The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
I have been considering starting to wear a watch again and was perusing this thread for ideas. That prompted me to pull out a railroad watch that belonged to my grandfather and which was passed to me by my father. I had assumed the watch was no longer in working condition and I was wondering if there was anyplace in the area that could work on it. However, it turned out that the hour hand just needed to be bent back into position and the watch wound and it is ticking away again. I have no idea how old the watch is, but my grandfather died in 1963. I don't know it I will carry it on a regular basis, but it is in my pocket for today.
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I have been considering starting to wear a watch again and was perusing this thread for ideas. That prompted me to pull out a railroad watch that belonged to my grandfather and which was passed to me by my father. I had assumed the watch was no longer in working condition and I was wondering if there was anyplace in the area that could work on it. However, it turned out that the hour hand just needed to be bent back into position and the watch wound and it is ticking away again. I have no idea how old the watch is, but my grandfather died in 1963. I don't know it I will carry it on a regular basis, but it is in my pocket for today.
View attachment 1212217
The Dueber-Hampden Watch Co. of Canton, Ohio, was created by a merger in 1886. The new company was more significant than its antecedents and produced 4 million watches. In the 1890s, when synthetic rubies became widely available, Dueber-Hampden was the first to mass produce and heavily promote 17-jewel watches. (Seventeen is still the standard for mechanical watch movements, but movements with self-winding mechanisms can use up to 32 jewels.) They produced a line of "railroad grade" watches, some of which were on the approved list of various railroads.
There is a good short history here with links to some cool mass market advertising from the early 20th century:
https://mb.nawcc.org/wiki/Hampden-Watch-Co
Their watch movements were serial numbered and they kept meticulous production and purchaser records.
On 7 May 1915, the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk with 1,198 passengers and crew off the south coast of Ireland. A passenger washed ashore in October, physically unidentifiable but wearing a Hampden watch, serial number 3,039,347. The Cunard Line contacted the Dueber-Hampden Watch Co. who were able to put them in touch with the owner's family.
Wrist watches, first mass produced in 1902, came into style for men after the First World War. Due to falling sales, Dueber-Hampden went into receivership in 1927. In 1930, Amtorg Trading Corporation purchased the Dueber-Hampden Watch Company together with all of its manufacturing equipment, parts on hand, and work in progress. AMTORG (Амторг, short for Amerikanskaya Torgovlya) was the trade representation of the Soviet Union in the United States, back before the USA and USSR had diplomatic relations. Twenty eight boxcars of machinery and 21 Dueber-Hampden employees went to Moscow to establish the First State Watch Factory. In 1931, the Moscow factory began producing pocket watches with Hampden's twin finger bridge movements, which the Soviets called Type-1. Renamed First Moscow Watch Factory in 1943, old Dueber-Hampden went on to produce Poljot (Полёт, "flight"), top of the line in Soviet watches, and Yuri Gagarin's space watch.
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You have a nice old pocket watch, popedandy. It might have collector value — not enough for a new car, but maybe a new iPad. I would take it to a watchmaker for cleaning, lubrication and regulation. Besides being accurate to +/– 15 seconds per week, railroad approved watches had to be easy for a railroad's watchmakers to regulate.
A watchmaker could give you the serial number on the movement and you could look that up online. If you want to keep it, he could advise you on repair work. You have a hunter style watch which once had a cover. It might be possible to put the movement into an intact hunter case, perhaps from another Hampden watch.