Reply To: Waltham rattle…

[Bob Tascione]

Hi Tom,
Hey ask away! The more questions the better. This has been a really good topic. Lot’s of normal trouble shooting techniques are being posted that others can refer to in the future.

You can check the end shake first by turning the watch upside down to see if the balance moves much as you did or by carefully carefully lifting the balance by an arm. Also sometimes helpful to remove the cock cap jewel. The end of the pivot should be fairly close to to edge of the hole jewel when in the dial down position. You can also remove both cap jewels to check if the pivots are extending beyond the hole jewels far enough to contact the cap jewels. This will tell you if the staff is long enough and/or if a pivot is too short (or jewel too thick).

Also when doing these tests you can view all of this mush easier if the plates are not assembled.

Looks like the side shake is ok so jewel hole diameters should be fine.

I may have missed it but still not sure whether you have a single or double roller (when you say ‘safety roller’ I visualize a double roller or 2 piece double roller) Is it the roller ‘jewel’ that’s jamming against the foot or the safety roller part of a double roller? I always thought that the 1883 used a single roller only but I might very well be wrong about that.

Bob