This is second of two 100+ year old Elgin’s we serviced this week for our customers, this one from 1883. It was owned by the great grandfather of our customer and then to their father. They will give the watch to their elderly father, now running again after many decades, as a surprise gift. As shown in the pictures, the mainspring barrel in this watch was damaged due to a past watchmaker using a mainspring without a brace (a protruding notch) designed to hold the mainspring in the barrel along with the barrel hook. The hook was not designed to solely accept all of the mainspring force and it failed. During servicing, we replaced the mainspring barrel and mainspring with correct ones from the same era and the watch is running well again.
