Dawson "Railway Lever"

For watch anoraks this is a an interesting watch.

 

 

Although branded the “English Railway Lever” don’t confuse it with American Railroad watches, the British railways had signalling and token systems to prevent train collisions and did not rely on timekeeping to prevent collisions as the American railroads did. This is a fairly basic 7 jewelled size 18 movement albeit one that was very well made and with Geneva stop gear to control mainspring pressure. And being in an expensive case it was probably never intended for use on the railways except perhaps by station masters and management. .

Apart from the rocking bar winding and setting mechanism, the movement could be a very early going barrel movement having a bridge for the 3^nd and 4^th wheels, as was normal for Fusee movements[i] from the 19^th century and which was retained in early going barrel movement allowing the same trains to be used for both forms. The lower balance jewel securing mechanism of a brass wedge is that used in the 17^th and early 18^th century watches.

But this movement was made in 1911.

It is signed by Dawson a Liverpool based watchmaker but marked “London”, the watch was however almost certainly made in Coventry, and probably by one of the last remaining small makers, Jos H Bird who’s initials are on under the dial.

The very heavy case has Chester hallmarks and is probably by Charles Harris of Coventry.

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[i] The bridge was required on a Fusee to help fit the chain which was done with the 3^rd wheel out of the watch which could then be replaced by removing the bridge.

Thoughts on the failure of the Lancashire Watch Company

A Size 14, model 116, "Excellent" grade with the
addition of 2 pairs of jewels and signed for the retailer.

The Lancashire Watch Company failed in 1906 (although it continued trading in administration until 1910), many have blamed the failure of the skilled workers (many of who would have had to sell or wind up their small business after the formation of the LWC) to embrace new ways of working, Cutmore [1] argues that given early success this in unlikely and that poor marketing, bad forecasting, unwanted products and a plethora of designs & products and by implication pricing were to blame. Looking at the trade catalogues from 1898 [2]  and later I would go with the later point.

The three-quarter plate keyless watch is a good example:

Movements:

In 1898 the three-quarter plate keyless was available in two forms, both were pin set with the crown connected to the movement through bevel gears in the case and on the movement.





A Full plate LWC movement showing
the hinge and sprung loaded catch
required for a swing out movement.

#104: a swing out movement with the hinge integrated with the face plate and a catch opposite to secure it in the case. This model is rare and I have never one complete with its case.

#116: what became the more familiar type retained in the case by two screws with the addition of a locating pin to stop the movement turning in the case through the action of the bevel winding gear. This was not yet the “Standard” watch case.
 

An unusual English Key Set Watch, 1900.

This post was in error, the watch turned out to be an early American watch by Elgan in a very rare case made by Dennison in his first year of operation as a case maker. The full story is in this subsequent post.

A hint for Chronograph Owners.

The arrival of this Chronograph now restored reminded me that some chronograph users are abusing their watches. DO NOT leave the watch for extended periods wound but stopped with the "top" button as this will prematurely age the mainspring.

Stopping it before carrying in luggage or sending it through the post is however probably a good idea as it may help protect the balance.

The Coventry made size 22 movement has 13 jewels and Geneva Gear and is an early one from 1879. The Case is by WG Hammond of Coventry.

Coventry made "Own Label" watches

Rotherham 19J 1903 keyless branded
"Time O Day"
by Russell of Liverpool

After an exchange of Facebook messages and posts with the Coventry Watch Museum I have been doing an analysis of the watches I have handed recently to see how many Coventry watches were signed by a third party. I looked at three of the large Coventry makers - Rotherham, Errington / Williamson and Wm Ehrhardt  who although based in Birmingham is normally considered to be part of the Coventry trade.

The analysis will understate the number signed by third parties because although many are signed on the movement and/or dial many are signed only on the dial and as explained in my blog post "Why the blank faces? some of these will have been done using a fragile transfer print process which over time can be lost.

 This is what I came up with:

	Total #	3rd party signed
Rotherham	70	69%
Errington	44	73%
Ehrhardt	24	63%

I suspect that the Ehrhardt percentage would have been at least as high as the others originally but they produced a cheaper watch which was more likely to have a transfer printed dial signature than a more expensive enamelled version, for this reason and the sheer numbers involved I have excluded from the Errington sample  the Williamson 1905, 1910 and other late model which were widely sold under other names.

It is also revealing that apart from J.W. Benson there are very few "repeaters" in the list with most of the names being small local companies, indicating that, as I expected, relabeling Rotherham and other Coventry made watches was a widespread practice.

Naughty Mr Ehrhardt.

This is a 1910 series by Wm Ehrhardt branded "The British Watch Co" one of their trading names after 1921. They come up very infrequently and this was the first one that required some work on the winding and setting mechanism and what did I find?

Ehrhardt. had ripped off the design of the shifting sleeve setting mechanism from the Waltham 1899/1908 models. They are in fact identical and to fix this watch I used a small piece part from a Waltham.

Not that it did them much good as they stopped manufacturing not long after this example was made whilst Waltham continued making pocket watches until just after WWII and wrist watches until 1957.

The Riddle of the Hands (with appologies to Erskine Childers)

Rotherham key wound and set
full plate watch, Coventry, 1903.

This post is prompted by another query as to why a watch with gold main hands has a blue second hand, Carruthers  may have been able to find an answer but I can't and nor can others I have asked.

Swiss watches with gold hands normally have all three gold whereas most English watches such as this Rotherham, which was made in the year that Riddle of the Sands was published, does not.

The same will be found on English cased Waltham watches as most found in the UK are. Plain, rather than filigree,  gold hands were I am told rare in America and do not appear in my copy of the Waltham parts catalogue, so it is likely that hands were sourced and fitted locally conforming to English practice, which fits with a common method of selling these watches as described in my post on the standard watch case.

I think it will remain one of life's little mysteries.

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.

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.

Size 12, 19J Rotherham.

English watches are still in very short supply but the few I am getting in are rather good.

This is another classic size 12, 19 Jewel Pin set Rotherham  and Sons of Coventry, it has a true English Lever escapement with a Breguet sprung cut compensating balance.

It is signed under the dial by Rotherham and on the movement:

Phillips
Maker to the Admiralty
4 Tinsbury Pavement LONDON



Geneva Stop Gear on a 19J Rotherham, 1902

Geneva Stop Gear.
Click on an image for a larger version.

In my last post on isochronism I mentioned the Geneva Stop Gear, the next watch I opened up for restoration was a very nice size 12, 19 jewel Rotherham from 1902 – the first I have had in for months – and it not only has Geneva gear but it is fully function rather than broken or removed to give a longer run time.

So, here is a picture of it (Top) and I will attempt to explain how it works.

The mainspring is in the barrel with the gear teeth on its top edge and that powers the watch via the centre wheel pinion, it rotates around the arbor (axel). One end of the mainspring it attached to the inside of the outer wall of the barrel and the other end is attached to the arbor. To allow the spring to be wound, the arbor has a longish extension on the other side that goes through the face plate and is pinned to one of the winding gears (the left most gear in the second picture).

The 12 Rotherham 19J Keyless, 1902.

On the other side of the barrel (shown) there is a collar fitted to a squared off section of the arbor which has a small “nib” protruding (at 5 o’clock to the centre in this picture). This nib engages the cut out in the Geneva gear. In this picture the spring has been pre tensioned just over one turn and is as it will be with the watch fully wound down, if you look at the piece of the gear clockwise from the nib you can see that it is locked against the collar having a convex profile so it cannot lose that pre-tension.


The segment anticlockwise however is concave as are the next 3 segments and when the watch is wound the “nib” moves anti-clockwise pushing the Genva gear a little clockwise and after one full circle it will engage in the next cut out, this cycle can be repeated three more times until the nib reaches the next convex section of the gear at which point it will be locked in a similar way to the position shown thus preventing the spring being wound further.

The arbor is prevented from turning backwards by the “click” or ratchet operating on the winding gear, bottom left of the pinned winding gear in the second picture.

As the watch runs the barrel rotates around the arbour until it comes back to the state shown in the picture and the watch will stop. But during those four revolutions the spring will not have the very weak power from a fully wound down spring, because of the pre-tension, and will not have the maximum power of a fully wound up spring because of the four turn limit.

One more method of making a watch more accurate but see also my post Does non-functional geneva gear matter?

Double Watch Frustration.

This recently restored watch bought together two very common frustrations in restoring old English watches.

The first is common to all types of watch, and it is people’s belief that drowning a watch in oil will get it working, even in this case when it had a broken main spring.

 

This movement was covered in a recently applied film of an oil far too heavy for use anywhere near a watch causing components to stick together and to my tools. The hairspring was drenched with most of the coils stuck together and could not possibly work.

 

The cleaning process took about three times as long as usual even with the help of an ultrasonic cleaner and some serious de-greasing agents. Fortunately it was successful and the movement is now running exceptionally well after getting a new mainspring and a lot of TLC. 

The second frustration is that I do not know who made it, a recurring problem with watches from the fragmented English industry. This 13J English Lever was made in Coventry in 1893 from a Prescott ebauché - a kit of the main parts of the watch. So all I can say is that if the serial number represents the number actually made it is by one of the smaller Coventry makers.

An "In Beat" Design by W. Ehrhardt.

W. Ehrhardt Full Plate Keyless. 1920

At first glance this is a fairly standard full plate keyless watch, albeit a very late one from 1920. However things  are rather different under the covers, instead of a normal balance cock this design has the balance cock mounted on a ring that fits into the top plate of the watch.

This design makes the watch rather more robust, slightly slimmer (although it is still considerably thicker than a three quarter plate) and makes it very easy to get the watch "in beat".

Being in beat means that the balance action is symmetrical swinging an equal distance in each direction and that the balance staff, impulse jewel and pallet arbour are in perfect alignment. If you think in terms of a long case clock the "tick" equals the "tock" and it has a steady rhythm.

This can normally be a tricky operation involving quite a lot of work and often much fiddling with the hairspring which always has some risk attached to it. With this design the impulse jewel can be lined up simply by rotating the balance cock to the correct position and locked there with the two screws that hold it to the movement.



Three views of the movement, left before fitting the balance cock, the lever pallet can just be seen in the "well" where the balance fits, centre is the balance cock and regulator in place and right with the balance assembly in place (click on the image for a larger view).

After initial adjustment this example was within beat to 0.14%,  better than my  modern Rolex which is still excellent at 0.45%.

Unfortunately it did little for Ehrhardt who was out of business shortly after, or for watch design as the full plate movement was already obsolete by the time this was made, replaced by the three-quarter and split plate movements.

Who really made the Benson “Bank” watch?

A horological who-done-it.

The history of J.W. Benson is a bit of a mystery partly because retailers, particularly those who also made their own movements frequently did not want to let on who was making their product, but primarily in this case because all of their records were destroyed by German bombing in 1942.

The accepted view, reported by Cutmore[i] and others, has been that Benson made the “Ludgate”, “Bank” and “Field” models in-house and bought in movements from the English trade, primarily from Rotherham and P & A Guye and from a number of Swiss makers.

However as Priestly[ii] reports a minority view suggests that the “Bank” was in fact made by P & A Guye.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the minority are correct, at least for early versions! Here are the main reasons why:

• Cutmore says that P & A Guye made for Benson but I have handled dozens of Benson signed English movements and I have identified almost all of them and none of those were made by Guye, most being made by Rotherham, principally their excellent 19 jewel ¾ plate.
• P & A Guye were a medium sized company by English standards but I have only come across 2 or 3 identifiable Guye movements from over 400 English movements examined. So where are they all?
• But I have, in the last couple of years, come across at least half a dozen movements in cases by John Woodman of Clerkenwell and all unsigned except by the retailer, that are identical to the “Bank” and on one occasion I put the top plate from a signed Bank onto one of these unidentified movement and it worked.

Cutmore speculates that Benson may have made for the trade but I now believe it was the other way about and that the “Bank” was made for Benson by P & A Guye who also sold the movement to small retailers to sell under their own name.

In a 1930s sale catalogue Benson claimed to be making the Bank in-house but the description does not match that of the early "Bank" so it is possible that as Guye moved out of watch production into related watch activity some time after 1905 Benson took over production, possibly with a revised model.

The Ludgate, Field and their derivatives I am sure were made by Benson.

Update Feb 2017: Two recent finds and subsequent analysis have enabled me to further tie down the relationship between Benson & Guye, explained in my post J.W. Benson and P & A Guye two London watchmakers, later effectively one?

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[i] Watches 1850 – 1980 M. Cutmore, David & Charles, 1989

 

[ii] Watch Case Makers of England, Philip Priestley, NAWCC Bulletin Supplement #20 Spring 1994

C.H. Errington for Rogers, pin set 15J Chronograph, 1902

Chronographs were also known as "Doctors watches" because the centre seconds hand made it easier to time a persons pulse.

 

This pin set Chronograph is by C.H. Errington of Coventry (...by then owned by Williamson) for G. R. Rogers. The 15 jewel movement has a true English Lever escapement with a Breguet sprung cut compensating balance. The movement, Case and Dial all carry the serial number.

If used as a stop watch the button (at 2 o'clock) stops the seconds hand but also stops the entire movement so the time has to be reset, not an entirely practical proposition.

Rotherham 19J 3/4 plate, 1907

A Yank, then a Swiss now one of Coventy's finest. A Rotherham 19J 3/4 plate keyless for J.J. Dadd & Sons of Hackney, 1907.