1894 Elgin 6S

[azkid]

Just finished working on this 1894 Elgin 6S, Grade 117, 7 jewel watch, and it seems to be running ok. Hope you enjoy the pics and my little newbie adventure [emoji4]
 

 
Got the whole watch on eBay, minus crystal and not running well. The gold filled Keystone "cyclone" case is kind of worn down but still looks ok to me.
 

 
After cleaning, the amplitude was poor, like 180° poor. I pulled the mainspring and it was about as set as they come. A NOS replacement went in.
 
And the amplitude was still terrible! Then the impulse jewel fell out. Until I get my warmer tool, I swapped a balance from a compatible watch just to see if it would run worth a darn.
 

 
The guard pin needed adjusting and it took me forever to get the beat error down to a crummy 2ms. And still poor amplitude.
 
I remembered seeing divots on the cap jewels so I swapped those. And despite the fairly loose pivot holes, she finally started running right, plenty of amplitude. Whew.
 
Now, it does have a massively bad rate discrepancy between pendant left vs. right. I will have to address that at some point.
 
I recased it (the two had been separated for almost a year now) after finding the stem bits.
 

 
Cleaned up a couple hands and re-blued them and good to go. Now I just need to find a crystal.
 

 
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[azkid]

Well... Crap. I think the mainspring came off the arbor again. I have the worst time getting mainsprings shaped right to fit on arbors.

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[azkid]

Was able to address the mainspring issue.

 

I have had zero luck with crystals. Broken two trying to install. I need to rethink my technique.

 

A plastic crystal is inbound in the meantime so I at least can use the watch.

[MrRoundel]

I find that old mainsprings, especially the blue ones, lose their memory a bit with age. Hmmm...sounds familiar. If you don't already have one, a set of mainspring pliers might help you get that inner coil shaped better. It's sort of a round-nosed plier with stepped sizing for a couple of different sizes of inner coil bends.

Crystal replacement is a specialty in itself, especially the thin Geneva style for hunter cases. I'm still not great at crystal work myself. Hang in there. Nice little Elgin, BTW. Cheers.