Thursday, November 22, 2007

Scratches inside your vintage watch?

From time to time, I find lines scratched inside vintage watches. I even posted a pic last year of my 1906 Waltham wire lug watch bezel but nobody seemed to know back then.

The penny finally dropped as I took it apart yesterday and made notes, as I do these days. I duly noted down the Wadsworth case serial number xxx9394 and then removed the bezel. By chance, the scratches were lit and oriented such that it looked like VIIII III VIIII IIII - and in Roman numerals that's the last 4 digits of the above serial number! The inscriber hadn't closed the bottom of the V's so, from other angles, it wasn't at all obvious what the scratches represented.

One slightly interesting thing about these particular numerals is that the inscriber didn't use the "subtractive" method, ie IX for 9 and of course, IV for 4 - the which has often been discussed ref. dial numbers. I guess that a V is easier to scribe than a X, and an I is easier than a V.

Ed Ueberall (The Escapement) agreed:
Many of the watch case companies did this in order to keep matching parts together as they traveled around the factory. Often the center section will also have the last four (or more) Arabic digits stamped on the rim, while the bezel had the hand scratched (Roman) numerals. The back cover(s) had the full number stamped inside.

Cary Hurt also mentioned:
You'll also find this on Hamilton wristwatch cases made by both Wadsworth and Fahy's. Though (as Ed says above) this was originally done as an inventory aid during production, it now serves as an easy way to validate the originality of bezel-midsection-back combinations.

This is increasingly important as the rarity of original two-tone watches makes it unfortunately more attractive for mismatched sets to be presented as genuine.
It also can help to identify when a gold-filled bezel is mated to a solid gold back.

I've seen it on Wadsworth cases by Elgin, Waltham and Gruen as well.

Terry Hall just added:
If you find an upside down V, that is a Zero.....

Happy Holidays!

xpatUSA

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Can Vibration break your Wristwatch?

Probably not, I'm pleased to say.  Please read on . . .

This question came to mind while I was mowing the lawn.  I had glanced down at my wrist to check the time and, to my horror, I saw that, instead of my Traser "beater", I was wearing a vintage 1929 Bulova cut-corner watch with no shock protection on the balance jewels.  Not only that but, because of the unbalanced mower blade and general crappy state of the machine, the vibration was actually blurring the watch with about a 1/8 inch amplitude! I just had to do the calcs - and here are the results . .

Machinery Vibration and the Strength of Materials can both get pretty complicated, especially if you don't know the steel alloy used to make a balance staff, so I simplified the problem and assumed that any breakage would be to a balance staff pivot by a shearing force, i.e. applied at right angles to to the staff axis (centerline). Then I assumed that the pivots were good fits in the jewels and that the oil would cushion any tendency for the staff to "rattle" under vibration.  I also assumed that the watch itself being moving in a sinusoidal manner which eased the calculation a lot.  The mower runs at about 600 rpm which equals a vibration frequency of 10 Hz.  The first job was to calculate the peak force on the balance . .

For that, it was necessary to weigh the balance.  Presenting it to the 0-500g kitchen scales proved to be a waste of time, as one might expect!  The needle didn't even budge.  Fortunately, I still had the beam-balance scales that I use for re-loading gun cartridges.  The balance weighed in at 1.3 grains (there are 7000 grains to 1 lb).  Next I measured the balance pivot diameter which was 0.09mm or 90um.

Now, if we knew the peak acceleration, we could calculate the force on the pivots.  Fortunately, that is a common enough calculation in the world of machinery protection and, these days, there are calculators like this available on the 'net.  Using that calculator and entering 10Hz and 3mm, the result was 0.6 G's.  Didn't seem a lot but, just to be sure, the next step was to calculate the stress on the pivots.

As a worst case, I assumed that the watch was vertical.  That way, it is necessary to add 1 G (the constant force of gravity) to the acceleration figure obtained previously, which gives a total acceleration of 1.6 G's. Then, the formula for Stress is simply Stress = Force/Area.  The force is simply 1.6 x the weight (in Newtons).  The balance weight of 1.3 grains converts to 826uN (micro-newtons), and so the force is 826uN x 1.6 = 1.322mN (milli-Newtons).  (The use of Newtons in metric engineering calculations is commonly done to distinguish between force and mass.)  With a pivot diameter of only 0.09mm, the area will be very small.  (Small areas give high stresses - consider the case of the fat lady tottering along on stiletto heels!).  However,we will be doubling it because the force is assumed to be shared equally between the two pivots.  The pivot cross-sectional area (from πD2/4) came out to 6.362nm2, twice that being 12.72nm2.  Therefore, the Stress is 1.322mN/12.72nm2 = 104 kPa or 15 psi.

15 psi doesn't sound much to me.  To make any judgement though, we need to know what level of Stress steel can withstand.  As stated above, it's not easy to find an exact value beyond which a pivot would suddenly snap.  However, a lot of Googling suggested that somewhere around 200,000 kPa (Shear Yield Stress) would be a reasonable guess which is 29,000 psi.  From that, it's obvious that you can mow the grass with a lawnmower way worse than mine while wearing even the most delicate wristwatch from your collection.

cheers,

xpatUSA

Monday, November 5, 2007

Some ice in your watch, Sir?

Somebody said on a popular watch forum:
I've heard the best way to keep a watch for a long time - especially allowing the lubricant's condition - is to pack it in a vacuum [bag] and store it in a freezer (-18 degrees C).

Myself, I think it's pretty good way to mess up a watch . .
1) Take an expensive watch at room temperature 20 C and a not unreasonable 60% relative humidity (RH) inside the watch.
2) Place it in the freezer (baggie or not, makes little difference). As the temperature inside the watch falls, the relative humdity increases. Condensation starts at +12 C (the dew point for 60% RH) and continues down to O C when it will freeze. However, condensation will still continue to occur as the temperature falls, building up as more ice until the internal temperature stabilizes at -18 C or whatever. See here for proof.
3) The watch will have stopped by this point because the oil will be too viscous.
4) Now take out the watch: as your fine timepiece warms up, the ice melts and the water will probably emulsify the oil rendering it essentially useless and bringing forward your next service date to tomorrow.

I do keep my watches in the kitchen but certainly not in the freezer, nor even the fridge for that matter!

xpatUSA