Burlington grade question

[Steve D.]

Can someone please give me information regarding the grade and age of a Burlington 21 jewel watch, open face. The brushed metal dial with Roman numerals is signed Burlington. The case has the Burlington hallmark and is signed The Burlington Watch Co, 14 karat Gold Filled, Chicago, USA The movement is signed Burlington Watch Co. underneath the balance wheel and also 21 Jewels, double roller, Adjusted Temp and Positions. The serial number is 4667182. Stem wind and stem set. The case is kind of fancy and is white gold filled. I broke the crystal last week trying to snap it back on so are crystals still available? Oh, it is a 16s. Thanks for any other information.

Steve

[Kent]

Hi Steve:

The Burlington Watch Co., of Chicago, IL, was a mail-order sales operation. Almost all of the watches were made by the Illinois Watch Co. and privately-labeled for Burlington. There are allegations that the Burlington Watch Co. was an operation owned and operated by the Illinois Watch Co. as a outlet for its medium grade movements. However, documentation supporting the allegations have yet to come to light. Since the vast majority of Burlington watches were made by the Illinois Watch Co., information about them is contained in American Pocket Watches Vol. 2, Illinois Watch Co., Encyclopedia and Price Guide, William Meggers, Jr. & Roy Ehrhardt, Heart of America Press, Kansas City, MO, 1985. In seeking information about a watch, it is the serial number on the movement (the "works") that is important.

In addition to printed references, and Russell W Snyder's Illinois Data Base CD, which may be obtained by an email to Jon Hanson at jonontime@aol.com, there are Oldwatch.com's Illinois Production Date Chart (http://www.oldwatch.com/Illinoisdate.html) and the PocketWatchSite's Illinois Date Table (http://www.pocketwatchsite.com/illinoisserials.html) which are an online means for determining the very approximate production date of Illinois pocket watches. In general, we think of serial number vs. date lists - created by using the average number of watches produced over a period of years - to only be accurate within a year or two at best, and recognize that there are numerous exceptions wherein which the dates may be off as much as 3 years or more. This is not just for Illinois, but for other watch manufacturers as well.

Looking up movement serial number 4,667,182 in the above references shows it to be an Illinois grade No. 275, a 12-size watch, built in about 1925. Burlington also offered a full line of 12-size dress watches, as may be seen in this 1922 Ad (http://static.flickr.com/76/228703312_06a7c79eff_b.jpg).

It seems that once a watch is recognized as a special order, or private label, watch, it doesn't really matter from which run/grade it was drawn. The only thing that matters is what was contracted for by the buyer. It was only for convenience (i.e., production efficiency) that private label movements for higher grade watches were taken from runs of high grade watches, thus minimizing the task of meeting special order requirements. Although, in general, the finish and adjustment of a private label watch is probably the same as that of the grade of the run from which it was taken, until one sees the retailer's description of the watch, it is indeterminate whether its description matches that of the factory run from which it was drawn.

A caliper, reading in thousandths (1/1000's) of an inch, or tenths (1/10's) of a millimeter, is needed to measure a bezel to determine the correctly-sized crystal. Bezels have slightly larger diameters inside the "bottom" of their groove, than inside their upper rim. To find the correct crystal size, one needs to measure that larger inside diameter. This is because the correctly-sized crystal is held in place by the upper rim, such that cement is not needed for a correctly-sized crystal. It simply 'snaps' into place.

Then, depending upon whether the measurement is in inches or millimeters, use the appropriate chart to find the right crystal size. Or, crystal suppliers ought to be able to furnish a correctly-sized crystal directly from your measurement. Depending upon the cost of the crystals, it might be advisable to get one or two sizes immediately larger and smaller than the one indicated by the measurement, especially if expect to continue collecting the same size watches.

Crystal Charts
A crystal size chart, and its explanation, can be viewed at:
www.elginwatches.org/scans/misc_ads/1927/m_index.html
To view, go to the Elgin Watch Collectors Site Home Page at elginwatches.org, then copy and paste the address in your browser's address bar and click on 'Go'.
Thanks to Steve Maddox, we have access to a Crystal Size to Decimal Inch Conversion Chart (http://photos10.flickr.com/16463399_10d80f7055_o.jpg).

You can avoid all of the charts and figuring sizes out by simply measuring the inside diameter of the bezel and contacting a supplier with the measurement. Anybody who sells crystals should be able to work from that

Watch Materials are available from:
Brian Cavanaugh, pwpartsetc@pwatch.com
Bryan Eyring, bdeyring@hotmail.com
Dashto (http://www.dashto.org/)
Otto Frei (http://www.ofrei.com/)
Uncle Larry's Watch Shop (http://www.execulink.com/~lfoord/order.html)

Mounting the Crystal
When a glass crystal is sized correctly to the metal bezel that holds it, it is an interference fit. To fit a crystal into the bezel, set the bezel on a flat surface, facing upward, and place the crystal on top. If the crystal is slightly too small, it will drop right into place and be loose within the bezel. A correctly-sized crystal will "almost" fit within the inner rim of the bezel, appearing to extend beyond the rim of the bezel by a tiny amount. If this is a crystal that had previously resided in the bezel, it is correctly sized. If it is a new crystal, be careful that it is not too large for the bezel. The correctly-sized crystal can be "snapped" into place by placing your thumbs on opposite sides of the bezel, overlapping the crystal. As you press down firmly (but not excessively) and roll your thumbs together, the correctly-sized crystal will seat with an audible "snapping" sound.

Good luck,

[rrwatch]

Steve,
Accoring to the data in Dr. Russ Snyder's Illinois database your watch, S/N 4,667,182, is a 12 size, Model 3, Grade 275 movement, pendant set, made in 1925. It was adjusted to positions, but the exact number of positions was carefully never stated on the Illinois made Burlingtons. Total production on the Grade 275 was 36,300. The 12 and 16 size Burlington's used a very similar plate layout, and are often mistaken for each other.

Dang - Kent and I answered at the same time again!!

[Steve D.]

Thank you Ed and Kent for providing me with all the information I was looking for. Snapping a new crystal into the bezel sounds a bit tricky to me, especially since I clumsily broke the original one just trying to snap the bezel back in place. Think I'll leave that to an expert.

I now have a few photos to post.

29146

29147

[Jim Carroll]

Ed,
The sure way to tell if an image of a Burlington Watch Co. movement is a size 12 or 16 is that there was not enough room on the size 12 base plate for the wording Burlington Watch Co. and the term double roller, so the words double roller are stamped on the top of the escapement bridge although some early runs of the 19 jewel 274 grade Burlingtons don’t have double roller stamped on the movements.
From some research I have been doing I believe the grade 275 movements are all Burlington Watch Co. and the total figure is over 50,000.

[Fred Hansen]

The Burlingtons are attractive triple-signed watches and are fun to collect. They can still often be found at very reasonable prices, and they also sometimes came with very interesting and sometimes also very scarce dial and case styles.

The very high majority of Burlingtons in 16 and 12 size rank in the better end of the middle quality range of Illinois products of their time. They had composition (not gold) jewel settings, gold plated train wheels, and other details of finish that were not quite what was found on the top cost Illinois grades. The adjustment markings of these watches were (purposely?) vague, but I've always suspected were most likely at about the 3 position level. These watches were designed to be nice looking 19 and 21 jewel movements that could be produced and sold at better prices than what the contemporary top priced models in the high jewel counts were, and this was a success as many runs at this similar quality level were produced over a number of years.

The only Burlingtons that were ever produced that did rank with the top end of Illinois products were about 100 made early on from a run of Sangamo grade movements. These are signed "Adjusted Temperature, 6 Positions, Isochronism" and had full gold train, gold jewel settings, gold balance screws, and the other details of finish typical to an Illinois Sangamo grade. After this single run it seems that Burlington chose to never return to this quality level again with their products and instead focused on the grades that must have proved to be much better sellers. Thanks to member Larry Soucheck there are some beautiful photos of one of these Sangamo grade Burlingtons on the Global Horology message board at this link ... http://www.global-horology.com/GHMB/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=779 (http://www.global-horology.com/GHMB/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=779)

In the other direction, there were also some Burlington watches produced at lower quality levels but again these are much lower in total production numbers and seem to have been an early experiment that didn't last too long. The lowest end of these I've seen is an 11 jewel 16 size Getty model at 1.9 million serial number with a sunk-seconds (not double-sunk) Burlington dial.

But again overall it seems that Burlington really found their niche among the more modestly finished 19 and 21 jewel 16 and 12 size products and even though early on they did make a few both above and below this quality level, it was at this better end of the middle quality Illinois level that they really hit their market and became a success.

Fred