Timex 61 User Manual

No. 61

Restoration Log

&

Instruction Manual

Andrew LaBounty, 2002

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Waterbury
Regulator
No.61

Andrew LaBounty, Apprentice Clockmaker;
Sophomore, Olathe North High School, 2002

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Table of Contents

A History of the Waterbury Clock Company

The Process

To Begin – The Take Down.....................................................................................3

At the Shop – Cleaning it up....................................................................................4

On Paper – Making a Map.......................................................................................5

Taking It Apart – And Determining Beats per Hour...............................................6

Polishing Pivots – The Dreary Part..........................................................................7

Major Project – The Escape Wheel “Nut”...............................................................8

Bushing – For Real Now..........................................................................................9

Polishing the Pivot Holes – Everything’s so Shiny!..............................................10

The Escapement – Theory, Practice, and Math .....................................................10

Beat and Rate Adjustments – Nuts and Knobs......................................................11

Refitting the Second Hand – Found in the Case....................................................12

Conclusion – And Thanks......................................................................................13

Care and Maintenance..................................................................................................14-17

Winding..................................................................................................................14

Setting to Time.......................................................................................................14

Rating.....................................................................................................................15

Cleaning.................................................................................................................15

Moving the Clock ..................................................................................................16

Setup After Moving ...............................................................................................16

Setting the Beat......................................................................................................17

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................18

Attachments ................................................................................................................. 19-22

A: Repair Itemization.............................................................................................19

B: Tooth Count ......................................................................................................20

C: Original Sketch..................................................................................................21

D: Other Sketches..................................................................................................22

....................................................................................................................3-13

..................................................................1-2

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A History of the Waterbury Clock Company

(1857 – 1942)

The Waterbury Clock Company, founded in March 5, 1857, began as a venture
into the lucrative clock market by the ambitious Benedict & Burnham Corporation,
heretofore the “B&B Corp.” Being a company specializing in the production of brass,
and with clock movements being made of brass, the B&B Corp. made its first attempt at
utilizing its goods for the measurement of time by investing heavily in the business of a
clockmaker named Chauncey Jerome with the understanding that Jerome would buy
brass from no other brass company. Thus began a short cooperation that ended with
Jerome striking out upon his own business with $75,000 of B&B’s brass, which they sold
to Jerome at a profit. Having only begun to satisfy the needs of impatient people waiting
for, and trying to catch trains, B&B began their own clock company: The Waterbury
Clock Company!

It started in an old mill, very near to the main factory of the B&B Corp. Strapped for
good clockmakers, the corporation decided to honor Jerome’s brother, Noble Jerome,
with the title “chief foreman of movement production.” So began the famous clock
making business in Waterbury, CT on March 5, 1857 as a company of the Benedict &
Burnham Corporation. The Waterbury Clock Company was described in its time by
Chauncey Jerome in his autobiography as being a company of famous “first citizens of
that place” including a senator and one of the richest men in the country. He also spoke
of his brother, the chief movement mechanic, as being “as good a brass clock maker as
can be found.” A great grief struck the Company in 1861, however, when Noble Jerome
was killed by a falling balustrade while strolling in the merry month of May. Silus B.
Terry replaced Noble as master clockmaker. Silus B. Terry, apprenticed by his father Eli
Terry, later founded the Terry Clock Company with his sons. Incidentally, Eli Terry also
apprenticed the famous clock maker Seth Thomas who created his own company when
Silus B. was but two years old.

After the Civil War, in which most of Waterbury’s employees participated on the Union
side, the Company erected two large case-building shops. They were hardly used,
though, before both caught fire and caused $25,000 damage, equaling about $270,000 in
2002 currency. Half of that was safely insured, and another case shop was built upon the
same site. From here, the Waterbury Clock Company kept getting larger and more
flushed with employees. In 1867, the first known catalogue of Waterbury clocks was
released by the New York Sales Agency. Waterbury clocks occupied only a small
fraction of the myriad of companies represented by the catalogue but that was soon to
change. The company continued to grow and by 1875, had opened several offices in
Chicago and San Francisco. By 1881, their own catalogue contained 94 of their own
clocks on 122 pages. Ten years later they had grown to a full 175 pages offering 304
models of their own design.

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Until this point, Waterbury had been offering chiefly commonplace clocks. Their fame
was truly made, however, when Waterbury, in 1892, began to build watches for the
Ingersoll Company, who sold them as dollar watch alternatives to the expensive watches
of the time. These became known as Ingersoll Watches, and were produced by an
offshoot of the Waterbury Clock Company, the Waterbury Watch Company. This
became an extremely profitable venture for both parties, yet when Ingersoll went
bankrupt due to several mistakes involving the purchase of “defunct” watch companies,
Waterbury lost its most valuable customer. During the time in which Waterbury was
producing the Ingersoll-Waterbury watch, clock production held, but did not increase
much. A few new clocks were added, but their catalogue was very much standard as it
always had been.

Waterbury continued on its way, eventually creating the “Mickey Mouse clock” and the
“Timex”, though by 1942 it had already ceased to be its own corporation, having been
bought out by Norwegian investors and moved to Middlebury, CT. Now, the Waterbury
Clock Company lives on in its legacy of vintage antique timepieces and in the Timex
Corporation which it birthed.

As for a brief history of the Waterbury Regulator No. 61 and its long
ancestry of precision regulators...

The Waterbury Regulator No. 61 was produced during Waterbury’s business peak from
1903 to 1917 because of demand that stemmed greatly from the advancements made in
the railroad. With the railroad came schedules, and people needed to know what the time
was to a greater accuracy than simply night or day. As such, precision regulators were
found chiefly in train stations, banks, and hotels, yet demand grew for smaller timepieces,
such as precision watches, in large cities. In addition, people began to move to those
cities where time became important in one’s work place instead of generalized on one’s
farm. As the world became more modernized and in effect, smaller, time became a
necessity not only to keep trains from colliding and economy running, but also for the
common man who simply wanted the time of day.

Precision movements before the railroad, however, existed primarily as scientific
advancements quite beyond the public’s field of use. The early clock began with but one
hand, the hour hand, which showed the time within about 30 minutes the time of day. As
people became more and more interested in keeping track of time, a minute hand was
added allowing ease of time measurement to within approximately 30 seconds. Precision
clocks were those with a second hand, which measured to the second and finer,
dependant upon the clock. Today, in such a time-based world, the common clock has a
minute hand and most often a second hand. In 1903, The Waterbury Regulator No. 61
was among those clocks with a second hand and probably considered nearly extraneous
in its accuracy. At that time, no one needed to know the time to within a second, except
perhaps in the railroad’s case and those persons servicing the precision watches.
Presently, the Waterbury Regulator No. 61 remains a superbly accurate clock even by
today’s standards of a precision movement.

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The Process

To Begin – The Take Down

The first day of work began on the morning of February 27, 2002; ninety years after the
presentation of the clock to the school by the class of 1912. We [David LaBounty CMC,
FBHI and Andrew LaBounty, Apprentice] received permission from Asst. Principal Mr.
Carmody to remove the clock’s movement, dial, weight, and pendulum from the case and
take it to our shop (then operating from home) for restoration. First, the pendulum was
removed and placed to the side. Next, the weight was detached and placed with the
pendulum. Finally, to take the clock movement and dial out of the case, it was necessary
to loosen the seat board screws that held the metal box encasing the movement. After
doing so, the metal box and movement, attached with the dial, were easily transported as
a unit. The work had begun that would take place everyday during seventh hour for
about a month.

From Tran Duy Ly’s

“Waterbury” Reference

Book

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At the Shop – Cleaning it up

The first step in restoring the movement was obviously to remove it from both the dial
and the metal box that encased it. To achieve this, the taper pins that held the dial to the
box and the screws affixing the movement to the box were all removed. In addition, the

hands were removed to take the dial off. After the
movement was taken out, several observations
were made concerning the general state of the
movement. It had indeed, been restored
previously. It was obvious that it had been bushed
(discussed later) in some places that were not
entirely necessary and not bushed in places where
it would have been more helpful. It was also
painfully obvious why the piece kept bad time, or
more likely no time. Several pivot holes were

Removing the Dial Pins

worn, the pendulum was badly adjusted with the

beat adjuster set far to the left, the escapement had
far too much entrance drop and little to no exit drop, and it was probably set up
incorrectly. All of the problems with performance are easily taken care of with no cost to
the school, yet there is an aesthetic scar on the
escape pallet arm placed there purposely by an
unknown repairman. Unfortunately, it serves no
cause for good or ill but to mar the otherwise
gorgeous workings of a Waterbury Regulator 61,
and it is irreparable. Apparently, someone took
a punch and a hammer and beat consistently 16
times on the edge of the steel pallet arms.

Again, it is
senseless, useless,
and obscene, so of
course I’d like to point it out as a previous injury and not a
recent one. Everything else seems to be in order and original,
making for a beautiful timepiece. Having made these
observations and taken pictures, the movement was then off

to the ultrasonics to be cleaned. An ultrasonic tank is used
because the ultrasonics agitate the liquid, causing small implosions, and knock off more
dirt and grease than is possible any other way. First the
movement was placed in an ultrasonic tank filled with
ammoniated clock cleaning solution to remove the grease
and dirt, as well as to brighten the brass. Then, it was
rinsed in water to take off the ammonia solution and
placed in an ultrasonic rinse solution of 50% xylene, 50%
mineral spirits to bond with and remove the water.
Finally, it was put in the dryer for several minutes at

o

about 125

F to evaporate the rinse solution. When it was
finished, it was photographed again and ready to be
disassembled.

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On Paper – Making a Map

Before I could take the movement entirely apart, it had to be drawn so I would be able to

put it together again with the gears in their proper places.
To do this, I drew circles and numbered them in a
hierarchy to display the order in which they went, then
drew each individual gear to show “which way was up”.
Since there are two plates, it is very easy to put a gear’s
opposite end in the wrong hole, so not only did I have to
know their order, but also the relationship of their pinions
to wheels, which end went “down”, and the
characteristics of each individual gear. The difference
between pinions and gears should be explained. A wheel
is, of course, a toothed disk that drives other gears. A
pinion is a smaller portion of the gear, either in the shape
of a lantern or a cut, smaller wheel that mates with the
wheel of an adjacent gear. The pinion is the driven and

My Drawing (see attachment C)

the wheel is the driver. Another difference is that pinions

have fewer “teeth” than a wheel, but they’re called
“leaves” instead. In fact, if a wheel has less than 20 teeth, it is considered a pinion, and
the teeth are then called leaves. Both a wheel
and a pinion together on a steel shaft is
representative of a gear. At any rate, I had to
know where the wheels and pinions were
positioned on each gear, and where each gear
was positioned between the plates. In

addition to drawing the
movement, I also examined
it for any damage I hadn’t
already noticed. One thing
that made itself apparent was

the warped condition of the hand nut. Placing it in a hole on an
otherwise flat block, I pounded it gently flat with a brass hammer so as not to mar the
surface. Thus, I straightened the hand nut.

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