More About Creative Fixes

Long ago, although it seems counter-intuitive, factory parts for watches were often difficult to obtain and very frequently more expensive than hand-made replacements, and other...  solutions.  Today we see all sorts of interesting repairs in vintage watches, done long, long ago.  Here's something I found in a watch just today.


What we see here is a mainspring barrel from a 16 size Elgin pocketwatch.  The cap and the arbor have been removed.  What do we have?  There's a neatly folded wad of watch paper (a type of low-lint tissue paper) tucked in there just at the inside end of the mainspring where the spring hooks to the arbor.

Well this is a new one on me...

It appears that the mainspring is worn out and the watchmaker made a little paper pad to put in there that will press the end of the spring against the center so it would not relax and come unhooked.  Ha!  I think I'll replace the spring...

2 comments:

kevin said...

Quite a inventive repair, not a bodge, perhaps that was the skill level of this repair person.
Atleast it worked.And i have never seen that before either.

GatorDude said...

That is certainly a field expedient repair. It's interesting to see what goes on inside some of those vintage watch cases!

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