CHAPTER II.

THE CYLINDER ESCAPEMENT.

There is always in mechanical matters an underlying combination of principles and relations of parts known as “theory.”  We often hear the remark made that such a thing may be all right in theory, but will not work in practice.  This statement has no foundation in fact.  If a given mechanical device accords strictly with theory, it will come out all right practically. Mental conceptions of a machine are what we may term their theoretical existence.

When we make drawings of a machine mentally conceived, we commence its mechanical construction, and if we make such drawings to scale, and add a specification stating the materials to be employed, we leave only the merest mechanical details to be carried out; the brain work is done and only finger work remains to be executed.

With these preliminary remarks we will take up the consideration of the cylinder escapement invented by Robert Graham about the year 1720.  It is one of the two so-called frictional rest dead-beat escapements which have come into popular use, the other being the duplex.  Usage, or, to put it in other words, experience derived from the actual manufacture of the cylinder escapement, settled the best forms and proportions of the several parts years ago.  Still, makers vary slightly on certain lines, which are important for a man who repairs such watches to know and be able to carry out, in order to put them in a condition to perform as intended by the manufacturers.  It is not knowing these lines which leaves the average watchmaker so much at sea.  He cuts and moves and shifts parts about to see if dumb luck will not supply the correction he does not know how to make.  This requisite knowledge does not consist so much in knowing how to file or grind as it does in discriminating where such application of manual dexterity is to be applied.  And right here let us make a remark to which we will call attention again later on.  The point of this remark lies in the question—­How many of the so-called practical watchmakers could tell you what proportion of a cylinder should be cut away from the half shell?  How many could explain the difference between the “real” and “apparent” lift?  Comparatively few, and yet a knowledge of these things is as important for a watchmaker as it is for a surgeon to understand the action of a man’s heart or the relations of the muscles to the bones.

ESSENTIAL PARTS OF THE CYLINDER ESCAPEMENT.

The cylinder escapement is made up of two essential parts, viz.:  the escape wheel and the cylinder.  The cylinder escape wheel in all modern watches has fifteen teeth, although Saunier, in his “Modern Horology,” delineates a twelve-tooth wheel for apparently no better reason than because it was more easily drawn.  We, in this treatise, will consider both the theoretical action and the practical construction, but more particularly the repair of this escapement in a thorough and complete manner.