Newsome dial replacement.

Replacing a dial with one from a different type of watch is something I have managed to avoid doing in the last five years but this rare size 10, 17 jewel watch by Newsome of Coventry has been waiting for a replacement dial for a couple of years with nothing even close coming along so I decided to bite the bullet and modify a dial.

This posting shows how it should be done, and that is not by clipping off the fixing pins and using Blue-Tac or glue to fix the dial to the movement, a technique I see used fairly frequently on watches I buy in.

The first thing is to find a dial from the right period that is of the right size with the hole for the second hand in the right place. You then need some replacement dial feet.

Normally these can now be glued or soldered to the face but on this movement the dial is retained with pins rather than clamped in with screws, so the feet first have to be drilled with a 0.5mm drill held in a pin chuck. A fiddly job as the pins are round.

The pins are then positioned in the movement with "springy" dial washers or similar underneath to get the flat end of the pin high enough to contact the dial, the newly drilled securing holes have to be lined up so that the brass pins can be inserted  when the movement is finally assembled.

 

A thick glue such as the resign based Araldite or Loctite Hysol is then put on the feet plates and the face carefully positioned so that the centre hole is in the centre and the seconds hand hole is correctly aligned.

 

And there we have it, a hundred and two year old watch has a new lease of life.

June market update

LWC half Hunter, 1910

Its a funny old game. A severe shortage of English watches for months, then an avalanche of them, but almost all by the Lancashire Watch Company with 6 completed and a couple more that did not make it.


It was much the same with Swiss watches with 7 signed by J.W. Benson of which 6 were by Tavannes and another Tavannes for Russells Ltd. So from 22 watches completed in the last 5 weeks or so 13 were either by Tavannes or the LWC, of course  Benson is a brand I specialise in and so buy more aggressively but even so  the proportions are odd.

P & A Guye, 13J, London 1892

It was much the same with Rolled gold chains, very few since November then a bunch of them so that there is finally some stock at Brackley and on the web with one or two more to follow shortly.

The month closed out with a couple of nice English watches not by the LWC and I have some more coming in that hopefully will appear on the web site in a week or so.



A rare Beesley Silver Hunter, 1883, with an interesting engraving and repair.

A 17 Jewel Pinset Hunter by Beesely
for J.W. Carter. English Silver, 1883.

This watch is signed by J.W. Carter of London but under the dial it is signed "R.B" and is almost certainly by one of the Beesley family. The trade list compiled by Coventry Watch Museum shows Beesleys being active from 1850 until at least 1909 as variously movement makers, watch makers, jewellers (in this context craftsman who put the jewels in watches), escapement makers and gilders.

There are a couple of interesting features, an old repair and the case engraving with love symbolism.