Movement reference books

[Stuart2]

good evening, i was wondering which books people use to find a particular movement, i have best fit and flume and i use ranfft. just wondered if there were any other books or web sites for identification purposes.

[grsnovi]

I'm not familiar with Flume but I own a hardcopy of Best Fit and that and Ranfft serve my needs. I would imagine that the need to identify odd ball movements is more of a hobbyist thing as (I suspect) the pros doing actual servicing (as their job) routinely see the same pieces. But I too would be curious if other resources exist that are more commonly used.

- Gary

[dadistic]

For pocket watches, Pocketwatchdatabase.com. I also have a book, American Pocket Watches Identification and Price Guide by Roy Ehrhardt and William Meggers. The book is good for browsing movement drawings.

For wrist watches, I have a couple of books by Bruce Shawkey. Waltham Wristwatches,  A Collectors Guide and Elgin Wristwatches, A Collectors Guide, 2nd Edition. He has other titles, too. These books are oriented to identifying models via catalog extracts, advertisements, patents, etc.  The model can be a starting point when figuring out what movement you are looking at. 

Lastly, the E & J Swigert Co. material house published the Illustrated Manual of American Watch Movements, the copy I have was reprinted by S. LaRose, Inc. (both defunct material houses) . This one is helpful, but only covers watches from the early 50's  and before.  

Hope this helps!

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by dadistic

[grsnovi]

Good point! For Elgins I also have a printed copy of the red "Elgin Genuine Materials". With old US-made pocket watches you can generally find out quite a lot from the pocketwatchdatabase. I've used that to identify Elgins by their serial number then used the Elgin catalog to identify individual part numbers.

[JohnR725]

2 hours ago, Stuart2 said:

i was wondering which books people use to find a particular movement, i have best fit and flume and i use ranfft. just wondered if there were any other books or web sites for identification purposes.

because this is a watch repair discussion group I assume you would like to identify the movement or watch for parts finding? Versus identifying the movement for basically figuring out what it is. Yes it may seem like both are identical questions but the reality is there not.

 

[Stuart2]

3 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

because this is a watch repair discussion group I assume you would like to identify the movement or watch for parts finding? Versus identifying the movement for basically figuring out what it is. Yes it may seem like both are identical questions but the reality is there not.

 

Yes i want to identify the movement for finding parts.

[JohnR725]

9 minutes ago, Stuart2 said:

Yes i want to identify the movement for finding parts.

then all the reference mentioned to work fine. If you're looking at Elgin in particular and you want to identify a movement for collectibility or figure out what it is then things like the pocket watch database has literally thousands of mistakes. But it will work just fine for parts. That means conceivably you can have a rare watch and not realize it because the pocket watch database is wrong but don't worry all the rest the reference books mentions will have the exact same problem.

[Stuart2]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

then all the reference mentioned to work fine. If you're looking at Elgin in particular and you want to identify a movement for collectibility or figure out what it is then things like the pocket watch database has literally thousands of mistakes. But it will work just fine for parts. That means conceivably you can have a rare watch and not realize it because the pocket watch database is wrong but don't worry all the rest the reference books mentions will have the exact same problem.

You help is much appreciated, i am actually trying to find out about a pocket watch that has sirdar and baume on the movement, the watch has a black dial with an arrow and under that it has the letter I and 1928. At least i now know how to look up some of the american ones i have. Thank you