Lift Angle on pocket watches.

[jmb]

Hello All.

got an early christmas present from my wife, a watch timegrapher.  which i hope to fine useful.

i have come across a problem with it, which i hope someone might be able to help me with. As you know to get any accurate reading you need to put into the machine

the lift angle of the watch you wish to see how it performs. With most modern watches this is easily done. however the majority of my watches are 19th and 20th century

pocket watches and i have tried google etc with no luck. i have also tried the technique of carefully marking the balance wheel with a felt pen and winding the watch one

or two turns till i can see the mark i have made on the balance wheel doing 180 degrees of oscillation  then putting it on the timegrapher and altering the lift angle till i get 180 degrees 

of amplitude reading on the machine.

and that would be the lift angle for that watch. unfortunately try as i might i cannot make out the mark on the balance wheel when its in the watch, its just a blur to me, so unable to know if its oscillating at 180 degrees.   does anyone know another way i can get the lift angle of vintage pocket watches.

thanks, Mike

[AshF]

Something I've used before is the slow motion camera feature on many smart phones.  Do the thing with putting a small amount of wind in and film the balance in slow motion.  Add a turn of the crown if needed.  It's a bit tedious but will work.

[MechanicMike]

1 hour ago, AshF said:

Something I've used before is the slow motion camera feature on many smart phones.

now I need instructions how to vid slow motion on my phone to view my balance wheel and instructions on my timegrapher to set lift angle...welp

[Watchfixr]

The lift angle on vintage pocket watches is a function of the position of the banking pins, which are usually adjustable. Usually, the first thing an amateur watchmaker does is adjust them thinking it will solve whatever problem exists. That just makes it worse. If the escapement is in proper alignment it should be in beat. If it is not in beat when it is properly aligned, it indicates some bozo has been there ahead of you.

On a watch with adjustable banking pins, I start with a 52 degree lift angle and check the amplitude and beat error. If they are good, I move on. If not, the problem can be complex based on what the last person did to it. The solutions are many and more involved than I can discuss here.

The slow motion idea is a good one if you really need to know the lift angle for some particular reason.

[praezis]

Surely best is to determine the lift angle according above methods.

But PWs have lower angles than WWs. If you use 40 degrees, you are in the ballpark.

Frank

[JohnR725]

Knowing your lift angle is not a life or death situation for using the timing machine. If you don't like the numbers on the machine  either because are too high or too low versus what you think you're seeing in the watch  just change the lift angle to give your machine happier numbers.   I know it doesn't sound like a very scientific method but it really doesn't matter that much. Because even if it's not exactly right you could still look at dial-up dial down and the crown positions and see how much it varies..

Then as this is a new timing machine additional information like PDFs. Probably not the same company who produced  your machine but still  good information. Also a link that lists lift angles just not American pocket watch lift angles.

Then your question has interesting timing for me in that  two things related to this question of come up this week.. First on Monday my boss asked  the same question..  So I got to explain  what American pocket watches came into existence timing machines did not exist at all. It's not until vacuum tubes become readily available do machines that can show rate come into existence.. Then amplitude  measuring machines don't really come into existence at least in any quantity until  we get to the digital machines..  Then the Swiss get obsessed with amplitudes and we have always nifty charts but they don't care about pocket watches. It's really only when the hobbyists get their cheap Chinese machine does it become a bigger problem..

The other reason why the question is interesting is at work we found a better way of  observing the 180° for finding the lift angle. There is a link to a YouTube video  no notice that the dot he has is easy to see.. We found that using a Yellow FORAY® Liquid Ink Highlighter With a UV flashlight works really really well. To understand that I have pictures attached.. Nice bonus  that while it's a highlighting pen on metal standard lighting it's basically invisible.. That comes off in the cleaning machine  it's not a problem..

The second reason the timing is interesting for your question  is that the UV flashlight  at work went missing and I ordered one off of eBay yesterday. There really cheap one eBay it's probably way brighter than what I had before and I'll let you know how it works when it comes. The reason we had a UV light it was given to us by some watch company it makes the dials look much prettier or anything on the dial that would florescent really fluoresces under UV.. But I'm guessing somebody in the front room  thought the flashlight was broken and didn't grasp what it was and tossed it in the trash.

Then  I suppose something good with an obsessed boss lift angles below came from that. The only thing where I made a mistake I should I had the serial numbers that we would know exactly which model watch these are  because you'll notice that  it's not set like all 16 size or 18 size are not the same it varies.

 

Ball Illinois 12 size 45°
Elgin 12 size 55°
Elgin 18 size 49°
Elgin 590 16 size 21 J 48°
Elgin GM Wheeler 16 size 52°
Elgin 6 size 62°
Hamilton 12 size 48°
Hamilton 912 12 size 38°
Hamilton 940 16 size 60°
Hamilton 992 16 size 48°
Hamilton 992B 51.5°
Hamilton 992E 42°Louis Audemar 44°
Hampton 3/0 52°
Illinois 12 size 45°
Illinois 305 16 size 48°
Illinois 6 size 62°
Lange and Sohne  40°
Longines  pocket watch 35°
Waltham 18 size 38.5°
Waltham 1888 16 size 60°
Waltham 21 jewel 645 16 size 42°
Waltham Crescent Street 45°
Waltham Riverside 16 size 44°

 

https://watchguy.co.uk/cgi-bin/lift_angles

https://youtu.be/-Xgcck692js

witschi Witschi Training Course.pdf witschi X-D-DVH-Di-Im-N_EN.pdf

[jmb]

A big thank you to you all for your answers it is a great help. special thanks to johnRT75 i will get a high lighter pen

and uv flash light and give that a go. i will get back to you with the results.

Mike

[MechanicMike]

10 hours ago, Watchfixr said:

On a watch with adjustable banking pins, I start with a 52 degree lift angle and check the amplitude and beat error

trying to understand this, and getting familiar with my timegrapher 1K. so when you say "start with a 52 deg. lift angle, is there somewhere on the timegrapher you enter this number? 

[Watchfixr]

20 hours ago, MechanicMike said:

trying to understand this, and getting familiar with my timegrapher 1K. so when you say "start with a 52 deg. lift angle, is there somewhere on the timegrapher you enter this number? 

On mine there is. I have a Microset because I work both watches and clocks and it will test both. The lift angle can be pretty much anything I want. I haven't pushed to see if there is a limit to what can be entered.

[KarlvonKoln]

JohnR725, I would like to thank you for your tip with the highlighter and UV light.  That's brilliant!  And thank you also for that handy chart.  I know it may not be all-inclusive, but I would contribute that my 1919 Longines 18.50 has a lift angle of 50 degrees. However, I suspect it is because it has a sort of counterpoised English-lever style escapement rather than the usual Swiss straight line anchor set-up. Could that be the case: the manner of lever may somewhat dictate the lift angle?

[nickelsilver]

I've been doing this a couple of decades, and for 2 arm balances have never had a issue seeing amplitude without a machine within a few degrees.  Maybe that my teacher was a 6'4" Croatian scared it unto us? I like John's highlighter and UV but will use it on 3 arm balances down the road- thing is if a watch is modern enough to have a 3 arm balance 99.9% chance lift angle is referenced somewhere.

 

It's not that hard, and is a good skill, to see amplitude on a two arm balance. Lighting can make a big difference,  sometimes when I  put a watch on the mic I can't see it, shift the light and boom. 100 years ago the old guys 100% were aware of amplitude and when you service an unabused watch, high end, from that time and it hits perfect rates in 6 positions with terrific amplitude it's not because the previous watchmakers were going "well seems ok!". Especially for railroad grade watches or anything else that would be a high confidence piece.

 

All that said, and in line with John again, sometimes good enough is great. I just did a 50s Rolex that is in a donor case, dial from?, balance from some low grade donor (really low grade), to fit that balance the previous guy filed down the pallet cock and the end of the pallet fork, and of course it needed a staff as I got it with a broken and bent pivot, they reamed the cock to friction fit the non original stud, and the hairspring had about 8 slight bends in the flat and round. After making a staff and truing the spring as well as can be, it holds 260 degrees in the flats, and after some poising went from 500s delta vertical to 50s overall 6 positions.

 

Lift angle for that caliber is 40 degrees, by visual observation it was more like 44/45. Still astonished it managed the rate it did. In "3 positions" looks even better hahaha.