 
|
This looks at first like a typical British Massey III movement of the
early period (about 1825-1850),
good in quality, with a diamond
end-stone and at least six enormous Liverpool jewels; but it has
a
couple of quirks. One is that the balance-wheel, basically an
ordinary solid-rim pattern, has
several small screws set in its rim
like a compensated balance. The other is that the train is reversed;
the lever and the fourth wheel have interchanged their places
flanking the escape-wheel, and this
in turn calls for a re-positioning
of the sunken third wheel which is almost under the spring-barrel.
(The whole train has had to be swung round some 60 degrees from
its normal orientation in order to
bring the second-hand – carried as
usual on the fourth-wheel arbor – back to its accustomed position
at six o'clock on the main dial.) Unsigned but numbered 6091.
Diameter 46mm.
Below
The end of the lever (arrowed) and the escape-wheel to its
right can be seen here.
|
Left Here is another reversed-train movement (by Ellis Samuel Yates
& Co. of Liverpool, c.
1850). Notice the large jewel supporting the
fusee arbor with its winding-square – a decidedly high
flight for a
mid-19th-century English movement – and the unusual spring-loaded
pawl for the set-up
wheel (the wheel itself is missing). The narrow
flush-sided cock is a stylistic device widely adopted
in early
American watchmaking.
Both these movements illustrate one positive advantage of this
layout:
the barrel is only marginally overlapped by the balance, which there-
fore does not have
to be disturbed when the barrel is removed or
replaced. It is difficult to see why this sensible
modification did not
become far more popular.
|
|