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Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots
Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots
Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots
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Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots

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This antiquarian book contains a comprehensive guide to fixing watches, with information on correcting balances, hairsprings and pivots. Written in clear, concise language and containing useful charts, tables, diagrams, and formulas, this text constitutes a must-have for those with a practical interest in the topic, and makes for a great addition to collections of allied literature. The chapters of this volume include: Middle Temperature Error, Berthoud's Experiments, Effect of Temperature upon Springs, Safe Range of Temperature, Airy's Experiments, Adjustment of Chronometers, Permanent Compensation Balance... among others. This antiquarian book is being republished now complete with a new introduction on the history of clocks and watches.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 6, 2016
ISBN9781473353879
Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots

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    Wrist Watch Maintenance - Correcting Balances, Hairsprings and Pivots - Anon Anon

    book.

    THE COMPENSATION BALANCE.

    Middle Temperature Error.—After the inventions of Earnshaw and his contemporaries had brought the ship’s chronometer to great mechanical perfection, it was discovered that, though the ordinary compensation balance (Fig. 46) afforded an adjustment for a limited range of temperature so near that it was difficult to detect or record any difference, if the chronometer was subjected to a wide variation of heat or cold, a very serious deviation from its rate would be the result. The deviation was found to be constant, and was this, that if a chronometer be adjusted for two given degrees of temperature, say at 30° and 90° Fahrenheit, and is going to mean time at each of those degrees, it will gain two to three seconds a day at 60°. This method of adjusting the chronometer at two extremes of temperature and dividing the error in the balance, gave rise to some confusion of ideas, and the error was termed the middle temperature error by watchmakers; most illogically, however, as the error is greatest in extremes. It was found that it arose from the compensation weights of the balance not moving towards the centre fast enough in heat; and a theory was advanced, and was for a long time adhered to, that the balance spring lost its elasticity in heat in an increasing ratio. It was conjectured, however, that the error arose from some inherent incapacity of the balance, in the movements of its compensation weights to and from the centre, to accord exactly with the loss or gain in the elasticity of the spring in heat or cold.

    155. Berthoud’s Experiments.—F. Berthoud found by experimenting on a chronometer with a plain balance, that it lost, in a range of temperature of 60° Fahrenheit, six minutes and a half in twenty-four hours; but he does not appear to have made his experiments with a view to ascertain if the loss was equal for equal increments of heat, but to find its total amount, and to determine how much of it was due to the spring, and how much to the balance. He calculated the loss as follows:—

    At a later period the late Mr. Charles Frodsham obtained a result nearly corresponding with this. Now, as the results show the loss from the inelasticity of the spring to be more than five times as much as that arising from the expansion of the balance itself, it is evident that the attention of chronometer makers should be kept directed to this point in their efforts to correct the error. It is obvious that if some material could be discovered applicable to the purpose, that would retain its elasticity for a sufficient length of time, and be less sensitive to changes of temperature, both the primary and secondary errors would be greatly reduced.

    I have already stated the unadvisability of any ill-considered change of material for the springs of watches, but perhaps the palladium alloyed springs may at a future time come into use for marine chronometers, when the method of drawing the wire and setting them in shape of an equal hardness, etc., has been more fully developed.

    156. Effect of Temperature upon Springs.—Taking it for granted that the elasticity of the spring varies inversely with the temperature, and that the weights, or virtual radius of gyration, move in and out in the same proportion, it follows that the moment of inertia (which should follow inversely as the square of this radius) will not increase sufficiently fast in heat nor decrease sufficiently fast in cold.

    Sir E. Beckett shows this mathematically thus:—

    Let r be the distance of the compensation weights from the staff or axis of the balance, and let us call them both together M; for this purpose we have nothing to do with the rest of the balance. Let dr be the increase of distance of the weights for some given decrease of heat. Then the new moment of inertia of the balance will be M (r² + 2r dr + dris too large to be disregarded as it may be in the similar formula for pendulums, because dr must be larger in proportion to r than it is in a

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