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1894 Elgin 6S

azkid

By azkid
in Your Watch Collection

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azkid Watch Enthusiast

azkid

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Just finished working on this 1894 Elgin 6S, Grade 117, 7 jewel watch, and it seems to be running ok. Hope you enjoy the pics and my little newbie adventure [emoji4]
 
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Got the whole watch on eBay, minus crystal and not running well. The gold filled Keystone "cyclone" case is kind of worn down but still looks ok to me.
 
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After cleaning, the amplitude was poor, like 180° poor. I pulled the mainspring and it was about as set as they come. A NOS replacement went in.
 
And the amplitude was still terrible! Then the impulse jewel fell out. Until I get my warmer tool, I swapped a balance from a compatible watch just to see if it would run worth a darn.
 
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The guard pin needed adjusting and it took me forever to get the beat error down to a crummy 2ms. And still poor amplitude.
 
I remembered seeing divots on the cap jewels so I swapped those. And despite the fairly loose pivot holes, she finally started running right, plenty of amplitude. Whew.
 
Now, it does have a massively bad rate discrepancy between pendant left vs. right. I will have to address that at some point.
 
I recased it (the two had been separated for almost a year now) after finding the stem bits.
 
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Cleaned up a couple hands and re-blued them and good to go. Now I just need to find a crystal.
 
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Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 
 


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azkid Watch Enthusiast

azkid

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Was able to address the mainspring issue.

 

I have had zero luck with crystals. Broken two trying to install. I need to rethink my technique.

 

A plastic crystal is inbound in the meantime so I at least can use the watch.

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MrRoundel Super WRT Addict

MrRoundel

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I find that old mainsprings, especially the blue ones, lose their memory a bit with age. Hmmm...sounds familiar. If you don't already have one, a set of mainspring pliers might help you get that inner coil shaped better. It's sort of a round-nosed plier with stepped sizing for a couple of different sizes of inner coil bends.

Crystal replacement is a specialty in itself, especially the thin Geneva style for hunter cases. I'm still not great at crystal work myself. Hang in there. Nice little Elgin, BTW. Cheers.

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