Adjusted movements.

[Nucejoe]

When I see engravings on a movement say adjusted in three positions or five or more, I know I am looking at a good percision movement.

However some just say adjusted, no mention of positions,

What does that mean?  Must have been sitting in some position to get adjusted.

How different are adjusted from unadjusted ones? 

TIA for your responses.

Regs

Joe

 

[Nucejoe]

Usually my questions get answered by the first response, this one received none.

Must be his hat.

[PastorChris]

Try different hat. This is an interesting question and I am also interested in the answer.

[Nucejoe]

 Here s a different hat  folks,    certainly hope this works, pastor knows humankind better than I. 

 

[Nucejoe]

Well @PastorChris  it wasn't the hat.

Theologists are good with words, , need your help, how would you compose a post asking this question?

Joe

[nickelsilver]

Hi Joe!

I don't know the actual regulations (legal or whatever) surrounding the number of adjustments. What I do know is the U.S. imposed tariffs on foreign watches that were adjusted, to protect the domestic market. So now when I get a beautiful Lecoultre on the bench marked unadjusted and then unfailingly with a cryptic 3 letter code on a bridge, it was intended for the U.S. market. I believe some makers just marked everything unadjusted as a simplifying measure for this reason. Marking a movement as adjusted in any way just knocked out a major market.

 

High grade pieces from early last century were labor intensive and expensive. So a really high grade piece would say "a bunch" of adjustments, a little lower fewer adjustments, then a high quality piece that was a cut above commercial quality would just say "adjusted". There's surely more to the story but that's the gist.

 

As an Oris fan I'm sure you've seen that some pretty pedestrian pin lever watches were quite capable of hitting a 20-30 second delta. I've done jlc movements for a major manufacturer that required 20 hours of nerve wracking skull sweat to break 30. These were marked adjusted (just that or to some number) quite often. Ok these are often extra small and/or ultra flat pieces*, but just goes to show that that word , "adjusted", doesn't necessarily mean that much.

 

* there were different  guidelines for different sizes. Obviously a 30mm movement will be easier to regulate than one that's 5x7 ligne.

[Nucejoe]

Ran across this, found it good to know.

https://www.dwiss.com/blogs/news/eta-caliber-2824-2