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6 hours ago, digginstony said:

You've done a great job don't get to preoccupied with amplitude on old pocket watches. I was told by a friend with far more knowledge than me on Walthams that 270° swing was pretty much the factory standard ? of the day and an amplitude of 180 isn't that bad for these old watches. As said + or - a few minutes a day on these time pieces is common.

One of the problems with a generalized statement like this is it's too generalized. Obviously the older the pocket watch the less likely it is to have super amplitudes. Earlier verge watches barely moved at all and didn't really keep time but that's what they did.

Omega watch company has a technical documentation with timing specifications for all of their watches almost. For some of the really old that they don't have a listing for I've attached an image of what they expect. Now this isn't going exactly work for older pocket watches because the escapement designs have changed the newer wristwatches are just more efficient. But we get an idea of what they expected for older watches. Since were discussing amplitude notice they specify what it should be at the end of 24 hours. For the larger watch the expect 180°. This is why the example above 180 is considered okay I have a problem with because at the end of 24 hours is the watch even running? If you could keep 180° from the beginning to the end that would be okay providing the watch keeps time if it's a watch that can keep time. 200 would be better and anything above would be outstanding. The watch would actually keep better time if it Could maintain the same amplitude. But no matter what it still has to be running at the end of 24 hours usually watches with low amplitude drop a lot amplitude and finally come to a stop.

So only with modern timing machine with the digital display do we get obsessed with numeric result of amplitude. In the early days if the watch company told us such as Elgin in the mid-50s has a specification they will refer to the number of turns. Data timing machine for the rate but they used turns for the amplitude because they did not have a digital machine.

Then also attached timing specifications for basically better grade watches. I was trying to find what a 12 size Illinois non-railroad watch does and haven't got that yet instead a collector of Illinois gave me those PDFs. Then there is the one for the Hamilton but those are basically really nice railroad watches. But notice there is no reference to amplitude.

 

Illinois 12s Certificate of Rating.pdf

Illinois 16s Sang Spec Certificate of Rating.pdf

Hamilton 992b 950 timing.PDF

older Omega timekeeping.JPG

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