This post is a cautionary note for any of you who work on your own watches.

I took in a balance staff repair and COA of a late model 9, Gr 167, s/n5351845 Illinois watch and was amazed to find that both sides of the Balance wheel pivots had press jewels!

Machining mounted jewels to "press fit" is about twice as demanding than kissing off a jewel body to get a slip fit. Also, remember that these paired press fit jewels still need to be pressed out, cleaned and re-installed very carefully for a proper COA.

Re-Staffing this watch proved to be a more time consuming project because two of the PRESS Jewels were blown out and had to be replaced, requiring re-machining mounted jewels of the correct hole size and thiskness to "press-fit" into the original host Jewel cavities.

This particular watch had not only a broken staff, but the last service person attempted to hold on the hairspring with epoxy which was smeared all over the balance wheel and into the three innermost spring traces themselves which would certainly have caused the watch to run very very fast, if at all. I got it running, but cannot say it will ever be "perfect" again.

The lesson was clear though, later production Illinois were more frugally built to the detriment of their servicability.

You see balance jewels like that on late model Hamilton-made watches too, like 992B's, 950B's and 999B's.

Ed unlike the later Hamiltons which had pressed in Pivot Jewels that were still held in with screwed in cap jewel plates which also secured the regulator arm, this guy has BOTH cap AND pivot jewels pressed in and bottomed out at an inner step at the top of the Jewel bore. The highest serial number 992B known (below) still has a screwed on cap jewel mount.