New York Standard

[collin]

I thought I would post a recent purchase- New York Standard with worm drive. As is obvious, The paper dial is shrunken and almost illegible, but the movement works properly. My question concerns replacing the dial. I can print a resonable facsimile, but should I?

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/d89e4b2e58.jpg (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/e4e84b4834.jpg (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)

[Vic Kuring]

Nice rare NYS movement! Were the original dials on those actually paper and not porcelain? The hands aren't matching. Should they be spade hands or fleur-de-lis?

[collin]

You are correct about the dial- it's not paper. I believe the watch is all original but it's easy enough to disagree. It appears the whatever material was used to laminate the dial has shrunk. A close inspection of the dial reveals that it was well printed (although faded). I believe these watches were made to be reliable, relatively cheap time pieces which may explain the dial material. Someone on the forum should know better than I.

[Vic Kuring]

Collin,

I'm pretty certain that the NYS watches of that era all had porcelain dials. I've never seen a porcelain dial fade to the degree that yours has. Also the hour hand on the watch does not match the minute hand. Either style hand may be correct but I'm not certain. NYS also utilized the Fleur-de-lis stlye hands on their early watches.

Even though NYS made lower grade watches I Personally like the model 4. They are a bear to work on compared to other american made watches but I think any NYS model 4 is worth the effort because of the unusual plate configuration, worm drive or not. Nice bonus having a running worm drive. If I remember correctly they only produced about 52,000 of them and they were all produced in the early stages of the company's tenure.

I'm probably about to open a can of worms here but if I were to own that watch I would install a nice early NYS porcelain roman numeral dial with an outer minute track and a sharp pair of blued Fleur-de-lis or medium Spade hands. I'm no true expert on these but I believe thats more than likely what would have been on it when it left the factory. I've never run accross an early NYS with an arabic numbered dial. I don't think they came with arabic dials that early in the company's history and again I could be wrong.

Vic