When you fish for pocket watches in the murky waters of eBay, estate sales, and pawn shops, you’ll find some seriously mistreated watches. A certain kind of person, when finding… Read more »
I’m often asked for advice about buying pocket watches as gifts, and it usually looks like this. Someone who doesn’t know anything about watches has a son or spouse… Read more »
The first task in watch adjusting to positions is aligning the two horizontal rates: dial up and dial down. In our “Dial Up, Dial Down” series, we’ve explored some of… Read more »
Vintage wristwatches often have “tension ring crystals,” also known as “armored crystals.” These are domed acrylic crystals with a small, beveled ring—usually gold or silver in color—at the base. The… Read more »
With the 8/0 747 movement ticking away nicely, it’s time to turn to the case. Like many Hamilton watches from that era, the “Clinton” model had a two-piece case with… Read more »
As I work my way through my epic stash of “project watches,” I’m excavating some long-buried watches that I worked on years and years ago with cryptic notes. I packed… Read more »
In statistics—a big part of my day job—an often misunderstood idea is “regression to the mean.” This is sometimes misinterpreted as some sort of mystical process where the universe balances… Read more »
In the days before smooth balance wheels, the mass of the balance wheel was controlled using screws around the rim of the balance wheel. This approach enables relatively fine control… Read more »
When checking a watch on a timing machine, we want to see stable rates: a set of parallel lines, not wavy curves. A watch might be too slow or too… Read more »
My stash of watches to fix is slowly shrinking, and I’m reaching some interesting and complicated cases. Here’s the current patient: a big, chunky Illinois pocket watch. This is an… Read more »
The prior post in this series described how to remove a friction-fit balance staff. Friction-fit staffs are quick and easy to work with, so naturally, the world being what it… Read more »
One of the nicer watches in my stash of “fix someday” watches is this old Waltham pocket watch. I picked it up for a good price some years back at… Read more »