This feels strait out of Outer Limits. I have this Hampden 3-Ball (17j railroad watch from 1899) which I planned to sell, so I carry it for a day and it stops. Only problem is I have already listed it on ebay. I never really got a chance to even time it. So I tear it down and find nothing wrong (nothing jumped out and said: help me), so I clean and oil this beauty. While timing it on the bench I see good balance action but she is minus almost 15 minutes after only 12 hours. I set the second hand with another watch sitting next to it (a real accurate Burlington) and guess what the second hand is keeping perfect time (less than 2 seconds in 12 hours). How can the second hand be dead on and the watch be off almost 30 minutes in a day? After discussion I will give the answer which drove me crazy, because the watch is now sold and it is still in the outer limits after all the usual answers did not work. mike paynter
PS: I did not solve the riddle, Ed Thouvenin took me down the yellow brick road and the 3-Ball found its way home with accurate time.

Sounds like a loose cannon pinion to me.
Brian C.

That was my first guess, tight and no problems with the hour or minute wheels. Good try, think deeper. mike paynter

Mike,

Sounds like everything is fine at least to the 4th wheel and possibly the 3rd wheel. Did you find an incorrect center wheel with too many teeth or something else having to do with the train gear ratios?

John : your in the right church wrong pew. By the way the timing machine said the watch was keeping perfect time! mike paynter

I had an illinois that did the same thing. It needed a couple dial washers to hold the minute wheel down.


Charlie

Slow down , take the train. Is this cryptic or what. Should we have 14,400 guesses, you should get it.

Should we take the SLOW TRAIN?

Woo Woo : What did hampden do. It went from Slow train to Fast Train, and what did they do?

Lindell: come on pull out your Hampden book. What different in the train? Only one thing in the wheels, you should get this by fall!

Ok: here's the full story. Ed took apart the watch and told me to count the teeth on the 4th wheel. 80 just like it was supposed to be. He then said count the leaves, and I said what. I am bad on terminolgy and did not know that the little teeth on the wheel which connect with the 3rd wheel are called leaves. And here is the problem. Some former watch guy replaced the 4th wheel and did not check the leaves on the two wheels. The older slow train had 8 leaves and the newer fast train had 10 leaves. Well how come it did not bind up. Well it did on occasion, and thats why I cleaned the watch. But the 8 leaf wheel had a thinner pinion for the second hand and allowed it to slightly wobble in the jewel and not bind up all the time. All the other wheels were correct. The watch now sits on my bench with the second hand still correct and now the hour and minute hands as well.

Even though I know NOTHING about fixing watches, I just LOVE posts like this one.

You get to watch everyone try to figure it out, and you get to learn about watches in a really new, and different way.

Great job.

I may not know watch repair, but I sure know how to SAVE ANSWERS TO WATCH MYSTERIES.