill the pivot holes.  

I found a decent looking depthing tool.  Hopefully it hasnt been dropped on the floor etc.  Dont wanna have to true up the points.  It looks pretty well kept but fotos are deceiving

Maybe im just bitching because i expected less work. Haha

 

[oldhippy]

Could you post a photo of the plates and a photo of the pivots. I have come across  barrel shaped pivots in clocks but never in a verge P/W

[watchweasol]

If you are drilling out the old worn plates and fitting blind bushes the use of a up righting tool would be used to ensure the holes in the the top plate were indeed vertical and matches the bottom hole then when fitting the adjacent wheels a depthing tool use to ensure the correct meshing of the wheels.  The cottage industry of pocket watch making was indeed as stated that the individual parts were made by out workers and then assembled my the "maker" hence the variations in parts and plates. I am struggling with one at the moment that seems to be a differnt height to most.

[jdrichard]

Why are you not friction fitting jewels: too big?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Orologi67]

The pivot holes are just holes drill into brass.  This watch never had jewels

[jdrichard]

Perhaps you need to jewel this old watch

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, jdrichard said:

Perhaps you need to jewel this old watch

comparing this watch to a Timex or a cheap pin lever isn't exactly the proper comparison but similar. Would you jewel a inexpensive watch that never had jewels like a pin lever? If you look carefully at these watches even in their best they really can't compare to a modern watch. The pivots a lot of times will look quite primitive the holes etc. Visually on the outside they can look quite pretty with their gold plating but. then there's always the possibility if you make everything perfect in this watch it might actually run worse.

then it would be nice to see a picture of what were talking about even if it is in pieces right now.

 

[Orologi67]

Its a really old verge escapement watch with fusee power. The pallet arbor simply has brass cups for its rounded pivots.  I did want to try to convert that to jewels but i dont know.

[oldhippy]

The photos do not give me any detail of how the train sits in the plates. You say the pivots are barrel rounded, that is how they were made. Has someone tried to turn them down in order to give them straight pivots? This will cause the meshing of the wheels to be out of line. On no account try to fit jewels, these watches were not made to work with the train jewelled. At the moment the only thing I can think of, is to plug all the train holes and with a depthing tool re-drill them. You will need to work out the pallet escapement angles.

[jdrichard]

8 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

The photos do not give me any detail of how the train sits in the plates. You say the pivots are barrel rounded, that is how they were made. Has someone tried to turn them down in order to give them straight pivots? This will cause the meshing of the wheels to be out of line. On no account try to fit jewels, these watches were not made to work with the train jewelled. At the moment the only thing I can think of, is to plug all the train holes and with a depthing tool re-drill them. You will need to work out the pallet escapement angles.

Advice noted:)

[jdrichard]

19 hours ago, Orologi67 said:

Its a really old verge escapement watch with fusee power. The pallet arbor simply has brass cups for its rounded pivots.  I did want to try to convert that to jewels but i dont know.

Now seeing the movement, i would not recommend Jewels.

[JohnR725]

23 hours ago, Orologi67 said:

Its a really old verge escapement watch with fusee power. The pallet arbor simply has brass cups for its rounded pivots.  I did want to try to convert that to jewels but i dont know.

yes by all means jewels big jewels big red modern jewels definitely the way to go if you want to destroy this watch. When doing restoration work which is what this is the preferred is to restore it back to the way it was. Providing it ran in the first place we will make an assumption that it must've run in the first place. As pretty as this is it's a primitive watch the bearings were adequate but that's what they were. For instance the balance jewels aren't jewels they're usually just little indents into the brass plug that's what they are. To put jewels in would visually destroy the watch very likely not solve any problems at all and with the added bonus it probably won't run any better at all. These watches have and are used to having a heck of a lot of friction.

leave the balance out and don't put the fusee chain on assemble watch spin the train how does it spin? If it seems to let the power go through I would leave things alone. If you see excessive pivot wobbling as a whole was grossly out around maybe you could fix them. Your mighty be able to just close the hole in get by.

so suggestion has start with the basics see if you get power through the gear train if you can't fix that problem but definitely not with jewels unless of course you would like to upgrade the watch to having those beautiful large transparent quartz Liverpool type jewels oh wait are we restoring or making a new watch here? So this is a restoration job not a distraction and modernize hopefully

[Orologi67]

Oh my ive opened quite a can of worms.

First, the pivot holes are all plugs of other brass.  Whether thats original or added later i dont know.  But the plugs are out of round in shape and the pivot holes are not centered in the plug. Theyre off center.

So to solve that, im going to ream them out just enough to add round plugs (solid/undrilled bushings) of brass.  Then i will use a depthing tool to find the center of the pivot.  Then i will drill a new pivot hole and add a new oil sink.

Second ive seen watches of this age where its obvious that a watchmaker, at a later date, has added jewel cups to the pallet/balance wheel arbor (one and the same in this watch).  I most probably will not do that since its quite a bit of work and the cock is too filigreed to find a spot to add screws and i dare not press in a jewel bushing.  I would love to fashion new brass cups however.

The watch is obviously very quirky.  And it doesnt keep time.  So im simply going to do my best to get it to run more efficiently and nothing else.

And frankly, most of the comments have been informative and pleasant, but if you have to show me how snobbish you are please dont respond.

 

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, Orologi67 said:

Oh my ive opened quite a can of worms.

not really the problem is like anyone asking a question it's good the start off with pictures of the watch the condition way you're trying to do so that everyone is on the same page of what they're looking at. Otherwise people a jump on let's put jewels in not recognizing what you're trying to do like his it's a restoration or whatever.

7 hours ago, Orologi67 said:

So to solve that, im going to ream them out just enough to add round plugs (solid/undrilled bushings) of brass.  Then i will use a depthing tool to find the center of the pivot.  Then i will drill a new pivot hole and add a new oil sink.

so you have a plan and  a depth thing tool so the plan sounds good. In the absence of knowing where any of the centers are you will have to determined that yourself. The watches were basically almost hand made maybe they were handmade. They obviously had a gear cutting machine that was not hand filed and some way of turning stuff but all pretty primitive. As far as timekeeping goes it's not going to be outstanding it's why they moved on to other escapement's. The verge was there and it's tried to equalize the power but the escapement just isn't the best

then I don't suppose you want to elaborate which one of us including me possibly was being snobbish by your definition?

 

[nickelsilver]

Are you sure there are plugs fitted? What you see sometimes is that the area around a pivot hole has been protected during the guilding process, so you have the brilliant guilding and dull brass around the pivots. You see this on wheels too that were guilded after mounting to their pinion.