As is often the case with the older, 14,400 beats per hour, movements, my timing machine (not the best) had trouble locking in. I couldn't use it to see if the rate is in the ballpark. This means to see what’s going on I had to put the hands and dial on. That’s extra effort, aligning the hands, with these key-set watches. The minute hand has a square hole. The arbor has to align correctly when you put the hands on. Usually you just have to align the hands only.
Anyway after getting the hands on and running for an hour, sure enough, the cannon pinion was slipping. Bad news… There is, technically, no way to tighten the cannon pinion on one of these. The correct procedure is to replace it with a new one. So I’ll just pop on down to the telegraph office and wire the factory. I should be able to get the new part by the first train in April.
Meanwhile, I tried some other approaches.
Notice close up, you can tell these dials were all hand painted. Wish I could do that…
