Job Number 180057, Part 1

This watch is an Aurora Watch Company 18 size, 15 jewel movement, made about 1885.

First a few "before" images.

The first thing of note is how big, clunky and unfinished things are. This is typical of the earlier American watches. Making things with more machinery, and less hand work was new at the time. Parts tend to be well designed functionally, but rather crude, especially if you've been looking at Elgins, Hamiltons and like from later years.

A spring popped out of place when I removed the clamp over the ratchet. It almost looks like a piece of old mainspring some repairer hand formed as a kludge. It's not, this is a factory part.

It seems like many parts in the early American pieces were actually handmade. And their tools and machinery were all rather crude. All this must have improved extremely rapidly at the very end of the 19th century. It must have been a great time to be a mechanic.

 Huge bezels...

 Pretty dirty...

The serial number is stamped on a lot of the parts.

The parts above that hold the winding arbor go here. At first I thought one of the four screws was missing. Nope, it's broken off. Fortunately it was easy to get out and I found a suitable replacement.

Old style tangential, English lever escapement...

Notice this partial-round cut out in the ratchet clamp that fits the little curve in the end of that ugly setting lever spring, right at the edge of the plate.

Here's the other end of that spring.

It took me awhile to get this assembled with the springs in the right place.  Not easy...

Again, even just a few years later we see watches with a much more refined design.

My current issue with this watch is that the bevel pinion, part of the winding arbor, and the main wheel (the largest gear shown in this image) do not engage well for winding. The teeth on the parts don't look all that worn. There's just too much play in the main wheel, up and down. Everything is just sloppy.

I am not yet sure what to do. If I trim the underside of the washer a little so the screw goes down further, and holds everything tighter, that might work, But go too tight and it won't move.

I'm not getting as much done today as I usually do. I am going ahead and post this just so I have something to show for the morning. A couple days ago I was stung on the hand buy a bee (!) while working on our outdoor aviary. My right hand is a balloon at the moment, adding to the challenge of this watch project!