I recently serviced this unusual and rare ~ 120 year old 18S Elgin B. W. Raymond pocket watch with power reserve up/down indicator for a ClockSavant customer. It has a serial number of 12345678, a number Elgin assigned to watches for internal-use. The watch was beautifully mounted in a miniature mantel clock setting. I believe Elgin made this mantel design and I’ve never seen another one like it. It has been in the customer’s family for as long as they can remember. The watch had been wound and kept running every day, according to the owner, for decades. These old American pocket watches were workhorses but running them this way will badly bite you eventually. The watch had stopped working and suffered significant damage. As shown in the pictures (see felt tip pen circle in picture and video), an arbor sheered-off for a dial-side wheel. the old arbor was still stuck inside the wheel. This arbor was originally milled into the sub-plate. This sub-plate is very thin, only .36mm, making the repair more difficult. A new arbor must be made and then very well secured, without the use of any kind of glue, into very thin brass plate of .36mm. There was no easy way to find “center” for the old arbor— traditional approaches (such as depthing) won’t easily work here. In the end, I had to eyeball the center of the new arbor to within hundredths of a millimeter and position the plate, on the lathe, to that position and precisely drill it. You get one chance to drill it— if you are off-center, the movement likely cannot be saved. Fortunately, the new hole was centered and after trialing various approaches, a new arbor was successfully secured. Other issues in the watch included a badly damaged center jewel setting. This watch also features a motor barrel (mainspring.) Once servicing was completed, the watch is now running to within a fraction of a second a day. These watches were made for accuracy and were an amazing feat for the era.
