What's the Opposite of a Sidewinder?

[Barry G]

All right, silly question time.... I know that a hunter case movement placed in an open face case is called a "sidewinder" [because you wind it at the side instead of at the top, of course]. But is there a special name for an open face movement placed in a hunting case?

Regards,

Barry [NAWCC #144290]

------------------
My Online Pocket Watch Collection (http://www.ultranet.com/~barry/watches.htm)

[Barry G]

All right, silly question time.... I know that a hunter case movement placed in an open face case is called a "sidewinder" [because you wind it at the side instead of at the top, of course]. But is there a special name for an open face movement placed in a hunting case?

Regards,

Barry [NAWCC #144290]

------------------
My Online Pocket Watch Collection (http://www.ultranet.com/~barry/watches.htm)

[Tom McIntyre]

I had never seen the term "sidewinder" until very recently. It seems to be part of a amateur marketing campaign to lend respectability to an obviously recased movement.

You can probably have the honor of coming up with a name for a hunting case watch with the 12:00 at the pendant. However, these are not always recases and may even be normally straight. Especially in European watches, the maker might have considered it important to have the pendant at 12:00.

Conversion dials with the seconds bit at the 3:00 position are also almost all recase indications.

Second bits at 9:00 are not necessarily recased material. I think we discussed a while back that the Waltham Double Dial Chronograph's have this dial when cased in an open face case. This is, of course, the hunting to open face "conversion" dial.

------------------
Tom McIntyre
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.mcintyre.com/McIntyre)

[Barry G]

Hmmmmmm...

I didn't realize that "sidewinder" was a relatively new term. Perhaps you're right and there is no "official" term for an open face movement in a hunter case. "Topwinder" perhaps? Or is that redundant, seeing as how MOST open face watches wind at the top?

And yes, I know about conversion dials. In fact, whenever I see somebody selling a watch with a conversion dial and describing it as "rare" or "unusual" I can't help pointing out to them that, while the dial may indeed be a bit unusual, the watch itself is just a plain old hunter case watch which has been recased somewhere along the line....

Barry

------------------
My Online Pocket Watch Collection (http://www.ultranet.com/~barry/watches.htm)

[edited to add: I'm no longer a "new" member! Woo-Hoo!!! :wink:]



[This message has been edited by Barry G (edited 09-12-2000).]

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Barry and Tom,

I recall seeing either the term "side winder" or "side wheeler" used a long time ago (c. 1920).

I will check my files and report back.

Greg

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Barry and Tom,

An article in the Railway Age from 1920 shows a picture of an 18 size open face watch with a hunting mvt (winds at 3) and describes it thus: "Old-Style "Side Wheeler" Watch".

As for "Side Winder", it seems a better description than "Side Wheeler" and so it's use is also probably quite old.

As for hunting mvts in OF cases, my own opinion is that a good number of American hunting mvts were originally purchased in open face cases.
Of course, there's no way to prove this to everyone's satisfaction so it seems a rather pointless exercise to try.

Cheers,

Greg

[Kent]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Greg Frauenhoff:
... An article in the Railway Age from 1920 shows a picture of an 18 size open face watch with a hunting mvt (winds at 3) and describes it thus: "Old-Style "Side Wheeler" Watch". ...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What Greg neglected to mention was that the person being quoted was Webb c. Ball, hardly an amateur.

I have heard the term "Side-Winder" applied to hunting-case movements in open-face cases for over twenty years and I suspect that it goes back a good deal further than that.

Kent

[This message has been edited by Kent (edited 09-12-2000).]

[jagkar]

That seems to establish that there's no opposite to a sidewinder, and that's reasonable too because "sidewinder" is a term of abuse, more or less, (it brings to mind a snake with nasty habits) applied to a watch which has come down in the world. Sidewheeler probably lost currency when the steamboats it was named after became rarities. Not to imply that all hunter cases are more deluxe than open face cases, but that's generally true, and so going the other direction would be an upgrade of sorts. To confirm that terms of abuse are far more common than compliments, look in the American Dictionary of Slang.

[Larry Jones 98326]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jagkar:

That seems to establish that there's no opposite to a sidewinder, and that's reasonable too because "sidewinder" is a term of abuse, more or less, (it brings to mind a snake with nasty habits) applied to a watch which has come down in the world. Sidewheeler probably lost currency when the steamboats it was named after became rarities. Not to imply that all hunter cases are more deluxe than open face cases, but that's generally true, and so going the other direction would be an upgrade of sorts. To confirm that terms of abuse are far more common than compliments, look in the American Dictionary of Slang. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

jagkar,

Well, I supppose the snakes among us are highly insulted, but I'm not, so I'm not.....but.....I personally consider the term descriptive rather than derogatory. But who knows exactly what people were thinking 90 years or so back when the terms were applied.

[Tom McIntyre]

As I said in an earlier post in this thread, I first saw the term on eBay, but I don't spend much time reading old railroad magazines.

The watches that the ads and commentaries probably refer to are the very first stemwind watches that were stemwind adaptations of HC movements. The Waltham 1857 and 1870 models are examples. Both of these watches were introduced in stemwind versions and marketed to the railroad trade. In the preferred open face version, they wind at 3:00.

Once the movements were redesigned for open face service, the older movements were at least old fashioned.

I would think that any movement made after the common availability of open face stem wind movements in a hunting case style would have been cased originally in a hunting style case. The exceptions would have been watches purchased from jewelers in the hinterlands who did not have the open face equivalent movement available.

My impression, without checking a lot of references, is that the open face, stem wind movements were first introduced in the 1880's. The Waltham American Grade 1872 model was first available in open face at sn 1,427,901. The records for that run have been lost, but the preceding run up to 1,427,900 was made in November 1879.

Illinois' 5th pinion models were introduced about the same time and the Elgin Grade 72 was also introduced in 1879. The lower grades were available in stemwind, open face slightly sooner.

The point of this is that any hunting case watch made after 1880 has no excuse for being in an open face case unless its original case was worn out or scrapped for gold value.



------------------
Tom McIntyre
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.mcintyre.com/McIntyre)

[Jerry Laux]

I'm sure there must have been a few eccentrics who demanded that their new hunter movements be put in new open-face cases; but they had to be the very rare exception to the general rule. As Damon Runyon said: "The race goes not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that's the way to bet." So before you bet your hard earned money that some sidewinder is an original; at least check for obvious signs of recasing.



------------------
Jerry Laux

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Jerry,

Here's my opinion (theory?) (for what it's worth) on why a number of (or a lot, but certainly not most or even close to a majority) of hunting mvts may have been sold in open face cases when new. It has to do with fashion and discounting.

Between 1880 and 1910 the number of hunting case mvts, as compared with open face mvts, being made declined significanty (I think his is provable but will leave it to someone else to check out the numbers). Inventories of good grade htg mvts accumulated at factories and jewelry stores because hunting case watches were becoming less and less popular. Hunting mvts were getting hard to sell and since many were still in inventory the factories/jewelers discounted them in price in order to move them. Even some split plate Howard mvts were sold at cheap prices to catalog houses such as Montgomery Wards (not exactly for the reasons herein proposed, but it illustrates that all good things come to end and when they do there's always some stuff to get rid of).

So, if you have a good grade of htg mvt and you're selling it cheap, my guess is that many of the buyers for them were interested in a "good watch" cheap. The way to make such a watch was to sell a high grade (but discontinued and heavily discounted) movement in a cheap case. Since about the cheapest "good" case you could buy was a silveroid open face one, the high grade mvt, be it hunting or open face, was married to an open face case.

Just some opinions,

Greg

[Tom McIntyre]

My opinion is that there have been two or three major upheavals in our economic system since these watches were originally cased and that essentially all the ones that were originally in gold cases found their way into inexpensive open face cases.

Historians can check the dates since I am supposedly working at the moment but, I think 1892 was a minor depression and 1929 was a major depressions and the panic run up in the price of gold in the late 1970's created a similar phenomenon.

Hunger and greed seem sufficient to explain the phenomenon. Therefore Bishop Occam would counsel against any more complex explanation.

------------------
Tom McIntyre
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.mcintyre.com/McIntyre)

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Tom,

I have no doubt that you're correct that many (perhaps even most) most hunting mvts in "original looking" open face cases got that way because of the reasons that you suggest (scraping of cases).

However, I am still of the opinion that many were also sold when new in open face cases, for the reasons that I suggested above.

I will check my new-old-stock mvt pile and report what percentage are OF versus Htg mvts. This will be a small sample but it might give some indication as to whether more Htg mvts were left uncased than OF mvts and, if so, this might tend to support an argument that htg mvts were more likely to be held in inventory. Being held in inventory longer means that they were probably harder to sell and thus, when finally sold, were sold cheaper. Being sold cheaper means they probably ended up in a cheap case, i. e. an open face silveroid one. The speculation never ends! (Which is part of what makes old watches so endlessly fascinating).

Greg

P. S. I'm supposed to be working as well. Oh well.

[Greg Frauenhoff]

P. P. S. to Tom,

I thought Heir Occam was a barber not a man of the cloth? :smile:

[Barry G]

All right, this is all well and good [not to mention very interesting and enlightening]. But I STILL want to know what you call an open face movement in a hunter case....

:wink:

Barry

------------------
My Online Pocket Watch Collection (http://www.ultranet.com/~barry/watches.htm)

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Tom and Jerry (sorry, I couldn't resist),

I didn't get very far in my files when I came across a htg mvt being sold in an open face case.

The relevant item is an 18 size 17 jewel Hampden New Railway being sold by Montgomery Ward & Co. Illustrated is a "side-winder". The prices run from $9.98 in an OF silveroid up to $17.25 in a 25 year GF OF case. It was an extra $3 in a gold-filled htg case.

I will post a picture when I get a chance.

Greg

Special to Barry,

I have no idea what to call an open face mvt in a hunting case.

[Jerry Laux]

Greg,
you have proven beyond any doubt that the term "sidewinder," was used long before Ebay to sell watches. Your hypothesis about slow moving inventory of hunter movements seems a very plausible explanation for some of the early sales. However, what did the merchants do with their increasing problem of unoccupied hunter cases? Lockets perhaps?
I still maintain that the term is most often used today to give implied legitimacy to a recased watch for sale. Caveat emptor.


------------------
Jerry Laux

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Jerry,

You're probably be right about the use of sidewinder to give an air of legitimacy to certain mvt/case combinations today. However, it is also a very descriptive term, and I think it would be unfair to ascribe nefarious motives to all who use the term. My own collection has many sidewinders in it, most of which are definitely recases, but then mvts are generally of more interest to me than the cases.

Here is a picture of the ad as promised.

<img src=http://members.aol.com/gfrauen/side.jpg>

Cheers,

Greg

[Greg Frauenhoff]

let me try this picture business again
http://members.aol.com/gfrauen/side.jpg

[Larry Jones 98326]

Greg,

Thanks for the image. 80% price increase from open face nickel, to a gold filled hunting case! I missed the date of the ad, but if it's ca 1900, wages (for miners, for example) were on the order of $2-$3 per day, so that $8 extra for the HC wasn't chicken feed.

As you know, I use the term sidewinder all the time on my ads as a descriptive term. Some people actually like the 3 oclock wind. I had assumed that a very small number were originally custom cased that way at the jeweler's, but didn't realize Wards, and probably others, were selling complete watches that way. This discussion has convinced me that more of these "sidewinders" are legitimate than I thought. So who will be the first to use the term "orignal sidewinder"?

This is a situation where the numbers have a lot to do with reality - there are simply a great deal many more hunting case movements around nowadays than there are hunting cases, and the result is that a lot of hunting case movements are in open face cases and will probably remain there.