Last month I showed what I thought was a 19 jewel watch that was jeweled down to 15 by the manufacturer inserting 2 pr. brass "jewels" in the usual screwed in mounts. The only meaningful reply from 185'rs was the "Private label customer was pretty High Class'. To that I have no comment. It seemed to me that the vintage of that watch came at a time when jewels were just being transitioned frolm SW to US makers and the availabilty was rather limited. NOW, I have a new 7 - 15 "Jeweled UP" piece WITH mean time screws too, ALL the S/N's match, and it is ACCURATE! Looks almost brand new for a 1915 production date. Any Comments?

BTW Happy and Safe Thanksgiving to all that celebrate that event.

David,
Two questions. If one is going to spend the time and money to jewel a watch in this fashion why not do the center wheel as well? I'm curious to know just what kind of caculations are necessary to select a mainspring of the proper strength to drive a re-jeweled movement like this?Aside from the questions it is a very interesting project,thanks for showing it. John

Some very good questions. Firstly, jeweling the center wheel especially with the abuse watches get "nowadays" is only inviting a broken jewel. The "modern" lubricants beginning with the era of Elgin's 56b stuff pretty well obviates the need for jeweling the center wheel anyway, except to "show off the fancy jewels".
I am not completely shure how to answer the mainspring question, so I will leave that to the "experts".
As one of the jewels added to this piece sports "old screw marks" out of register to it's present assembly screw, and as I know for a fact that Waltham employees did "home reman's" as it was a regular black market around Boston to get a "good Waltham" from their "dealer's".(My father spoke of that a few times as he did that to buy time-pieces for his various 1920's and 30's "botanical expeditions".) I would guess that this was an after-factory "home job" by an Elgin employee, or a very skilled jeweler who had a "lot of time on his hands". (pun intended)

David, Your watch SN is listed on the Elgin site at a grade 293, 7J. So, it did leave the factory as a 7J. Could this work have been a watchmaker school project for a student to complete for graduation?

Tom

That is definetly another good possibility, the necessary drilling, tapping and fitting would be certainly "schoolworthy, and the NOS condition of this piece would give evidence the "student" kept it out of circulation. Sort of like my First "School" Elgin that I would NEVER sell, even though that was only a clean and repair job, it was my first. Another noteworthy detail of this piece is the balance wheel was evidently upgraded too. Overall, it still is under 1.5 ms beat error and "counts" on my mumford at <18,002 - >17,998 bph. in the three basic positions.