Recently a good friend, Neil, was visiting the workshop and wearing a very cool watch. A vintage electric Whittnaur with a very early movement. So early this electrically powered watch uses mechanical contacts to control an electromagnet rather than the more common transistor. A great piece of history but also an amazing looking watch, check out the dial and hands at the bottom of this post.
Though he loves the watch, he did have one major complaint. Standard battery sizes have changed since the watch was made, and are now much smaller. The person that sold him the watch had fitted a band around the modern battery to hold in in place, but it was a poor fit and the battery could still move and disconnect from the contacts. This meant that the watch could sometimes stop without warning until the case back was removed and the battery refitted; there’s no point in having a watch which you can’t rely on so I said I would fix it for him.
A piece of black delrin was machined to snugly (but not tightly) fit inside the case back, with a bore large enough to hold the battery in place without any movement. It’s a very small job but requires the right tools and proper measurement.
Now Neil can wear the watch without fear of it stopping and can be confident he won’t miss his next meeting where this watch is sure to catch the eye of anyone that notices it. One nice thing about these early electric watches is the high speed balance pushing a gear train means a sweeping second hand unlike the ‘dead second’ ticking seen in quartz watches.