Silver-Lined Blackout Bulb Designed

From The American Horologist and Jeweler magazine, February, 1942

 Silver-Lined Blackout Bulb Designed

Designed for blackout lighting in air raids, the new Wabash Blackout bulb just announced by the Wabash Appliance Corporation, Brooklyn, N. Y., provides downlighting in a soft beam of blue light that is safe for indoor visibility during blackouts. The bulb is lined inside with a pure silver reflector lining that hides all filament glare and projects the light down·ward. Light leaks are prevented by a black silicate coating that covers the bulb up to the extreme lighting end which is a deep blue. The new bulb consumes 25 watts and will list at 45c. 

Waltham Grade 625, 1908 model.

This balance wheel is not only seriously dirty but is has, not too long ago, been slathered in some sort of ordinary oil. In fact the whole movement was nearly dripping with it. That doesn't work. And it's a pain to get clean.

This Waltham has the "keyless works", the winding/setting mechanism, that a lot of Walthams have called a shipper. It has to be assembled with care to avoid losing the spring.

In this image, the round clamp holding the shipper is in place.

Watch Conversion

Here's a nice article about the increasingly popular conversion of antique pocketwatch movements to wristatches.

http://www.wbur.org/2016/02/22/startup-waltham-watchmaking

Two things...

First, wristwatches and vintage pocketwatches are different in several ways. It's important to know what you are getting into before buying something like this.

Second, it seems like most of the people doing this don't know much about the repair and service of vintage watches.

Elgin Grade 320

This is a great example of Elgin's grade 320. It is a 0 size, 7 jewel movement made about 1905. 

These movements are found cased as both pocketwatches and early wristwatches.

This watch's serial number begins with "111", and the prefix on the underside of the balance cock looks more like three lines.

These hand done inlay dials are fragile and often cracked, mostly due to over tightened dial foot screws. This one is in excellent shape!

Elgin Grade 94

Here is a nice example of Elgin's grade 94, 6 size, 11 jewels, made about 1890. 

New Arrivals

Two Elgins new in the queue...

Elgin Grade 96, Before Images

I took some "before" images of this one while disassembling it. This condition is pretty typical of a watch that has not been serviced in awhile.

You can see the old oil, gummed up with grid and lint. Often they look like this and actually run - which is really bad for them. This one did not run, but it looked mechanically OK.

In this image, we can see the lever setting mechanism.

I didn't find anything broken. There's a small amount of rust on the lever setting parts, but it was not bad and came right off.

The watch is Elgin's grade 96. It is an 18 size movement, 7 jewels, made about 1886.