Rules and Practice for Adjusting Watches

by Walter J. Kleinlein

When rust begins its attack upon any point of a hairspring there will be a constant loss in time until its advance is stopped.

Should considerable headway have been made by the rust before the watchmaker's attention is enlisted for an examination it may be necessary to change the spring entirely before good results can again be obtained.

There are many instances, however, in which proper care at the right time will produce as good results as will a new spring.

The first appearance of rust is generally indicated by one or more spots of a light brown shade and in such instances it has hardly attacked the metal to any serious extent, although usually enough to cause a slightly losing rate. At this stage the spots may be scraped with a piece of peg wood after which the spring can be placed in a small copper pan containing lard oil to a depth of about one-fourth inch.

This pan should then be held over an alcohol lamp until the oil becomes hot enough to smoke, after which the spring should be removed, immersed in benzine for about thirty seconds and then dried in sawdust. This treatment will stop further rust and the only indication of previous rust may be a removal of the color from the spot which had been affected.

In case that the rust has reached a stage far enough advanced to seriously pit the metal, good results cannot be expected from the spring even though further rusting may be prevented.

[84.]Stopping by Escapement Locking When Hands are Set Backward, or When Watch Receives a Jar.

This is sometimes a very annoying trouble and while it should not occur on high grade watches at all, it does show up just often enough to cause a certain degree of unpleasantness for the owner of the watch as well as for the watchmaker.

There are two principal causes for the difficulty. One is due to the back of discharging pallet stone having a very sharp corner combined with a slightly rough edge on the back of the escape wheel teeth and when the two factors meet with some slight force, such as is caused by reversal of the train wheels the sharp corner of the stone wedges itself into the rough surface of the tooth and holds until pulled away by some small instrument. This can be remedied by removing the sharp edge of the stone on a diamond charged polishing lap and a very slight correction is sufficient.

The second principal cause is due to sharp edges on the roller jewel. First quality roller jewels always have these edges rounded, as otherwise they may wedge into the horn of the fork and often will not release through ordinary shaking of the watch.