hi all
a friend of mine said his grandfather an old farmer would clean his pocketwatch by spraying carbarauter cleaner in the movement then use sewing machine oil to lubricate it with.
in theory this sounds good but will it tear up a pocketwatch movement or the dial?

If he did that very many times to that watch I would suggest when it finally stopped for good, he drill a hole all the way across from the winding stem out the bottom of the other side, stick a steel wire through it and mount it to the input end of his carburetor barrel to use as a Manual choke, as that would be all it would be good for.
Even a Westclox "dollar" watch would not survive that for long.
Seriously the critical Jewels for regulating the timing and operation of the watch are assembled with Shellac, and tough as it is, I doubt that it would enjoy a Carburetor cleaner "soak".

thanks david
when my buddy told me about that method of watch cleaning i thought id better run it by the club and see what everybody thought. i never even considered the shellac on the jewells and no if anyone is wondering i have not tried to clean my watch like this

i think you would have a hard time getting rid of the smell of the carb cleaner to.have you ever smelled that stuff?
james

I too wondered about the smell as if the resulting damage was not enough. But his watch probably starts easier and gets better mileage!

Don

This topic begs the question-what is the best watch oil(s) available? In this age of synthetics, particularly moly and ptfe additives, one would think there must be oils that would reduce friction and wear to nearly nil. Although I could imagine such radical change would require re-timing. What say the forum?

P.S. Thanks to David for his blueprint for a "Carb Fob".