Elgin Grade 315: Runs/stops with dial down/up

[nevenbekriev]

7 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

I work on many high grade watches daily. In fact, those are the ones you definitely don't want to re-poise, as they are most likely adjusted for positional accuracy from the factory.

Only the cheapest watches are 'unadjusted' from the factory.

See, if the watch is 'untouched', then it is worth to mark the position of the roller and to be very careful not to change in any way the hairspring shape and position. After replacing the balance staff just check the performance and probably there will be not big position errors. But having in mind that even unadjusted watches also perform well when the amplitude is proper, check positions with small and big amplitudes.

I work mainly on watches that other people have tried to repair and have failed, this is something like faith... I see alot BAD repairs. There are 'ingenious' ways of 'end shake adjustment' and balance staff repairs I meet I even don't want to speak about (here the term 'previous idiots' is right on it's place). Especially with compensating balances, static poising speeds up alot the adjustment, more - it really helps for the balance truing in round. Of course, everything depends on the aim one wants to achieve.

[Neverenoughwatches]

13 hours ago, docrpm said:

bend it. If I've got the balance shimmed with 5 layers of foil, each roughly 0.016mm thick (standard household aluminum

I would concentrate on a single piece of material at the correct thickness. I have a few rolls of narrow thin steel that I sometimes use for making setting levers. Very cheap to buy and will last all of my life, 0.3mm is the thinnest I have. But there are other common place items you can use, stanley knife blades I think are around 0.4mm, single edge razor blade scapers 0.2mm and beard razors finish at exactly 0.1mm, pretty close to what you require.  Feeler gauges are also a good option. Fiddling around with multiple layers of foil doesn't sound like fun, and aluminium will compress easily,  if not when fitting , then later down the line. Ive found watch paper under a bridge before, probably less likely to compress than tin foil.

Sounds wrong putting paper in a watch, but trapped between the plate and a bridge, I cant see a big problem. Besides it will soak up the extra oil from over-oiling

[JohnR725]

15 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

I see a lot of posts on here about poising the balance. How often are you guys doing that? It really shouldn't need to be done unless a new balance wheel has been installed. Really if its been adjusted for positions from the factory, it'll be out of poise, but adjusted for accuracy. I have a poising tool, but haven't used it. I do true balance wheels, but re-poising will mess with a watch that's already be set.

poising and the right discussion group with the right people it can become an extremely heated conversation like so many other things in watch repair. but it really shouldn't be an issue as long as everybody understands what they're supposed to be doing and why?

the first and most interesting problem we have is what exactly is the poise balance wheel? Now understand the question we need to clarify and to clarify we need timing specifications that typically do not exist for vintage watches. so the overly simplistic of all of this is you only have a poise problem if the positional timing is outside of the specifications of the particular watch your working on.

now the quote above isn't quite right the reference to a new balance wheel if you purchase a new balance wheel it's supposed to be poised from the factory. but it's only going to be poised to whatever the factory specifications are if you're expecting your whatever to be a chronometer then it's not going to be poised to your specifications. Then on any modern balance wheel without screws you shouldn't have to poise at all?

For instance here's an interesting link on poising. What makes it interesting is that the balance wheel he showing is a modern balance wheel that really does not need any adjusting at all as it would be within the specifications of the factory but he is still going to show you how to do it anyway.

https://great-british-watch.co.uk/how-to-poise-a-balance-wheel/

so is poising necessary sometimes. How do we know poising as necessary? Easy put it on the timing machine look at the watch in four positions is the timing outside of whatever you perceive the specifications are supposed to be for your watch?  I was looking at some of the watches that I do have timing specifications and so far the greatest I've seen is one minute of out of poise would be considered acceptable at a fully wound up watch. so positional errors get all kinds of differing numbers depending upon the specifications. 

[SwissSeiko]

10 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

 Are we talking the same ballgame?  restaffed balance wheel ?   bend, unbend  bridge ?   

If you restaff the balance correctly, there should be no need to repoise the wheel, unless it was messed with by a previous watchmaker. Here is an experiment to try that will explain my findings. Remove the balance from a correctly running watch that is marked "adjusted to 5 or 6 positions" or however many they claim. Place it on your poising tool, and you will find that it is out of poise. But, being out of poise, it has been adjusted for positional adjustments, to average the 5 or 10 seconds a day. It seems like you would want the wheel to be perfectly weighted all around, but it might run better a little heavier CU at the 4:30 position on the wheel. HERE is a good article that can explain it better than me.

8 hours ago, nevenbekriev said:

Only the cheapest watches are 'unadjusted' from the factory.

See, if the watch is 'untouched', then it is worth to mark the position of the roller and to be very careful not to change in any way the hairspring shape and position. After replacing the balance staff just check the performance and probably there will be not big position errors. But having in mind that even unadjusted watches also perform well when the amplitude is proper, check positions with small and big amplitudes.

I work mainly on watches that other people have tried to repair and have failed, this is something like faith... I see alot BAD repairs. There are 'ingenious' ways of 'end shake adjustment' and balance staff repairs I meet I even don't want to speak about (here the term 'previous idiots' is right on it's place). Especially with compensating balances, static poising speeds up alot the adjustment, more - it really helps for the balance truing in round. Of course, everything depends on the aim one wants to achieve.

I also see a large amount of bad repairs, back when it was a cutthroat occupation. So if someone did re-poise a balance before you, you might have to do it again to correct it for positional accuracy. But at that point, its a sunken cost fallacy, as it will take a long time to make adjustments to 6 positional accuracy, so you might be better off finding an unmolested replacement.

[mbwatch]

56 minutes ago, SwissSeiko said:

 HERE is a good article that can explain it better than me.

Ah ok ok his beef is against static poising with bench tools, not with dynamic poising to correct the running watch.

[Nucejoe]

 In conclusion we have discovered,  the reason why a Rolex spends eight months to one year on assembly line is cuz it ain't a WRT member.

 

[mbwatch]

4 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

it ain't a WRT member

We could give them a Super Diamond Platinum Crown WRT Patron badge if they offered to pay the web hosting fees though...

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

if you restaff the balance correctly, there should be no need to repoise the wheel, unless it was messed with by a previous watchmaker

so let's break this down the words restaffed balance wheel correctly would mean no distortion at all on the balance wheel. Which can be done but often isn't. Oftentimes balance wheels end up and times particularly discussing a bimetallic all bent up like the one in this discussion. If the balance wheel is out of round you definitely get a poise issue. You also get an issue if somebody pleases and out around balance wheel and then you fix the out of round now the wheel is poised incorrectly because somebody didn't physically make sure the balance wheel was correct in the first place. Yes people really do poise balance wheels that are neither flat or round it's quite annoying and then it typically with anything vintage there's an extreme likelihood of timing issues. Like the fun I had yesterday the wall thumb was 400 seconds fast and had a 202nd positional problem. So yes it's extremely common on vintage watches you're going to have things to fix from prior inappropriate repairs

7 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

Place it on your poising tool, and you will find that it is out of poise. But, being out of poise, it has been adjusted for positional adjustments, to average the 5 or 10 seconds a day. It seems like you would want the wheel to be perfectly weighted all around,

typically and it depends upon how it nitpicky you want to be here. In other words if you are statically poising the definition of poised would be if you give the balance wheel of push it will rotate eventually come to a stop and it will not rock back and forth at all is considered perfectly poised. Typically when I poise I don't worry about that I will let it rock back and forth because it still going to be within 15 seconds typically. Now the problem with statically poising absolutely perfectly is that it does not take into account the hairspring. This is why ideally if you are really obsessed you statically poise until your close and then finish with dynamic poising. This will take into account the hairspring collet that's probably not a poised collet. Yes Hamilton had another companies had poised collet's they hairspring itself affects the poise so for absolute perfect you have to dynamic poise. So the suggestion has been that it absolutely poised dynamically done balance wheel will not be statically poise absolutely perfectly. 

 

16 hours ago, nevenbekriev said:

Only the cheapest watches are 'unadjusted' from the factory.

this is an interesting one? In the United States of America over a time span and I don't remember the exact but it ended in the 60s there was a tear off on watches to protect the American watch industry. I've read the books on the tariffs specifications it would bump up the cost of better watches to making them expensive. This is why you will often see a nice Omega watch for instance that was regulated was adjusted and was still keeping really good time will be marked not adjusted. Because the quantity of jewels each jewel bumped up the cost adjustment adjustment and variety of positions bumped up the cost so a huge percentage of watches imported into this country will be not adjusted but they were adjusted at the factory it's just a terra thing

then I suspect that even the cheapest of watches probably were somewhat adjusted because if they had zero adjustments I have no idea how bad the timekeeping would be? It's one of the problems of we don't actually have numbers of what the watches really should be doing we only have numbers of timekeeping basically when timing machines exist or for things like railroad grade watches where they absolutely had to know what the timekeeping is doing. So railroad timekeeping specification in this country is of watch Dependent up has to be within plus or -30/2 per week. Which if you compare it to the specifications of chronometer grade will ask which I think could be up to six seconds a day is better than a Rolex.

7 hours ago, SwissSeiko said:

its a sunken cost fallacy, as it will take a long time to make adjustments to 6 positional accuracy, so you might be better off finding an unmolested replacement.

this is one of my amusements at work. There we have that really nice which he timing machine full automatic microphone we look at every single watch and six positions and my boss once the watches all the keep really good time. So basically the watchmakers have learned to let the boss adjust the watches it seems to make him happy and we can do other things like service watches. So yesterday's fun on the 18 size Waltham to get the 400 timing down to think he got it down to 15 seconds it might've been better than that the Delta was still might've been within a minute much better than what it was before but still took more than an hour of time. When we don't specifically charge for this we charge for servicing of the watch we do not typically charge to make your watch keep time in multiple positions so yes it wastes a lot of time unless you're getting paid for it where it can definitely eat up a lot of time to fix vintage watches that I've had interesting repair histories.

On 4/16/2025 at 3:25 AM, Nucejoe said:

Didn't know shimming conforms to Swiss horolog standards, in watch repair, if its to  compensate for pivot wear, it actually is not a bad practice, for the following reasons. 

sorry I don't remember the brand name we once had a watch that was one of I take 1000 it actually was engraved number or something of something in other words it was a very expensive Swiss watch and I believe there was at least one shim under something. I always think of at the factory level if you have to place a shim to me it's a sign of poor manufacturing but there was a Swiss watch a nice watch that had it done. Of course what it may also be a sign of limited quantity of watches where things or adjusted at the factory

18 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

Are we talking the same ballgame?  restaffed balance wheel ?   bend, unbend  bridge ?   

we end up with interesting problems and I will pick on American pocket watches again with interesting repairs that can happen? For instance pocket watches dropped balance staff is broken possibly the whole jewels are broken and sometimes cap stones get broken. or worst-case I had a Hamilton 992 it actually had little notches taken out of the main plate I always wonder if it got hit by a train and things were dramatically bent in this watch somebody had ground the pallet fork bridge down to accommodate the balance wheel because the balance bridge had been bent to insane proportions it was bent so much it was no longer up and down in alignment so I always wondered if this particular watch got hit by a train. With its ultimate repair it would've been better to just replace the whole movement but instead we cannibalized another movements to replace all of the horribly mutilated parts.

Now back to not watches hit by a train while somebody was crossing the railroad track.

If the balance jewels are broken they are replaced but the same problem like we have on this group where do you get replacements? This means people in the field will get creative if they replace things with size differently than the original things will change. In other words the total length of the balance staff conceivably will change because they've changed the jewels and they're not properly sized.

Then there's a problem of replacement balance staffs I personally have often theorized in the case of  bestfit  that they deliberately made the staffs oversize so the watchmaker can reduce the size. But what if you don't have a lay then what happens? A for instance the Hamilton 992B only has one balance staff as it's of friction staff but often times the friction staff doesn't fit because the replacement staff is slightly oversize which should be impossible but it happens. Often times I have to go through an assortment of staffs to find one that fits because I don't feel like reducing at the size to fit. More common though would be staffs with pivots that are too long and if the watchmaker does not have a lathe again how do they fix that problem well undesirable for us that have to deal with it down the road

so an ideal perfect world the adjusted by the factory to whatever the specification was at the time and on a seven jewel American pocket watch it's not going to be railroad timekeeping. If we replace the staff in a proper fashion without bending or distorting anything the watch should keep time within the specification when it was originally made except of course we don't know what the specification was and they definitely did not have timing machines when this watch was made.

If we replace the balanced staff with a factory original factory staff and everything should fit perfectly if the jewels were broken and we used factory jewels everything once again would be perfect. Although if you look in the parts book typically for American pocket watches for certain parts they recommend sending the entire watch or parts of the watch back because American watch manufacturing at least until the not sure exact date but sometime past the 20s definitely by the 50s watches were made in batches which is why everything has a serial number and the tools over the course of the batch tend to wear a little bit. So conceivably something made at the beginning and the end of the batch may not fit without adjustments. Plus of course there's variations in parts I like the pic on Elgin because they have one balance staff that comes in four different size variations and then a whole bunch of pivot variations all with the same part number

so yes and an absolute perfect world which doesn't exist changing a balance staff with everything factory new would not require poising or truing the balance wheel because everything should still be perfect. But unfortunately in the 100+ year life of your watch things have happened.

If you want to grasp that go back and start on page 1 of this discussion as the balance wheels in this discussion have had issues they're not flat the probably out of round there were issues with the jewels there is issues possibly with the staffs. Oh and yes apparently there's a donor watch and if the donor watch is not within a very close serial number range of the original watch it will have very likely sizing differences especially for anything related to the balance wheel because all the vintage watches were adjusted individually in the factory. If you look at a video on I can find it if you want to watch it on YouTube from I believe the 30s where you will see on escapement related stuff every single watch is adjusted which is why you can't just grab the balance wheel from one watch shove it into another one as they were adjusted at the factory

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LittleWatchShop]

3 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

Now back to not watches hit by a train while somebody was crossing the railroad track.

yup, it happens A Pinto pony and a Navaho.

Edited April 18 by LittleWatchShop

[docrpm]

After another long hiatus (while waiting for truing calipers to arrive), I’ve made some more progress.

TRUING IN THE FLAT

I was able to use the calipers I purchased to true the wheel in the flat. There’s still a very slight eccentricity in the round, but I’m going to leave it as is. It doesn’t wobble any more and I’m happy with that. Thanks for the tool recommendation @mbwatch. It worked well, though I must say it takes a delicate touch to get the balance between the calipers. Also, my calipers effectively have four different variations based on the orientation of the arms (2 sides, 2 orientations each). Some are more tapered than others, though to what end, I can’t quite tell. My first thought was that flipping them over yields arms that can be used for poising. They are K&D horizontal calipers, btw.

OSCILLATION TEST

@nevenbekriev @JohnR725 After truing the wheel in the flat, I carefully remounted the hairspring and did your oscillation test. Balance wheel mounted to balance cock, no pallet fork, rotate balance wheel 180 degrees, let it go, and time+count the oscillations. Results as follows for dial down orientation:

• Duration: 1m 15sec (to full stop)
• # of oscillations: About 125, though the amplitude of the oscillations decreased significantly, as one might expect

I should redo the test in at least two other orientations…Forgot to do that.  

In general, it’s safe to say this watch has a pretty low amplitude, likely for a variety of reasons. I haven’t oiled the balance jewels FWIW…I should probably do that, but I really don’t want to keep disassembling and reassembling the balance. Is it possible to oil those jewels (top and bottom) by just removing the capstones and putting in a tiny amount of oil, with balance in place? I can see how having the pivot in the jewel hole could change how capillary action works, and thus might pull more oil in than desired. However, those capillary forces will be in effect anyway once the balance is inserted.

PRACTICE MOVEMENTS

@JohnR725 I agree with your sentiment about using practice movements wholeheartedly, and I’ve done that to some degree. The watch I’m currently repairing is for a friend, and she was willing to have me treat it as a “learn-by-doing experience.” With that said,, I probably should have purchased a few more “beaters” before getting to something where I don’t want to muck things up. I’ve still got a couple of those on the bench that I used as donors, and I’ll try to rehabilitate them.

[docrpm]

@JohnR725 You had also asked about the serial numbers for the watch under repair and the “donor.” Those are 36,764,469 and 19,110,954 respectively, so not that close to each other. However, it was the balance that I was originally going to swap in, and I’ve since purchased both new staff and new hairspring. Pretty sure it’s the original balance cock and wheel currently installed. The only part I wound up using from the donor was the click spring, which had been completely disintegrated by rust in mine.

[JohnR725]

3 hours ago, docrpm said:

Those are 36,764,469 and 19,110,954 respectively, so not that close to each other.

yes the pocketwatch database shows quite a spread in those serial numbers. With the watches typically made in batches and even in a batch from the beginning to the end there be some variations. Then you have approximately a 10 year difference between the two yes some of the stuff will probably not fit especially escapement components as there usually adjusted at the time of manufacturing and of course manufacturing tolerances were improving with time.

https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/search/result/elgin/36764469

Grade:    315   
Model:    3    
Class:    114  
Estimated Production Year:    1937 
Run Quantity:    4,000    
Grade/Model Run:    310 of 329

https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/search/result/elgin/19110954

Grade:    315    
Model:    3    
Class:    114   
Estimated Production Year:    1917  
Run Quantity:    2,000    
Grade/Model Run:    127 of 329