This poor Waltham pocket watch has seen better days … The glass is cracked and removed, and the hour hand has broken off.

The watch is from Constantine’s collection.

It ticks, but some coils of the hairspring stick together, so I’m not expecting miracles.

The watch is in a nice silver case which is decorated.

A chunky watch indeed.

The movement is protected by a second lid that has a hole for the winding key.

Nicely decorated balance cock.

Two windings of the hairspring stick together.

The bottom plate with hour wheel and minute wheel. There is no setting mechanism – the square on the cannon pinion is used to set the watch using the winding key.

The back of the enameled dial. The sub dial for the second hand is laid into the main dial and cemented in. Some of that cement has come loose and is now inside the movement.

The balance cock, balance, hairspring and hairspring cock.

Barrel bridge and barrel. Quite a bit of oxidization.

Top plate with pallet fork.

The pallet fork under the microscope.

Centre wheel with quite a bit of dirt.

The wheel train – and quite a bit of dirt.

For some odd reason, somebody pushed the pin that holds the movement in place in, so now the movement turns freely in the case. This did a bit of damage to the plate.

Under the microscope.

The crown is for decoration only, as the watch is wound and set with a winding key.

The movement looks like it is original as the serial number 536286 is stamped on all bridges and cocks throughout the movement. I just learned this last night from Owen Gilchrist, who gave a talk at the Cheltenham branch of the BHI. Apparently, Waltham stamped all the parts of their movements, and it is thus possible to tell if a movement is made up of several “donor” movements or original.

Time to do some cleaning.

The story continues here…