I am doing a tear down and mainspring replacement.
It is an Elgin Nat’l Watch Company 7jewel 18s with 1426708 on the serial number.

I am doing my visualization regarding the curl direction and the click gear acting on the arber.
I believe the set up will be correct.

I do not have any of the gear train, pinion or any thing but the center wheel and the top plate is in position to steady it, while I watch the barrel gear do it’s thing.

So I give it a bit of a winding by hand with the stem tool.

This is my dilemma, the spring is torqued and the click gear holds the wind, Ah success. The barrel MUST BE HELD from spinning by my finges otherwise the arber AND barrel would spin in the direction of the torgue on it.

The spring is held by the click gear, so WHAT THE HECK exists in a fully assembled gear train, all things being fragile and the pallet goes on banking and using up the power one bank at a time.

WHAT HOLDS THE BARREL FROM SPINNING FROM THE TORQUE OF THE MAINSPRING in the watch works, that is evident here as I wind it and must hold it ,and doing the job manually.

When the watch is ready and assembled I know something has to take that force and handle the torque?

Hi James ! The mainspring barrel applies it's power to the center wheel , carried to the third and fourth wheels to the escape wheel , now without the pallet fork it would just unwind in a dramatic fashion ! the power from the mainspring goes through the train out the fork and gives just enough of a nudge to the roller jewel on the balance to start the motion , as the balance comes back around it trips the pallet fork and 1 click of the escape wheel and it's off and running . I think I have it right

Hi James,

Glad to see your interest in the mechanical side of the escapement function. I would advise you before doing anymore tear-down and repair work on these marvels it will pay you to do a bit of reading first.

I say this as you should probably not be pulling them apart without a basic knowledge of function, as this question clearly shows.

Please do not takes this as a slight, as it is not meant to be so, but just a highlighting of the need to have basic understanding first as it will save you in the end a lot of time and money

I am just amazed as I have flicked pallet forks with a pin and watched it jump across, then like a simple test, one not performing as that is indications of a trouble.

With this being taken completely down I was reverse engineering and figured, but not positive the escape wheel locking and unlocking MUST be the balancing factor. The amazment is the tinyist parts are responsible for that much work!

While having a balance bridge off, I will regularly check if the watch is in beat. Mainly because some watches can come with someone’s incorrect finishing touches, after a staff or hair spring redo.

LOL today I was lucky. From now on I will use a plastic bag when removing a mainspring from that barrel which took off. Lucky because it ricocheted off a box and landed where I wasn’t looking, I thought the worst. Being hidden in no where land.

Hi James , I can relate to the mainspring flying ! having worked on small engines I am no stranger to them , but the slightest misstep and look out ! On a seperate note about Bila's suggestion I rec chicago watch school cousere's here is a link;

https://rmccurdy.com/scripts/d...of%20Watchmaking.pdf

Wow. ThankYou for the link. The 719 pages went right into my pdf reader on ipad.
I can search for words and find Table of Contents.
In this ‘book’ there is one for every Lesson. Very neat!