# Those Strange Electric Watches



## Robin S (Nov 1, 2008)

My count of electric watches is going up, currently three with another on the way.

The most recent arrival came as a bit of a surprise.

My first was a Waltham that had a pretty smooth second hand.

The second was a Timex with, I guess a more basic mechanism with only three beats (is that the right term??) per second, so looks a bit stunted as it works its way round the face.

My third however is nice classic looking backset Timex with a date window. What surprised me about this one was that the seconds hand moved like a quartz, stepping from second to second - I thought at first I had bought a frankenstein with a quartz movement inserted.

However, on listening to the movement is goes tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,CLICK every second.

Not come across a basically mechanical movement that does this before? Is it fairly common with the electrics?


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## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

Robin S said:


> My count of electric watches is going up, currently three with another on the way.
> 
> The most recent arrival came as a bit of a surprise.
> 
> ...


Wow! I've never heard of a dead-second electric :blink: Can you manage a movement shot?

Making a seconds hand jump once per second is an old trick used back in the pre-quartz days to make a watch look more precise i.e. it tells you the time to the _exact_ second. The Rolex Tru-Beat is a 1950s example of such. A widget is attached to the 4th wheel that loads up with every beat and then releases once per second.

Back in the 19th Century some Swiss firms made a device called a Crab-Tooth Duplex Escapement, mostly for the Chinese market, in which the escape wheel is cut in such a way that the entire train skips and hiccups in order to produce the one-second stepping action.


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

The Timex "tick,tick,tick,tick,CLUNK" sound is standard on a lot of the Timex electrics, and nothing to worry about, it's quite normal. These old Timex electrics are normally excellent workhorses, a clean, stick a battery in and off they go, and usually good timekeepers unless someone has tickled the hairspring in some way and bodgered it. :yes:

The Backsets come out through the crystal BTW, so be careful if you try to disassemble one. You need to be careful getting the crystal out, and of course many of them are now rather old and the crystal can be a bit brittle -









For a view of the service manual of the backsets, google on "e-watchmaker" and follow the links to Jay's site for the Timex 87 electric movement, exploded views etc. :yes:


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## Robin S (Nov 1, 2008)

Many thanks for the details and link Mel, very interesting. Mine is running like a good 'un and keeping excellent time.

Chascomm, yes I thought it was pretty different for a budget electric mechanical to be doing the same trick as the Rolex True Beat - which I saw recently via this very forum as a very expensive watch.

Sorry, as Mel ponts out, to get to the movement you have to take the crystal off which you will understand is not something I would want to do.

If you follow Mel's suggested link however it will show you - although it has confused me more as it refers to a 'sweep' second.


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

Robin, Timex use the word "sweep" I think more in the older sense - i.e. it's a second hand that fills the dial rather than a sub seconds hand with it's own separate little sub dial, or as in most of the Timex range, a non-sweep watch has no seconds hand at all.

The very basic and early "22" mechanical movement came with or without seconds hand, and is referred to in the Timex service manual [60 - ish] as Sweep or Non-Sweep. This convention seems to carry on through the manual(s). :yes:

HTH a bit

EDIT:- Meant to add, does your watch have a date? If it does, you may well find it has also an a.m./p.m. indicator built in on the date mechanism. If you look closely at the date, there may be a dot above or below the actual number (for the 19th or whatever). The Timex mechanism has a sort of "half move" that takes place at midday as well as at midnight, so the first section displays the dot below the number - signifying a.m., at midday the date wheel advances another half notch and dislays the dot above the number - signifying p.m. Clever for a cheapo watch, eh? :yes:


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## Robin S (Nov 1, 2008)

Hi Mel, yes that does help explain, thanks.

And yes it does have a date window and does indeed have the AM/PM dots.

Seems to be full of neat tricks for it's age and original cost.


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## Robin S (Nov 1, 2008)

A quick and dirty pic of my current Electrics. The one on the left is the backset this topic was raised against.

Second from right the one that arrived today from Rob (rdwiow).

Hmm, guess I should have synched the times before taking the photo


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## rdwiow (Aug 15, 2008)

Robin S said:


> A quick and dirty pic of my current Electrics. The one on the left is the backset this topic was raised against.
> 
> Second from right the one that arrived today from Rob (rdwiow).
> 
> Hmm, guess I should have synched the times before taking the photo


You've been busy, That Helbros has come up a treat...nice collection you have there 

Cheers

Rob


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## foztex (Nov 6, 2005)

mel said:


> Robin, Timex use the word "sweep" I think more in the older sense - i.e. it's a second hand that fills the dial rather than a sub seconds hand with it's own separate little sub dial, or as in most of the Timex range, a non-sweep watch has no seconds hand at all.
> 
> The very basic and early "22" mechanical movement came with or without seconds hand, and is referred to in the Timex service manual [60 - ish] as Sweep or Non-Sweep. This convention seems to carry on through the manual(s). :yes:
> 
> ...


Top info Mel, I too was really intrigued by the recent Dead Seconds thread. Really wanted to know how these movt's worked. This is the best most interesting info I've found all year so far 

Andy


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## watchnutz (Jan 18, 2008)

A little more on this. The Timex service manual for the model 67 movement says the following.

"The balance drives the time train which,in turn,rotates the hands. The *sweep second hand * of the Timex electric watch jumps once each second rather than "beating"5 or 6 times per second as in the conventional watch."

"The Timex electric has an hourly beat of 21,600"

The 1 second jump is a function of the sweep second wheel being indexed one tooth at every third index of the index wheel. The gear arrangement serves to move the second wheel.


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