Waltham pocket watch runs slow

[ewhitewatch246]

Model 1883 Waltham…I have cleaned the watch two times. I replaced balance staff. I replaced the mainspring. The watch has a great balance motion. I have adjusted the banking pins, and regulator pins. I checked the minute wheel, hour wheel and canon pinion to make sure they were correct and they are. The watch is running about 7 seconds slow every 60 seconds. No matter what I do, it does not seem to make any difference. Any ideas

[david pierce]

Ewhite,
Make sure the balance is oscillating at the proper frequency. If you have an electronic beat counter it will simply flash the counts (18,000/hr) on the screen. if not, you can do it the old fashion way and time it manually with an electronic watch. The oscillation of the balance is the heart of the timing process and if it is not right, then the rest of the watch wil be wrong no matter how mechanically perfect it is.
david

[Bob Tascione]

Hi EWhite,
Could be one of several possibilities such as timing screws etc. Would be helpful to know if this loss is consistent through different positions ie: dial up, dial down, pend. up, pend. right and left?
Bob

[ewhitewatch246]

I will monitor it this week in different positions and reply

[Bob Tascione]

Hi EWhiteWatch,
I just read the part of your first post where you say

No matter what I do, it does not seem to make any difference

does this also include adjusting the regulator? If you’re getting little or no change then you may want to check the index pins again. I know that you mentioned that you adjusted the regulator pins but just in case check again that the pins are not too far apart. The hairspring must contact “both” pins during vibration. Changing positions will often reveal this problem. There should be very little space between the hairspring and pins.

Bob

[willofiam]

Hi guys, so Bob, This may be obvious but if the index pins (are they also called curb pins????) are parallel and close to the hairspring and it is still contacting one pin more than the other do you give the hairspring a little “tweak” by the stud? if so then I would assume that it should be checked all along the adjustment. and if that is so then this could be a little hairy, William

[Bob Tascione]

Good question William.

Yes Curb pins, Index pins and Regulator Pins are all used to describe them. One may be more correct than another. I’m not sure. I think ‘Index’ was used in the U.K., Regulator in the U.S. and Curb? – maybe had something to do with the original ‘compensation curb’ but just guessing and most likely wrong.

When correcting this problem it’s important to figure out what caused the hairspring to move away from one pin in the first place. It could be that the pins have been moved and just need to be brought back into position. Most often I find that the hairspring has been bent at the stud and one simple bend will take care of the problem. By returning the hairspring back to it’s original position the spring should remain centered between the pins for the entire swing of the regulator arm. There are times that a double bend is needed at the stud. Example: assume that the hairspring is resting on the inside pin and we’ve determined that the problem is at the stud end and not the collet end. After making a single bend we find that it is centered between the pins but when the regulator is moved the spring again moves away from center. Making another small bend near the first bend in the opposite direction will often line things back up. These 2 bends will usually be all that’s necessary to make it right but…the problem doesn’t always originate from the stud but may be at the collet end. If the spring has been knocked off center at the collet then the adjustment must be made near the pinning point at the collet. Also if the hairspring has been knocked off plane then it must be brought back to level before making any adjustments.

On many watches the stud has no accurate locating mechanism so when the stud is removed from the balance cock and then replaced (like when replacing a staff)it may be twisted a little one way or the other. Twisting the stud a tiny bit back to where it needs to be will often bring things back to center. If not then a small bend or two will usually do the job.

If the spring has an overcoil then it’s possible that the coil was messed with but I don’t find this a common occurrence. Problem usually is at either end of the spring.

If the problem is traced back and found then usually just one bend is all it takes since one bend is normally all it took to knock it out alignment. If the stud didn’t relocate perfectly after removing from the balance cock then 1 to 2 bends at the stud pinning point is all it will take if the spring is correctly centered at the collet. Chasing the problem by adding more bends never worked for me.

Hope this makes sense and I didn’t confuse you William.
Please let me know.
Enjoy!
Bob

[willofiam]

Bob, your explanation was very informative and made complete sense, thank you for the detail and the time you took to explain, hope you have a fantastic day , William

[ewhitewatch246]

Gentlemen, thanks for all the replies. I did get the watch fixed. I found that someone had changed the balance wheel. There are two balance wheels listed for the mod 1883 watch. I had another watch that was same model and the balance wheel was smaller. I installed the smaller balance wheel and that increased my speed. I was still off about two seconds. I removed two balance screws. Checked my time this morning after running overnight and it was in perfect time with the writst watch. I will see what I have when I get home tonight….but definitely have made progress with the watch…by the way it is running beautifully.
Thanks to all.

[david pierce]

Ewhite,
You deserve a gold star for this one.
david

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