Wow…what were they thinking?

[Woolshire]

I just finished servicing a rare pocket watch; an Illinois Sangamo Special that is marked sixty hour. Anyway, the watch has gold balance screws but I noticed two of them were brass. Upon investigation, I discovered 20 timing washers around the balance! Couldn’t hardly see them because they were smaller than the screw heads…but really? I found two suitable gold screws, removed all 20 timing washers and the poise and timing was quite good with no other changes. Somebody went to a lot of effort just because they used brass screws. I guess I learned the weight difference between like-sized brass vs gold screws = 20 small timing washers!

[Neverenoughwatches]

11 minutes ago, Woolshire said:

I just finished servicing a rare pocket watch; an Illinois Sangamo Special that is marked sixty hour. Anyway, the watch has gold balance screws but I noticed two of them were brass. Upon investigation, I discovered 20 timing washers around the balance! Couldn’t hardly see them because they were smaller than the screw heads…but really? I found two suitable gold screws, removed all 20 timing washers and the poise and timing was quite good with no other changes. Somebody went to a lot of effort just because they used brass screws. I guess I learned the weight difference between like-sized brass vs gold screws = 20 small timing washers!

more than double.