Let's get small

Steve brought by a family heirloom pocket watch. 

It is a Waltham 0s, hunter style pocket watch. It is a beauty. 

0s is one of the smaller standard pocket watch sizes, roughly the diameter of a 50 cent piece. Here it is next to the Elgin 18s.

Hunter styled watches have two distinct features. 

Most notable is that they are effectively double-cased with a hinged metal lid/cover over the front crystal and a similar one over the movement cover on the back. Think like a standard, pocket watch wrapped in an additional clam shell. 

Here's the back case lid that snaps over the movement cover.

Why does the back need 2 covers you might ask. That first cover is called a cuvette and in the days when watches were wound with a key the cuvette would have a hole for the key, protecting the rest of the watch from dust/damage but enabling easy winding.

Here is a watch cuvette with a winding hole from a recent acquisition that I have yet to write about.

So a non-winding-hole cuvette may be a tad redundant for the more modern crown winding watches (like the Waltham 0s) but... it does stay with traditional design of the hunter case.

And here's a side shot of our friend with the case fully closed.

The general consensus is that the Hunting or Hunter name comes from the fact that this case style was popular with English fox hunters as it provided extra protection for the watch.

The second distinct feature of Hunting cases is that the crown (the little wheel used for winding and setting the hands) and the bow around it (the metal loop used to latch on a chain or a fob) are at the 3 o'clock position of the dial and not at the 12 o'clock position in standard cases. 

You push down on the crown with your thumb to pop open the top cover revealing the crystal and dial. I assume having the crown at 3 o'clock made that easier to accomplish with one hand but I'll have to research further to ascertain if that was the driver or just a factor in its design.

It has its original beautiful blued hands and the dial looks to be in perfect condition with no visible chips, cracks or even smudges.

If you didn't already notice, look above again and you will see that our friend is missing its crystal entirely as well as its second hand but otherwise it appears to be completely intact and original. Those are both parts that, with a bit of work, can be sourced.

Let's flip open the inner cover of the movement.

A pretty, gilded movement. 

Founded in 1851, the Waltham Watch Co. was one of the very earliest, biggest and most successful watchmakers in the United States. They were renamed the American Waltham Watch Co. in 1885 and went back to their original name in 1906. Waltham stopped making watches in 1957 and the name Waltham Watch Co. was sold to another company who imported watches under that name and it is still in use today. 

A quick serial number lookup on the Pocket Watch Database says this fine example is an 1891 model and was manufactured between 1895-1897. 

The movement looks to be in very good shape overall. The balance wheel (in the shadowy section above with the little brass screw knobs all around it) spins smoothly on its pivot which is a good sign that the movement is not fundamentally broken. It also has its handsome original blued screws on the two bridges (movement plates). 

It does have a corrosion spot on the wheel bridge (the upper plate in the photo above) which could indicate that there might be more found within the movement or it could just be cosmetic and limited to being a blemish on the bridge. We'll hope for the latter.

Steve reported that the watch was very beloved but hasn't run in a long time. Looking it over I tried winding the crown and it was rough to say the least. It wasn't clear that it was winding the watch at all. 

Maybe the mainspring is broken?

I won't know more until I disassemble the movement.

And that's up next!