Calling all Pocket Watch Buffs

This is so cool Tex! I will print it and hang it in my leather shop! Oh, and I have pig skin too! The best way to shape the « cup » is to have the intended watch, completely protect it in cling wrap, wet the leather and shape it around the watch. Clamp it down and let it dry. Works well. Perhaps a project for the near future. @DaveK also considering it. Thank you for sharing! Late entry. In the instructions on TexOmega’s post it is directed to glue leather to brass. That is worth trying!

I don’t know the source, and I am unable to quote this exactly. But as I understand it, the Waltham Watch Co. catalog circa 1915, had no wrist watches in it. By 1920, half the catalog was devoted to wrist watches!

I once saw a copy of a circa 1915 National Geographic magazine advert (I hope i am recalling correctly), that showed a dapper gent dressed in a fashionable outfit, carrying a ladie’s hand warmer called a muff. The caption alluded to the fact that, in the opinion of Waltham, no fashionable male would carry a wrist watch any more than he would carry a muff! Not only were people wearing wrist watches, they were carrying SWISS made wrist watches. Oh dread!

In the late 1960s, I was managing a jewellery store in a regional chain of stores. We carried house brand watches, Bulova, Rolex, Tudor, and Omega watches. In 1971, my assistant manager was transferred to Richmond Hill, Ontario, to manage a new store. He hadn’t been there for long (1973 or so), before he let me know that his store was involved in a trial selling Seiko watches which were gaining market share in leaps and bounds. A short time later, the C P Express guy delivered four huge cardboard boxes (approx. each a 3-foot cube). The packing tape had Seiko written all over. Oh my! I thought. What a disappointment! Japanese watches! Within a year or two, Bulova was gone from our store! It was a sad day for me, having cut my teeth on Swiss and American watches. About two years later, I didn’t miss Bulova at all. Seiko did everything right. This is a thumbnail view of the dangers of a company sitting on its laurels, and not watching the market place.

Does anyone have, or has anyone ever even heard of, or seen a pocket watch winding key called a “tipsy” key? My Hamilton marine chronometer has what could be called a tipsy key. Most key wind pocket watches that I have run into are English fusee movements. On these English key winders, the first wheel has the fusee mounted to it. The first wheel has two tiny ratchets mounted on the surface to which the fusee is mounted. The fusee has a ratchet wheel on the first wheel side which is acted upon by the two ratchets. The ratchet wheel is generally brass, and the teeth are quite small. On these watches, the winding arbor is fitted to the fusee, and the fusee turns as the watch is wound. Turning the winding key the wrong way when winding can have disastrous results. Breaking the tiny ratchets, or stripping the ratchet teeth. The tipsy key is designed to wind effectively if turned in the right direction. These keys are fitted with an internal ratchet which eliminates the danger of turning the key the wrong way.

The images are of the winding components on my Hamilton model 21 marine chronometer. Much bigger and more robust than a fusee pocket watch.

The arrow in the first picture points to the fusee. (Don’t fret. I know where everything goes!)





The second picture. The internal workings of a fusee winding mechanism.

1/ The fusee ratchet wheel.
2/ The under surface of the fusee.
3 and 4/ Point to the fusee clicks.
5/ Points at the maintaining power spring on the first wheel. This spring keeps the chronometer running during winding.
6/ Points at the maintaining power ratchet wheel. (Maintaining power ratchet not shown.

This is what the assembled unit looks like.

1/ Fusee.
2/ Fusee chain.
3/ First wheel teeth.
4/ Maintaining power ratchet wheel teeth.

The big brass drum has the fusee chain coiled around it. That drum contains the mainspring.

That's one beautiful fusee movement.
A lot different to the old English lever fusee that I restored last year.

They really are magnificent. Mine was built in September, 1944. In October of 1944, Hamilton produced over 600 model 21s. That is more chronometers than many chronometer makers produced during their production.

The Hamilton model 21s all have an alpha-numeric code on the dial. A capital N inside a larger O which stands for Naval Observatory, and 1941. The navy needed chronometers in WWII, and were forced to make do with what they could scrounge or borrow. Waltham, Hamilton, and Elgin were approached to produce prototype chronometers to be submitted for testing. Hamilton won the contract in 1941. It took time to design and build a prototype, and to tool up to be able to produce chronometers in quantity. The first chronometers to be submitted to the navy, were finished in early 1943. Hamilton didn’t have time to re-invent the wheel, so the model 21 was a copy of a Negus chronometer. The Negus was an older design which had a fusee, so Hamilton designed the model 21 with a fusee. I have read that they toyed with the idea of eliminating the fusee, as they felt that modern manufacture techniques, modern design, and modern alloys, the fusee could be omitted. But time was short, and there was no time to experiment, and fail. The design had worked for Negus, so Hamilton went with it.

As a mainspring runs down, its power output is gradually reduced which causes loss of amplitude in the balance. When the chronometer with a fusee is fully wound, most of the fusee chain is wound around fusee to the tip of the “cone”, and very little chain is on the mainspring barrel. The mainspring is producing the most power, and since the chain is off winding from the fusee at the small end, the mainspring is functioning at a disadvantage. The barrel turns, the fusee chain off-winds from a progressively larger part of the fusee, and gathers around the turning barrel. The mainspring weakens, but the fusee compensates by adding mechanical advantage to the weakening mainspring, as the chain is off-winding from a progressively larger section of the fusee. Ergo, we have isochronism. Add to that the Elinvar Extra alloy balance wheel, and little in the way of temperature compensation is necessary. Mine runs within seconds per month.

That @DaveK guy is at it again. I brave a -27° C day to trudge to our group mailbox, to find a package from him. Never one to toot his own horn, I thought It was up to me to show the contents of the package herewith. It is a beautiful leather pocket watch pouch, personalized, and in a draw-string linen sachet! So out came my private label Porte & Markle (Winnipeg) pocket watch on its @DaveK mystery braid leather lanyard, for a show and tell. I just know there will be a demand for these. The line-up forms to the left! 👍