Very Old Watch- "Echappement A Ancre", "13 Rubis" on the case

[coreymsnow]

Hi friends! My mother got a bunch of old watches from a horologist who was retiring, and he subsequently passed away. It's been in her studio for years, and she showed it to me today and I just fell in love with it.

Sadly, I don't know a darn thing about it yet. It's quite old, or at least seems to be. It has two winding arbors, but the key is missing. The crystal appears to be some kind of yellowed plastic, which is odd- I think it was replaced at some point to possibly protect it or something. If I had to guess, it's from the mid-19th century, given that it has no keyless works and that it says "Anchor Escapement" in French. It looks to be about 18 ligne, and the case fob is positioned in the upper right corner.

The face is missing the dial, the hands, and a couple of the wheels that drive the hands- I think. But the movement itself seems to be in excellent shape. The serial number on the movement matches the number on the case- it's stamped on the movement and on the case in two places.

I haven't started any disassembly yet, but I'm wondering if anyone can give me some idea of what kind of movement it is, and where I might look to see what parts are missing from the face. i may even have a dial that would fit it. It's in good enough shape that I think I could get it running, assuming I could find the missing parts.

Any insights are vastly appreciated and thank you!

Addendum: The inside of the case has some *very* tiny scratched numbers and letters in it, but I am having an extremely hard time seeing what they are. Like "N 99" and "No192X",

They were clearly done with some kind of sharp stylus and maybe they mean when it was serviced or by who?

Addendum the second: At least one of the scratches seems to say "N1921X" or maybe "W1921X". Serviced in 1921?

And the inside lid of the case has the letters R H with a star between them, and a very tiny mark that says "ARGENT" in a u-shape.

Edited 18 hours ago by coreymsnow
Typo in subject line

[watchweasol]

Hi. The small scratched numbers are likely to be repair marks, argent  means silver. Looks an interesting old watch.

[Mercurial]

The movement looks like a lepine movement in the Locle style, with a tangential lever escapement, with decorative engraving. 

Without engraving, the movement would have looked something like this :

The blue arrow points to the click, which appears to be missing from your movement. Without a click, it will be impossible for the mainspring to retain any power when wound. 

The “Echappment A Ancre” means the watch has a lever escapement. 

There is some damage and missing parts on the dial side. The blue arrow below indicates where the cannon pinion, centre wheel arbour and the pin that runs through them has snapped off. 

The green arrows indicate where the Maltese cross style stop works should be. 

Best Regards,

Mark

[coreymsnow]

1 hour ago, Mercurial said:

The movement looks like a lepine movement in the Locle style, with a tangential lever escapement, with decorative engraving. 

Without engraving, the movement would have looked something like this :

The blue arrow points to the click, which appears to be missing from your movement. Without a click, it will be impossible for the mainspring to retain any power when wound. 

The “Echappment A Ancre” means the watch has a lever escapement. 

There is some damage and missing parts on the dial side. The blue arrow below indicates where the cannon pinion, centre wheel arbour and the pin that runs through them has snapped off. 

The green arrows indicate where the Maltese cross style stop works should be. 

Best Regards,

Mark

That's great info, thank you. I wonder if the guy who owned it, being a watchmaker, was using it as a donor- would explain the missing parts.

I'll have to see if I can find the missing parts. Be an interesting challenge.

[Mercurial]

47 minutes ago, coreymsnow said:

I wonder if the guy who owned it, being a watchmaker, was using it as a donor- would explain the missing parts.

Parts weren’t readily interchangeable when this watch was made, and almost every part was adjusted by hand to fit the rest of the parts in that specific watch.

That said, it can save time to harvest a part from a donor movement so you can modify it to fit a similar movement, rather than try to make the part from scratch. 

With that in mind, it is possible that the click from this watch was removed for use in another watch.

I doubt that the other missing parts were taken for use as donor parts. The cannon pinion would be removed properly, rather than snapping it off with the centre wheel arbour and pin inside it. 

The Maltese cross stop works were probably removed by a lazy or less knowledgeable watchmaker servicing the watch. 

It is very common to encounter otherwise functional watches (including very high end pieces) that are missing their stop work because a previous watchmaker didn’t know how to set it up when reassembling the movement, or was too lazy to bother and knew that the customer would probably never notice. 

It is possible that the stop work parts were taken to be fitted to a watch that was missing them. 

Best Regards,

Mark

[coreymsnow]

3 hours ago, Mercurial said:

Parts weren’t readily interchangeable when this watch was made, and almost every part was adjusted by hand to fit the rest of the parts in that specific watch.

That said, it can save time to harvest a part from a donor movement so you can modify it to fit a similar movement, rather than try to make the part from scratch. 

With that in mind, it is possible that the click from this watch was removed for use in another watch.

I doubt that the other missing parts were taken for use as donor parts. The cannon pinion would be removed properly, rather than snapping it off with the centre wheel arbour and pin inside it. 

The Maltese cross stop works were probably removed by a lazy or less knowledgeable watchmaker servicing the watch. 

It is very common to encounter otherwise functional watches (including very high end pieces) that are missing their stop work because a previous watchmaker didn’t know how to set it up when reassembling the movement, or was too lazy to bother and knew that the customer would probably never notice. 

It is possible that the stop work parts were taken to be fitted to a watch that was missing them. 

Best Regards,

Mark

I was sort of expecting to find that parts would be difficult to source- my research bears out the lack of complete interchangeability.

I'm less concerned about the stop works because the watch could run without it, but it would be nice to have it. I have a gorgeous dial that would be perfect for this watch and the movement is just gorgeous to my eyes. I hate to see it not working.

I'm not sure where to start to find similar parts, but I expect learning to fabricate a cannon pinion and center wheel would be even harder. But who knows, it's not like it's going anywhere.

Thank you again!

Edited 4 hours ago by coreymsnow