Rodkford 9 jewel

[Don]

I have a nice old 9 jewel key wind S# 11688 if i remember right, it may be 11689 It should be the first year of production.
It is both a key wind and stem wind. With this early S# would the stem wind have been added to the watch. I have had it for about 20 years and have never had reason to have it taken apart. Just thought about it the other day when I opened it up to look at it.
Don

[Greg Frauenhoff]

Don,

Very early on Rockford made some stem wind mvts (their earliest pocket catalog from c. 1877 notes that both stem and key winders were available, but this may have been a bit of puffery). Rockford's stem wind feature evolved over time, so several different arrangements are known. Also, some KW mvts were converted to stem wind post factory; the most well known conversion kit being made and marketed by Abbott. It is also known that some KW Rockfords that had been sitting in the Company's inventory for a long time were converted to SW (by the factory) prior to being sold.

To sort things out re your mvt, it would probably be necessary to see its SW mechanism and then compare it with various others.

Greg