Movement with cylinder escapement

Description

As so often, also on this 11 1/2 ligne cylinder movement there’s manufacturer identification possible.

Its execution is quite decent, with a total of 9 jewels, it has got almost the maximum number of jewels used in normal, better cylinder movements at the time. Only the minute wheel and mainspring barrel nearings don’t contain jewels, but this is usually not a real problem.

We’ll come to the missing 10th jewel later.

The gear train follows the standard for cylinder movements: Mainspring barrel, minute wheel, third wheel, seconds wheel, and finally the cylinder wheel.

The balance wheel is also standard, with its three spokes and adjustment via a long arm and scale on the balance cock.

The only thing that’s incomprehensible is why the capstone for the dial-side balance staff bearing was omitted and a metal plate was used instead.
Running metal on metal isn’t a sustainable idea.

And also curious, but in a different sense, because it is technically completely superfluous and nonfunctional, is the use of a crown wheel that is only connected to the ratchet wheel, but has no connection whatsoever to the winding system.

This was probably intended to conceal the cheaper rocking-bar winding mechanism, which was installed on the dial side, by relocating the ratchet wheel and the nonfunctional (but still rotating during winding) crown wheel to the visible side of the movement.

As already mentioned, the rocking-bar winding mechanism is located on the dial side, but its ratchet mechanism is installed on the visible movement side. This was likely intended to convey the impression of a higher-quality movement.

Technical data

Usage gallery