How to Close Pivot Holes on a Pocket Watch Using Watchmakers Staking Tool

I'm going to be using my staking tool set to close the pivot holes on a pocket watch. Closing pivot holes was a regular practice on watches with the low number of jewels. It was a common job that the watchmaker had to perform almost daily. Sometimes you had to do it several times a day. If the pivot holes are too large, you're going to have a loss of power and that watch won't run well. More than likely the watch will be running slow- it won't be keeping good time. Here's the brass plate that we'll be closing the hole up on today. it's from an Elgen size 18, 7 jewel pocket watch. You can see the pivot hole that will be closing. That indention right there is called an "oil sink" and that's where you place your oil when you're lubricating your pivot. So let's talk a little bit about the pivot. Your watch has gears in it and those are called "wheels" in the watch trade. Each one of those gears has a shaft that runs through it, and the very tip of that shaft is called a "pivot". Now the pivot is a special hardened steel and it's also been highly polished to reduce friction. So here's the issue you have: you have the hardened steel on the pivot poking through the hole that's been drilled into the brass plate, which is a LOT softer than the hardened steel. Guess what's going to happen over time. That hardened steel is going to wear the hole in that brass plate and make it LARGER as that gear continues to spin around. This is usually caused by lack of lubrication or lack of cleaning and proper maintenance of the pocket watch. The watchmaker also found on some NEW watches the pivot holes needed to be closed because they were improperly sized at the factory! Let's inspect that pivot hole that we're going to be working on under the microscope.


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