My first interest in Hamilton watches was piqued by pocket watches. I inherited by grandfather's railroad watch (apparently he worked on a railroad in his younger years). According to my mom, he was very proud of the watch, although he never talked with me about it. He was a pretty private guy, but I'm sure he'd be happy to know that I still have it.
There's something about the confidently loud ticking of an accurate pocket watch - like the closing segment of CBS's 60 Minutes news show. I first learned to work on watches by tinkering with pocket watches.
Pocket watches come in all sorts of varieties and you could spend a lot of time and money trying to find good examples of all of the models that Hamilton offered. Unlike other American brands of the era, Hamilton only produced high quality movements and up. The entry-level Hamilton movement is far superior to what other brands offered, although other brands offered high end movements too.
The basic metric to use to establish "quality" is the jewel count. The jewels are just that, rubies or sapphire stones used as the bearing surfaces inside the watch. A movement is considered "fully jeweled" at 15 jewels. From there you can start adding jewels but most of them will be cap jewels that cover the end surfaces of other jewels.
Other than some very early movements, the Hamilton line up started at 17 jewels. That meant that every wheel was supported by jeweled bearings. So that's the center wheel, third wheel, fourth wheel, escape wheel and balance wheel - accounting for 10 jewels (one on each end). The balance wheel has two cap jewels covering the balance staff pivots, bringing the count up to 12. The balance also has an impulse pin or jewel - so that's 13. The remaining four jewels are in the pallet fork and the jewels that support it... that's 17.
A 15 jewel movement will often drop the jewels at the center wheel. A 19 jewel movement will add cap jewels for the escape wheel. A 21 jewel movement adds cap jewels for the pallet fork. A 23 jewel movement will add jewels to support the barrel. Of course, that's generally what Hamilton did, other makers could do things differently.
As you can imagine, the more jewels added, the higher quality the movement. In addition, Hamilton would add other attributes to high jeweled movements - like the wheels could be solid gold! The quality of the machined damascening and plating could also be add-ons.
The sky is really the limit and a super high grade caliber like a 950 Railroad grade is truly a beauty to behold.
Eventually and unsurprisingly, I quickly realized Hamilton made a ton of wrist watches too - so my collecting interests rapidly evolved to watches I could wear and enjoy more often. After that, I went deep down the rabbit hole, as this blog will attest.
Anyway, I still have a soft place in my heart for pocket watches and I will take them on from time to time. I was recently asked to help with a watch that was an heirloom but not working.
Looking at it I was a little suspicious... does this dial look legit to you?
Hamilton offered all sorts of dials in varying degree of quality, but never anything "cheap". I'm not saying this dial looks cheap, it just looks like you'd expect to see real applied gold numerals, as opposed to gold leaf.
Once I had the watch in hand, I was able to date it and it turns out it's 100% legitimate (or close to it).
It's a 1940 Kane. Based on the catalog, I'd expect the hands to be blue spear style, instead of gold pointex, but maybe that was changed at some point.
Inside the case is a 17 jewel 917 movement. This caliber was introduced in 1935 and made for a LONG time, well into the 60's. The Kane was offered in 1935 as well and the catalog calls out the dial as a number E-5.
I know my project watch is from 1940 based on the movement serial number.
The case back has a little lip you can see protruding at about 1:00 in the photo below. I can slip my case knife in there and pop the cover off. The catalog states "without inside cap" as part of the description - that simply means there's no dust cover over the movement - just the case back. Other 917 cases often have a dust cover under the case back and the dust cover will often have a presentation, if it was given for Christmas or graduation, etc.
This cover shows some wear but it's in good shape and I can probably improve it with a little simichrome polish.
As expected, inside is a 17 jewel 917 movement. The next step up would be the 921, then then 923, and eventually there would be a 945 but in that case, the 45 doesn't indicate the number of jewels... for the other three movements it does.
This watch is not running for at least one obvious reason - the balance wobbles and that means the balance staff pivots are gone. The crack in the crystal could be a clue to what happened - this watch was probably dropped. That's the main reason I don't covert pocket watches to wrist watches any longer - they are not intended for the use and abuse that a wrist can deliver. They are much better suited to the protection offered by a vest pocket or that little pocket in your blue jeans, inside the right front pocket.
The inside of the case back is ornately engraved Hamilton Watch Co with a serial number unique to this case. That serial number is meaningless though, the movement serial number is used to date the watch.
The mainspring inside the barrel is old blue steel and likely has "set" into a coil and lost most of it's energy.
Yup, you can tell that I've seen this situation a few hundred times before.
A fresh Dynavar mainspring will provide a "lifetime" of service - as long as the watch doesn't get dropped again.
Everything is cleaned and dried. I had a donor movement with a good balance so with any luck I can use that. My stash of donor movements is almost depleted. I have found getting replacement movements has gotten to be very expensive. It's not unusual to see a loose 917 movement sell on eBay for well north of $150. I guess more people are into wrist watch conversions.
The first parts back on are the train wheels and once the bridges are in place, all of the wheels should spin freely. Then I can carefully install the pallet fork.
The pallet fork is in place and I've installed the winding and ratchet wheels. Now I can wind the watch and, with any luck, the balance will start ticking when I get it in place.
Success! The balance is spinning briskly and even my camera can't freeze it in time.
It's running a smidgeon slow and there is a little extraneous noise. I'll reclean the hairspring and that will clear that up.
A new crystal completes the restoration of the 86 year old Kane. This was a really fun and interesting project - I'm glad I was able to save it so it can continue to be a treasured heirloom for it's owner's family.
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