Buying a used static poising tool – A word of warning

[VWatchie]

For a long time, I’ve been in the process of learning about poising and considering whether I should try dynamic poising or static posing first. From a practical standpoint each method has advantages and disadvantages. In the end I decide to try static poising first as I wouldn’t have to measure the rate between each adjustment of the balance wheel, and because it felt like it would be safer to drill on the underside of the rim of the balance wheel without the cock, collet, and hairspring in place.

So, I got myself a used poising tool privately (no eBay money back guarantee) and the seller assured me the agate stones were flawless. I paid about £100 for the tool which felt like a bargain considering buying this tool from CousinsUK would have costed me approx. £530 including tax and shipping.

Once the poising tool arrived, I was thrilled and indeed it looked flawless. So, I cleaned and polished the pivots of my balance spotless and checked that the pivots were perfectly straight and round. If the pivots are bent, oval shaped, have flats, or the wheel itself isn’t true the poising tool basically becomes useless. I then placed the balance on the tool and made sure only the cylindrical sections of the pivots were resting on the edges of the agate stones. However, and without going into detail, the balance didn’t behave like I expected. For example, depending on the rotational speed the wheel could suddenly stop unexpectedly on certain sections of the agate stones. As I said, I perceived the agate stones as being flawless, so I didn’t suspect anything being wrong with the tool, and it really made me scratch my head.

To make a long story short I eventually studied the edges of agate stones under my stereo microscope and at 40X magnification and with light coming from the right direction I could ascertain that the edges were indeed chipped. Near impossible to see at 10X magnification and still difficult to see at 40X magnification, but there they were. No wonder the balance would behave completely unpredictably.

So, a word of warning; if you buy a poising tool, do not settle for the seller promising that the tool is error free and that the agate stones look flawless. The stones may indeed look flawless even at 10X magnification but could still be chipped. Make sure an acceptable return policy and/or money back guarantee is in place.

£100 is quite a bit of money but at least I learned something in the process.

BTW, here's a nice article about static poising, and Henry B. Fried has an extensive chapter about "How to poise a balance wheel" in his book "The Watch Repairer's Manual" (2nd edition).

Edited December 9, 2020 by VWatchie
Slight improvement of wording

[nickelsilver]

Are they chipped _all over_ ,or just in one area? It takes some effort to chip them, and while I have my gripes with Bergeon their poising tools have always been really nice. You only need a sweet spot of about 5mm to be useful.

 

I have a Levin, humongous ruby jaws, built in level that's spot on. They made a couple of grades, but the german silver ones with ruby jaws are the best I've seen. If you scan Ebay you can find them around 50 bucks, still probably 100 shipped to you, but a seriously nicely made and beautiful tool.

 

Whenever a European watchmaker sees mine they're like "OH MY GOD!".

 

 

[VWatchie]

1 hour ago, nickelsilver said:

Are they chipped _all over_ ,or just in one area?

No, not all over, but one side has basically only one clearly visible and significant chip and on the other side there are many super tiny spots here and there along the entire edge with just one or two millimeters in between each spot. These super tiny spots are only visible (40X magnification) as bright spots. I used a cotton swab dipped in isopropanol and swiped any spot I saw to make sure it wasn't just a minuscule dust particle. I'm of course very disappointed and have been trying to get in contact with the seller but he just won't respond (we took the deal outside tradera.se, Swedish local eBay, and now I guess I know why. So bad idea!)

1 hour ago, nickelsilver said:

I have a Levin, humongous ruby jaws, built in level that's spot on. They made a couple of grades, but the german silver ones with ruby jaws are the best I've seen. If you scan Ebay you can find them around 50 bucks, still probably 100 shipped to you, but a seriously nicely made and beautiful tool.

Thanks for this tip!  I had no idea. I thought Bergeon was the only option as it's the only poising tool I've seen. eBay next and I'll keep you informed!

1 hour ago, nickelsilver said:

Whenever a European watchmaker sees mine they're like "OH MY GOD!".

I don't know what you're referring to, but whatever it is I'm sure it must be impressive! 

[rodabod]

DeCarle suggests using steel bladed types as you can dress them. You could potentially dress these jaws on diamond paste. 

[nickelsilver]

2 hours ago, VWatchie said:

I don't know what you're referring to, but whatever it is I'm sure it must be impressive! 

Ha, I'm American and Levin is an American brand . Most Europeans don't realize there was a serious U.S. watch manufacturing concern. When I  was here for school I had my grandfather's Hamilton with me and everyone was asking me what ebauche it was and didn't believe it was pure American, down to the hairspring.

[rodabod]

Levin were serious tool makers. I think their lathes feature a lot in the DeCarle book. I always wanted one.

Some of the earlier American watches are exceptional. Those railroad watches are often just sublime.

[nickelsilver]

22 minutes ago, rodabod said:

Levin were serious tool makers. I think their lathes feature a lot in the DeCarle book. I always wanted one.

Some of the earlier American watches are exceptional. Those railroad watches are often just sublime.

I've got a soft spot for Hamilton but Elgin and Waltham (and a few others) were beasts of watchmaking. Levin were killer toolmakers.

 

Aside from all of that, during the War Levin got requestordered to make jewels, like watch jewels, so they were like "ok" and figured out how to mass produce jewels (pretty sure they leaned on Elgin and Hamilton with some single malt here). It's well illustrated in their later editions of their book.

[rodabod]

There is a very interesting story documented which is too long for me to give justice by writing here, but Smiths in the UK needed to fabricate their own jewels rather than buying from the Swiss for the War Effort. So they basically sent a spy over to Switzerland to investigate and to smuggle a huge number of watch jewels which were stitched into a jacket that he wore on his return to the UK. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Graziano]

4 hours ago, rodabod said:

sent a spy over to Switzerland to investigate and to smuggle a huge number of watch jewels which were stitched into a jacket that he wore on his return to the UK. 

 

[VWatchie]

10 hours ago, rodabod said:

DeCarle suggests using steel bladed types as you can dress them.

And Fried advice against them due to "the possibility of magnetic influence". Anyway, I believe I saw a post somewhere of someone using a DIY poising tool using razor blades. Normally agate stones are so hard (but brittle) that there's never any natural wear on them. I believe my tool has been damaged by a previous owner tapping on the stones with the tip of tweezers to induce vibration, but I'm just guessing.

[VWatchie]

On 12/8/2020 at 11:13 PM, nickelsilver said:

Ha, I'm American and Levin is an American brand . Most Europeans don't realize there was a serious U.S. watch manufacturing concern. When I  was here for school I had my grandfather's Hamilton with me and everyone was asking me what ebauche it was and didn't believe it was pure American, down to the hairspring.

That reminds me of this YT video about Hamilton (section where they talk about the HS). Fascinating. We would probably all start to sob loudly if we knew how much knowledge and experience went down the drain when the US watch industry vanished.

I always thought of you as being Swiss! Your profile says you're located in Switzerland. So I take it you're an American living in Switzerland then? I realize it's a personal question so please don't feel pressed to reply.

Edited December 10, 2020 by VWatchie

[VWatchie]

9 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

It's well illustrated in their later editions of their book.

What book is that? Sounds interesting! Can you provide some details about the book?

[nickelsilver]

2 hours ago, VWatchie said:

What book is that? Sounds interesting! Can you provide some details about the book?

Practical Benchwork for Horologists by Louis and Samuel Levin. It's a great book, definitely for advanced work, but great.

 

I've been in Switzerland for almost 20 years now. Sure doesn't seem that long!

[Nucejoe]

Are the stones not replaceable?

[nickelsilver]

13 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Are the stones not replaceable?

There might be a tiny chance of getting replacement stones for a currently made tool like Bergeon (though I seriously doubt it), but finding shaped ruby suitable for anything else no way. Then installing them wouldn't be easy at all, they have to be perfectly parallel and level with each other.

[VWatchie]

On 12/8/2020 at 6:58 PM, nickelsilver said:

I have a Levin, humongous ruby jaws, built in level that's spot on. They made a couple of grades, but the german silver ones with ruby jaws are the best I've seen.

Just pulled the trigger on one of these "beasts" from the US expected to arrive in Europe, Sweden sometime between Dec 25 and Jan 02. I'll update this thread once I've tested it. Should I forget, and you're interested, please remind me!

[MechanicMike]

On 12/8/2020 at 5:34 PM, rodabod said:

Levin were serious tool makers

They used to make a ton of stuff. I have a Levin machinists square that belonged to my father, is ancient and spot on that I use to this day.

[VWatchie]

Just realized I had forgotten to report back about my Levin purchase. It works perfectly. Again, thanks for the tip @nickelsilver! So, I've retired the Bergeon (although in all honesty, there were some sections that were usable) and always put my Levin on the bench instead.

Some small tips; Static poising is extremely sensitive to the smallest gusts. Your breath and hand movements are picked up like they were tornadoes by this tool. I place a large transparent lunch box in glass over the tool (once I've made the balance wheel move) to make sure nothing disturbs it. A plastic box doesn't work as it interferes statically with the wheel and disturbs it. The process is overall incredibly sensitive and takes some practice, but it works and it works well. The difficult part is removing just enough material. What's needed is lots of patience and small steps. If you remove too much material it could make the wheel oscillate so fast the it will become impossible to set the rate by adjusting the regulator arm.

Edited July 20, 2021 by VWatchie

[nickelsilver]

Glad to hear it works! With any tool- even new- there's a chance of it being defective or damaged. Luckily these were usually very well cared for. What always makes me uneasy is when someone who's not from the trade lists one as "precision watchmaker vice", I can just picture them clamping it down on something to try it out, haha.

[VWatchie]

16 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

What always makes me uneasy is when someone who's not from the trade lists one as "precision watchmaker vice", I can just picture them clamping it down on something to try it out

Yes, you can see some pretty hilarious statements in these listings, especially from Chinese eBay sellers. This is from one such listing selling mainspring winders: "you can easily wind the watch, keeping the watch working properly". Except for knowing it's related to watches, they're clueless about what they are selling 

[Razz]

I got mine a few weeks back. The jaws have a couple of chips on the ends. I immediately cleaned with IPA and inspected the jaws. These C&E Marshall's come up time to time. Nice box and added the bubble level from Cosuins for 4£. There is a stop so the jaws never actually can close all the way and touch.

Cousins has replacement jaws for 330£ but not sure about the dimensions to see if they would even fit.

Edited January 29, 2024 by Razz

[Waggy]

As long as the chips are at the end, you can still use the tool. I ended up buying 2 tools, the first had a big chip which I knew about, but I could work around. However this was not the only chip and the entire length was peppered with tiny micro-chips which made it unusable.  I then bought a second tool, this time I got lucky and the jaws were in mint condition. So its a matter of getting lucky, but an expensive game of chance!