Does anyone know of a good reference for American pocket and wrist watch hand sizes? This would be for Elgin, Hamilton, Illinois, Rockford, Seth Thomas, South Bend, Waltham, Howard, Hampden, etc. I'm looking for hour and minute hand hole dimensions (and hand lengths, if available) for each size of watch from wrist watch sizes up to 18s.

The reason is that I have so many hands, but I'm not sure what watches they will fit. I've painstakingly sorted them and need some dimensions to find out which company and size they are for.

Thanks,

John III

The Hole sizes are quite different across the spectrum.

What I do is use a hand gauge to sort the hands by hole size and type (hour or Minute.
Then (if at all possible) when you need to replace a hand, gauge the old "hub", pick out of your siorted hand a hand you can "eyeball" to fit the radius limit where the Minute hand has to reach into the minutes chapter, and for the hour hand a decent "reach" from the center to a radius closer to the minutes chapter than half way from the center.
A hand gauge is for sale on eBay right now at;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintag...&hash=item564a04ca3e

Thanks David.

I guess that works well from a repair perspective, and that is what got me started on this topic - trying to find a matched set of blue hands for a Hamilton 974 movement and dial with no hands. Once I started digging through my Hamilton parts inventory, I found all kinds of hands but it wasn't clear what they were for. I also have an inventory of what I was told were Illinois hands and was trying to see if some of those blue hands would work.

What I discovered is that I have way more hands that I will ever use and would like to sell some of them here or on ebay. At $10 per set, this could be lucrative and help out fellow collectors. So my question is coming at it more from a seller of hands perspective.

How many of us have a "junk drawer" of watch hands that they inherited or purchased as part of a watchmaker's estate? Even among my Hamilton parts, there are switched out parts, so I'm not sure if what is in the bottle is what is supposed to be there. Until someone puts together a comprehensive list of manufacturer's specifications for watch hands, then this material will stay mostly junk and unusable.