DuRoWe 322

Description

Round Durowe movements with a small diameter (here: 8 3/4 lignes, equal to a little less than 2cm) were always exotics in the range of the Pforzheimer UhrenRohWerke. The Durowe 322 from the early 1950s is such a movement, which is built in a very compact way.

Typically for Durowe, its quality is really fair and it offers a contemporarily modern construction.

So it uses a center minute wheel, which is located above the mainspring barrel. Here you see the similarities with compact form movements of that time.

With its directly driven center seconds, in the gear train between third wheel and escape wheel, it shows in this aspect exactly the contemporarily modern construction of the upcoming movements with center seconds. Since it is directly driven, there are no problems with stuttering and fluttering of the center seconds hand.

As escapement, a traditional swiss pallet lever escapement is used, regulated by a two-leg screw balance, which is beared in two inhouse Duroswing shock protections.

It beats with 18000 A/h; the beating rate can be adjusted at the hairspring key only.

Due to the compact construction, balance wheel and hairspring are located below(!) the minute wheel, while the seconds wheel is located above the hairspring cock. You can imagine, how difficult the mounting of the balance is.

Of course, the Durowe 322 uses a yoke winding system (whose setting lever spring is broken on the specimen shown here).

Nice to see, how similar the dial side Duroswing shock protection mounting is to that of an Incabloc.

A little detail at the end, the usage of cap jewels for both escape wheel bearings help the Durowe 322 to achieve the advertising-helping number of 17 jewels, which were still unusually high in the early 1950s.

In the lab

Timegrapher result

The case and the rates reveal, how heavily this movement was used. Without a real service and exchange of many worn out parts, the rates won’t improve.