My latest acquisition is a rack-lever movement by Litherland, Whiteside & Co. of Liverpool, No. 7207. David Penney, from whom I bought it, suggests a date of about 1810, which seems consistent with the summary graph of serial numbers given by David Evans* and with the fact that the name of the firm became Litherland, Davies & Co. somewhere between 1813 (Evans) and 1816 (Britten). Obviously this fairly late example, made several years after Peter Litherland's death, does not compare with the fine pre-1800 specimens posted last summer by John Pavlik and Jerry Treiman; nonetheless I think it is worth a glance as a complete and reasonably well preserved example of a four-wheel-train rack lever from the workshop, albeit not from the hand, of the inventor.
The dial (with non-original hands) looks very like that of a typical English watch of twenty or so years later, apart from the fact that the white enamel still has a gloss finish rather than the matt surface favoured by British makers from the 1820s onwards. Similarly, the backplate has exactly the layout followed in most British full-plate watches for the rest of the century, with detachable barrel-bridge (was Litherland the first to use this?) and Bosley regulator; only the bell-shaped table shows that this is not a movement from the 1830s. The fusee has maintaining-power and the 'hack' mechanism is still present, although the brass-wire detent which originally bore against the pallet-arm of the lever has been bent out of the way. The cock is an early example of the three-dimensional style of decoration especially associated with Liverpool in the second quarter of the century. Easily noticeable is the adjustment-slide for the lever, secured by a large bright-headed screw and allowing both longitudinal and lateral movement. This is at almost a right angle to the lever; its purpose, evidently, is to modify the depth of engagement between lever and escape-wheel rather than between lever and pinion.
Unfortunately the watch does not run; it will tick unevenly for five seconds, and that is all. Pivots, mainspring and fusee-chain are all intact, but the balance-spring seems to be distorted and there is no free end projecting beyond the stud-pin. My guess is that the end of the spring has broken off in the past and somebody has tried to resuscitate the movement by re-pinning the shortened spring without correcting its alignment. I suspect that the movement will not run again unless the whole spring is replaced, but that there is nothing else preventing it from doing so. The gilding is still very bright and I cannot see any trace of rust on the steel parts.
I have discovered that there is a peculiar difficulty when removing and replacing the balance of a rack-lever. With most levers, there is only one position in which the impulse-pin and the fork of the lever will engage; the pin (or, in a Savage escapement, the pair of pins) is either between the prongs of the fork (right) or outside them (wrong, and instantly recognisable as such). In the rack-lever, by contrast, the rack has twelve teeth and the pinion on the balance-staff has six leaves; any of the six leaves will engage happily in any of the eleven slots between the rack teeth, so that there are (I think) sixty-six possible permutations, but only one of these will allow the watch to run! Not realising this at first, I lost the alignment so that the escapement would not tick at all, and it needed several hours of trial and error to bring rack and pinion back into what I think is the correct relationship.
I must apologise for the poor image of the dial; suddenly my elbows decided to remind me that Nature did not intend them to function as a tripod! Also, it will be noticed that the balance-spring is disengaged from the regulator pins; I corrected this afterwards.
Oliver Mundy.
*'Peter Litherland, Liverpool, and the Rack Lever', in Antiquarian Horology, March 2010.
The dial (with non-original hands) looks very like that of a typical English watch of twenty or so years later, apart from the fact that the white enamel still has a gloss finish rather than the matt surface favoured by British makers from the 1820s onwards. Similarly, the backplate has exactly the layout followed in most British full-plate watches for the rest of the century, with detachable barrel-bridge (was Litherland the first to use this?) and Bosley regulator; only the bell-shaped table shows that this is not a movement from the 1830s. The fusee has maintaining-power and the 'hack' mechanism is still present, although the brass-wire detent which originally bore against the pallet-arm of the lever has been bent out of the way. The cock is an early example of the three-dimensional style of decoration especially associated with Liverpool in the second quarter of the century. Easily noticeable is the adjustment-slide for the lever, secured by a large bright-headed screw and allowing both longitudinal and lateral movement. This is at almost a right angle to the lever; its purpose, evidently, is to modify the depth of engagement between lever and escape-wheel rather than between lever and pinion.
Unfortunately the watch does not run; it will tick unevenly for five seconds, and that is all. Pivots, mainspring and fusee-chain are all intact, but the balance-spring seems to be distorted and there is no free end projecting beyond the stud-pin. My guess is that the end of the spring has broken off in the past and somebody has tried to resuscitate the movement by re-pinning the shortened spring without correcting its alignment. I suspect that the movement will not run again unless the whole spring is replaced, but that there is nothing else preventing it from doing so. The gilding is still very bright and I cannot see any trace of rust on the steel parts.
I have discovered that there is a peculiar difficulty when removing and replacing the balance of a rack-lever. With most levers, there is only one position in which the impulse-pin and the fork of the lever will engage; the pin (or, in a Savage escapement, the pair of pins) is either between the prongs of the fork (right) or outside them (wrong, and instantly recognisable as such). In the rack-lever, by contrast, the rack has twelve teeth and the pinion on the balance-staff has six leaves; any of the six leaves will engage happily in any of the eleven slots between the rack teeth, so that there are (I think) sixty-six possible permutations, but only one of these will allow the watch to run! Not realising this at first, I lost the alignment so that the escapement would not tick at all, and it needed several hours of trial and error to bring rack and pinion back into what I think is the correct relationship.
I must apologise for the poor image of the dial; suddenly my elbows decided to remind me that Nature did not intend them to function as a tripod! Also, it will be noticed that the balance-spring is disengaged from the regulator pins; I corrected this afterwards.
Oliver Mundy.
*'Peter Litherland, Liverpool, and the Rack Lever', in Antiquarian Horology, March 2010.
