I have a question for the Illinois experts.I have an 18S open-face 17jewel Bunn, SN 1836518.Mine is adjusted to 5 positions.I notice some of the ones posted here are exactly the same, but are 6 positions.Some of those 6 pos. ones are below, and above my serial number.My question is, why would they keep changing,in and out of different runs, between 5 or 6 positions?Could it be they had unfinished movements marked both ways, waiting for orders?I've seen in the price guides, the 6 position ones are worth more, maybe they aren't as common? Thanks, Ted.

My understanding is the difference between 5 and 6 position adjustments were only the slightly higher testing time spent on each watch. The "6Th position" was in fact a bit overdone as each "pair" of vertical positions (Pendant Up-Down and Pendant Right-Left") were generally interactive; i.e. if one of the pair was off, the opposite tended to be equally off in the opposite direction!

That said, I have not the faintest idea why ANY of the watches were segregated as soon as Illinois started making some with 6 positon adjustments.

The 6th position [ standing on its head ] was indeed the big dog.

What David says is correct, as one took away from the other and added to the other. We all know that the more finely tuned anything is the more time it takes and the more expensive it becomes as time is money [pun intended]

It was a fine balancing act to adjust a watch to run in 6 positions and the more positions the more compounded it becomes.

My only answer would be from a manufacturing standpoint in the finishing room and the straw boss. Perhaps he could have a little leeway in his TP figures if he threw in a few more 5 positions when needed to up his totals

Since it will all be a guess, that's my best I can give

regards,
bb

I agree with the other two comments since even if there was no adjustments made to move the 6th position in you still had to spend the time and effort to check it.

You also see this same type of 5pos or 6 pos happen with the later Elgin grade 506. Elgin might have been tweaking their timing methods because the first 6 runs of the grade 506 were pulls (100 each) from 6 runs of the grade 478.

In the case of the grade 506 you will see adj5p or adj6p in the runs with no rhyme or reason to how they were distributed. I have two 506s and both are adj6p but you can see that the 6 is an overstamp of a 5.

What Illinois and later Elgin might have done is timed the watches in 5 positions and checked the 6th position, if the watch passed the 6 position it was marked adj6p, if it passed 5 positions and failed the 6th positions then it may have been marked adj5p.

If that was the case then how they occured in the runs would be purely random. Even being marked adj5p certainly would not hurt it being accepted into service since I can't recall any RR standards that required a watch to be adjusted to 6 positions.

Which makes one smile when you consider Elgin marked their later 571's as having 8 and 9 adjustments.

Regard! Mark

Thanks guys, all your answers make sense.I guess the 6th position most likely was Illinois' way of trying to one-up the competition.Since a watch would never run in that position,it was a waste of time and effort to bother with position 6 anyway.Kind of like going with 23 or more jewels, no real value but it sounded impressive!Thanks again, Ted.

Well Elgin made all of the 494's adjusted to 6 positions but the 506 was hit or miss, they were marked either 5 or 6 positions. Then after the 494/506 the 590/540 were just adjusted to 5 positions until the 571 ended being marked 9 adjustments. It appears that Elgin gave up on trying to offer 21/23j RR watches with the 6th position tested and marked until the later 571 came along.

Thanks Claude...Ever wonder why Hamilton kept up with the 6th position on 992B's?And for that matter why Elgin came up with "9 adjustments", instead of 6 positions, maybe they thought that would sound more impressive for advertising purposes?