Limit Pocket Watch

[oli]

Hi all
I have put together a couple of pics of a recent project. This was my first pocket watch. This is my first post in this section of the forum, so I feel slightly intimated by all the knowledge around me!

Limit was a British company, established in Lancashire in 1912. The 15 jewels movement in this watch was swiss made, and from my research I gathered that it was probably supplied by Thommen in Switzerland, and cased in the UK by Limit.

It turned out to be very easy to work on. My previous projects have all been wristwatches (mostly Seikos!), so the slightly larger diameter here definitely helped. It also turned out easy to put it back together.

Here is a summary of what I did with this watch, I hope you enjoy reading this! 

First the “before” picture – I bought the watch on an ebay auction for spares or repairs, not really knowing what to expect.

Upon receipt of the watch, the first good surprise was that the watch was running after my first attempt at winding it. 

The mineral glass dial was very cloudy, so this needed to be addressed.

I also wanted to completely strip, clean and lubricate the movement.
Upon opening the case of the watch, the movement looked very grubby, with traces of heat having been applied to some parts of the movement in the past.

 I am not too sure why this would have been done, perhaps to heat up Shellac for a repair of the balance jewel? Or to burn dust residue in the watch. I was quite puzzled by this because the marks are definitely not localised to one area of the movement.

 

I proceeded to strip the movement, no snags were encountered during disassembly.

After a bit of manual cleaning, all the parts went in the ultrasonic machine for a good clean.

I was not quite happy with the look of the visible parts of the movement after the Ultrasonic clean, so I gave some of them a polish, and back into the machine.
 I did not want to achieve a perfect result, but just wanted to make the movement look a bit more presentable. The superficial heat marks came out. Note I did not polish the balance cock as I did not want to interfere with anything there!

I put the movement back together, and lubricated it. 

 By that point, I had received a new crystal from our favourite supplier. I would normally use my crystal press to push out the old crystal, but I did not have a suitable die for this diameter, so had to do this manually. With a bit of persuasion, the old crystal came out, but not without a minor injury (cut on my thumb from the bezel edge, it was quite **BLEEP**!) so I will definitely wear gloves next time!

And here it is, the watch completely re-assembled. I did not do anything to the case as I like a bit of patina, I think it gives this watch character.

I put it on my timing machine, and with an accuracy of approx. 10sec/ day I am very happy with this, so will not do anything else to this one.

I hope you found this interesting, comments welcome (positive, negative, or advice!)

[szbalogh]

Great find and even greater job here! Gorgeous watch You have

Those burning? marks are really interesting. One of my pocket watches has also some under the balance. It would be great to know why someone is burning that place...

 

[bobm12]

Wonderful job, oli, and a good watch to keep!

20 hours ago, szbalogh said:

Those burning? marks are really interesting. One of my pocket watches has also some under the balance. It would be great to know why someone is burning that place...

My take on it is probably a previous watchmaker had to deal with a broken screw or similar and used vissine which is normally boiled with the part under an alcohol lamb...or more into thinking about it, how about rust treatment? It tends to mark those parts like that....and I believe there is some old pitting on the plates from that....but my computer doesn't show the pictures well.

But, any other guess? I'm interested too.

Cheers,

Bob

[oli]

Thanks guys

Bob I think you could well be right about the burning marks! i had not thought of that but it would be very plausible

 

 

Edited September 5, 2016 by oli

[Ruby2]

Looks great.

Well done! 

I have a gold and silver Limit pocket watch that was my great grandfathers who was a watch repairer. 

Cheers

Richard 

[Cad101]

Nice one oli job well done lad.

Mick

[oldhippy]

A good job all round. If you need to replace the glass and not bothered about the old one tap it out with a hammer.