Detached escapement
Pin-pallet (pin-lever) escapement
VerifiedSteel pins set into the pallet arms engage the escape-wheel teeth directly in place of jewelled pallet stones, giving a simplified and cheaper version of the lever escapement's locking and impulse action.
Schematic arrangement
How it is laid out
Outline schematic only, drawn to show the characteristic arrangement of wheel, locking member and oscillator. It is not a dimensioned working drawing and should not be used for setting up or repairing a movement.
Advantages
- Inexpensive to manufacture
- Simple to assemble in volume
- Reasonably robust
Drawbacks
- More friction and wear than a jewelled lever
- Lower long-term accuracy
- Pins wear and require eventual replacement
Attribution and period
Developed in the nineteenth century and widely adopted for inexpensive watches and clocks from the early twentieth century
Horological firsts are frequently contested. Where an invention is attributed to a named maker, that attribution is recorded as such rather than treated as settled fact.
How to recognise it
- Upright steel pins in the pallet arms in place of jewelled pallet stones.
- Often a stamped or pressed lever and an unjewelled or minimally jewelled train.
- Typical of Roskopf-descended watches and of inexpensive alarm and domestic clocks.
Servicing and conservation
Pins wear flat and the escape-wheel teeth wear in sympathy; on economy calibres the movement was designed as a replaceable unit, so a full overhaul frequently costs more than the object's market value. Conserve the original where the object has historical interest.
Work on an antique escapement by a qualified watchmaker or clockmaker. Conservation of original parts is preferred to replacement wherever the object will still run.
Bibliography
- Cutmore, M., Watches 1850–1980
- de Carle, Donald, Practical Watch Repairing
Photographs
Photographs are matched automatically from freely licensed Wikimedia Commons material. Each caption states the actual subject of the image and credits its author; where a close match for this escapement does not exist, a related mechanism may be shown instead.