Reply To: elgin winding problem

[Bob Tascione]

Welcome to the forum Keyman_220,

As William suggests the first thing you may want to check is the beat. You can do this with the watch at rest by ‘letting down all mainspring power’ and then turn and release the balance so it vibrates a little. When it comes to rest observe the position of the roller jewel. It should lie just about dead center in the pallet horn. If you visualize a line drawn from the center of the balance axis, passing through the pallet arbor and escape wheel arbor centers the roller jewel should come to rest on this line. If it rests on one side or the other of this line of centers then the watch is out of beat. The greater the distance from this line the more ‘out of beat’ it is. There are many reasons a watch can fall out of beat and hairspring collet adjustments can be made to bring it back into beat as shown in the videos but you wouldn’t want to make that adjustment until you know the reason for the jewel not resting on the line of centers . A dirty or magnetized hairspring can throw it out of beat enough to keep it from starting up on it’s own as well as a bent hairspring, hairspring resting on the outside of the regulating pins etc. You might check that the hairspring is spotlessly clean and that no coils are touching or sticking when there’s no balance motion due to either dirt or magnetism and that the hairspring is centered to it’s axis, and also check that it isn’t tilted off the plane of the balance. Any of these conditions can keep a watch from self starting during winding. I think sticky and magnetized hairsprings are among the most common culprits for what you’re experiencing after a cleaning. Hairsprings are very sensitive to contaminants in cleaning and rinsing solutions and when cleaned and rinsed in the same solution as the rest of the watch will often become sticky from the gummy dirt and oil released from the rest of the watch during cleaning. There are other reasons too but these would be the first to check.
If this all checks out ok then we can tackle some of the other reasons.

Hope this helps Keyman. Let us know how it goes.
Bob