# Jewels In Mechanical Movements.



## Shangas (Jan 27, 2008)

Ever since I embarked on a quest to find a good pocket watch for myself (A quest that is nearly over, give it a week or two  ), I've become increasingly interested in the smaller details of watches.

I've learnt that the better watches were sold with jewelled movements and that jewels reduce the wear on watch-parts that are constantly moving around inside the movement.

I have two questions:

1. What's the lowest number of jewels which can be found in a watch-movement, and what's the highest? What are the marks in between?

For example, the watch I'm having tinkered on at the moment has a 7J movement. I've also heard of 17, 21, 25 jewels, and so-on...What are all the different levels of jewelled movements & how high/low do they go?

2. WHERE are jewels found in watches? For example, if someone sent a watch to be repaired and he said it contained a 17-jewel movement, where would these jewels be located in the movement?


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## kknd92 (Aug 23, 2007)

Check out these sites:

http://www.antique-pocket-watch.com/

http://barrygoldberg.net/watchinfo.htm

They are a good starting point.


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## Shangas (Jan 27, 2008)

Hi,

Interesting reading, but didn't answer all of my questions. If anyone else has any other information, share it here. I want to learn and chat about it


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## Mikrolisk (Jan 23, 2008)

There are movements without any jewel! Then there are watches with one jewel (end stone on balance cock), but without any function (just to impress).

Then there are watches with one jewel either as end stone or as impulse jewel.

Standard jewels counts are:

- Verge watches: 0 / 1 (as end stone), in high quality verges some more

- Cylinder watches: 4 / 6 / 8 (depending on quality, up to 10)

- Lever watches: 7 to 15, if the center wheel is in a jewelled setting then 17. With additional end stones up to 23

And if the watch has a complication, there could be much more jewels.

Of course, some watches are bluffing, many of the old pocket watches for the turkish market have got many end stones on every bridge, but under these end stones is a normal metal bearing. And sometimes there are wrong declarations on the case, e.g. I've got a "Tavannes Watch Co."-pocket watch, the case says 23 jewels, but actually there are 15.

Andreas

Andreas


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## Shangas (Jan 27, 2008)

I found this on Wikipedia. I thought I would share it with the rest of you:

*Where jewels are used in watches*

7 jewel watch - has these jewels:

* 1 impulse pin

* 2 pallets

* 2 balance staff bearings

* 2 balance staff capstones

11 jewel watch - adds:

* 2 lever bearings

* 2 escape wheel bearings

15 jewel watch - adds:

* 2 fourth wheel bearings

* 2 third wheel bearings

17 jewel watch - adds:

* 2 center wheel bearings

21 jewel watch - adds:

* 2 lever capstones

* 2 escape wheel capstones

23 jewel watch - adds:

* 2 mainspring barrel bearings

Self winding watches add 4 or more in the winding mechanism, for a total of 25-27


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## adrian (May 23, 2004)

It depends on the movement, modular chronoghraphs (*) can have a jewel count of 55-60.

(*) The chrono modules are added to a selfwinding mechanism.


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