using a watch timegrapher to regulate a watch

Let go of the ON button when the watch is arm’s length from the unit. To use it, hold the watch an inch over the center of the unit, press the ON button, and keep the button depressed as you slowly move the watch away from the unit. The first kind-represented by the ubiquitous “little blue box” unit made in China-requires you to slowly move the watch through an alternating field.The two most common kinds work differently. Like all watchmaking tools, demagnetizers run the range from cheap stuff from China to solid equipment to poor value-for-money equipment with a Swiss name stamped on it. (The mind recoils, I know.) These have been around forever, so you have a choice between many different kinds. You demagnetize a watch with a demagnetizer. I always run a watch through the demagnetizer when I first receive it and before I adjust it. Otherwise, you could chase the rates in circles. I’m not sure what part was magnetized, but a zap with the demagnetizer (literally) straightened out the timing traces.īecause magnetism’s effects can be subtle and diverse, it’s wise to always demagnetize a watch before measuring its rates or attempting to adjust or regulate it. But these waves have a fast period, much faster than the escape wheel rotates, so it isn’t that. A wave with a 60-second period, for example, suggests a flaw in the fourth wheel, which rotates once every 60 seconds. When faced with wavy traces, we know to measure the period of the wave-the time between the peaks. If the coils stay stuck, the effective length of the hairspring will be much shorter than normal, causing the watch to run abnormally quickly.Īs an example, here are some odd Timegrapher traces: loopy and bulbous, with a consistent high-frequency period. If the hairspring is magnetized, its coils might stick together and slap against each other as they unstick, which would be apparent as erratic timing traces. Its effects depend on the magnetized part and where it is in relation to the escapement. Signs of MagnetismĪ magnetized watch won’t run well, but there’s no single timing-machine signature of magnetism. In modern watches, the shift toward silicon hairsprings greatly increases a watch’s resistance to magnetism.īut your 1917 Illinois pocket watch has none of that new-fangled stuff, so we’ll need to learn to identify and remove magnetism from our vintage movements. The use of Faraday cages to enclose a movement (e.g., Rolex’s Milgauss) and magnetism-resistant hairspring alloys are the big ones. Many of watchmaking’s great innovations were designed to prevent magnetism. Inexplicably, my anti-magnetic tweezers occasionally get magnetized. When I bought my staking set, for example, it was a boiling ball of magnetism that could power a small MRI coil. Your tools, if magnetized themselves, can magnetize the parts they touch.

And once you have your pocket watch, it might share a pocket with your smartphone. When you a buy a vintage pocket watch off eBay, for example, it goes through dozens of devices that weigh, scan, measure, image, probe, and transport it between the seller’s door and yours. The modern world has so many electronic devices that give off fields that magnetism is inevitable. These parts will cause erratic timing, and some of them-like steel hairsprings-will have calamitous effects. Most of the parts in a vintage watch are non-magnetic, but many are made of steel and can easily become magnetized. The symptoms of magnetism are so diverse that it is wise to routinely demagnetize your watches before adjusting them. Much like syphilis, it will slowly drive a watch adjuster to a wretched state of madness if not diagnosed and treated in time.

Using a watch timegrapher to regulate a watch