Old balance staffs

[Neverenoughwatches]

Hi all .i hope everyone is ok. Just a quick question regarding buying balance staffs from ebay. A lot of sellers seem unable to answer if the staffs they are selling are new old stock or used. I have asked before if used staffs can be re-rivetted, the answe was pretty much no or unlikely because of no material being left to rivet. But i now have thoughts if there is another way to attach a balance wheel. Shellac or some other kind of adhesive ?

[mikepilk]

15 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Hi all .i hope everyone is ok. Just a quick question regarding buying balance staffs from ebay. A lot of sellers seem unable to answer if the staffs they are selling are new old stock or used. I have asked before if used staffs can be re-rivetted, the answe was pretty much no or unlikely because of no material being left to rivet. But i now have thoughts if there is another way to attach a balance wheel. Shellac or some other kind of adhesive ?

I can't believe anyone is selling used staffs. As you suggest, I can't see any way they could be re-rivetted*. As for using shellac - possible I suppose, but you'd have to make sure you got the wheel square with the staff.

*The first staffs I replaced were Waltham pocket watches which used friction fit balance staffs. Those you could possibly re-use.

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 hours ago, mikepilk said:

I can't believe anyone is selling used staffs. As you suggest, I can't see any way they could be re-rivetted*. As for using shellac - possible I suppose, but you'd have to make sure you got the wheel square with the staff.

*The first staffs I replaced were Waltham pocket watches which used friction fit balance staffs. Those you could possibly re-use.

Thanks Mike. There are a lot of unidentified job lot staffs for sale on ebay.  The sellers often have no idea if these are used or nos. Using balance staff.com and an accurate micrometer its possible to match staffs up to calibres. There are also a lot of staffs that are becoming unavailable or quite expensive. As an example i have a couple of military pocket watches with broken pivots on staffs.These  cost £35 to replace. My thoughts were to identify joblot staffs and build an inventory that could be used as is or if close enough lathe turned to size. My question was just a wonder if used staffs could still be used in an unconventional way. Just ideas to get around decreasing supplies. 

[clockboy]

I have purchased a bulk lot of balance staffs. Out of the 100,s I have used one that I had to modify. Used balance staffs I have never come across. Certainly not worth purchasing as if a riveted staff the rivet will be useless. 

[Neverenoughwatches]

9 minutes ago, clockboy said:

I have purchased a bulk lot of balance staffs. Out of the 100,s I have used one that I had to modify. Used balance staffs I have never come across. Certainly not worth purchasing as if a riveted staff the rivet will be useless. 

Thanks clockboy. There seems a lot of unknown  balance staff stock out there being unused. 

[clockboy]

The bottom line is fitting a new balance staff can be troublesome anyway trying to fit a used staff just adds to the possible errors. 

[JohnR725]

4 hours ago, mikepilk said:

I can't believe anyone is selling used staffs.

Usually when you find the used staffs there in bottles of miscellaneous used staffs. In other words the watchmaker usually keeping everything they ever replaced Placed all the Old staffs in a bottle and that typically is for sale. So in my miscellaneous stuff I have a bottle of used staffs.

1 hour ago, clockboy said:

The bottom line is fitting a new balance staff can be troublesome anyway trying to fit a used staff just adds to the possible errors.

The real problem here is why would you use a used staff somebody replaced it for a reason And your going to inherit their problem.

1 hour ago, clockboy said:

I have purchased a bulk lot of balance staffs. Out of the 100,s I have used one that I had to modify. Used balance staffs I have never come across. Certainly not worth purchasing as if a riveted staff the rivet will be useless. 

Miscellaneous assortments especially if they come off of eBay are interesting. At work we have a Swiss packet of miscellaneous staffs and I don't think I've ever used any of the staffs for restaffing because they don't match anything I've ever seen. But we were once given a bunch of miscellaneous tools from some old watchmaker in there was a staff assortment. I really wish I can find another one of these it was assortment of American pocket watch staffs and I've used quite a few staffs out of there because they were all usable staffs. I know there were several Hamilton 992B staffs in perfect shape. So somewhere out there that there are really outstanding staff assortments the problem is they existed at a certain time and those assortments do not exist today unless you goodbye old watchmaker's estate in just get really like. I don't think I've ever seen an assortment as nice as this Hamilton Elgin Waltham all-in-one nice assortment. On the other hand when did those watch companies ever exist altogether which gives you a clue of how old these are and doesn't explain why brand-new staffs would be an assortment anyway usually Usually to valuable To be sold an assortment should be sold separately?

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

Usually when you find the used staffs there in bottles of miscellaneous used staffs. In other words the watchmaker usually keeping everything they ever replaced Placed all the Old staffs in a bottle and that typically is for sale. So in my miscellaneous stuff I have a bottle of used staffs.

The real problem here is why would you use a used staff somebody replaced it for a reason And your going to inherit their problem.

Miscellaneous assortments especially if they come off of eBay are interesting. At work we have a Swiss packet of miscellaneous staffs and I don't think I've ever used any of the staffs for restaffing because they don't match anything I've ever seen. But we were once given a bunch of miscellaneous tools from some old watchmaker in there was a staff assortment. I really wish I can find another one of these it was assortment of American pocket watch staffs and I've used quite a few staffs out of there because they were all usable staffs. I know there were several Hamilton 992B staffs in perfect shape. So somewhere out there that there are really outstanding staff assortments the problem is they existed at a certain time and those assortments do not exist today unless you goodbye old watchmaker's estate in just get really like. I don't think I've ever seen an assortment as nice as this Hamilton Elgin Waltham all-in-one nice assortment. On the other hand when did those watch companies ever exist altogether which gives you a clue of how old these are and doesn't explain why brand-new staffs would be an assortment anyway usually Usually to valuable To be sold an assortment should be sold separately?

 

Thanks John. I was just trying to figure out why some sellers would have for sale packets of hundreds of assorted staffs, if they might be useable  or if they had been collected as used. A lot of these sellers cant answer the question of used or not. Maybe not worth the trouble but sometimes mixed pocketwatch staffs crop up. Bit of a lottery but occasionally very cheap.