AS 53 A

Description

In the early 20th century, the swiss manufacturer AS still made lots of cylinder movements, some of better quality, some pretty simple, as the one shown here.

With a diameter of 12 1/2 lignes, the AS 53 A is almost too big for a wrist watch, because at that time, people didn’t yet put frying pans on their wrist, but were happy when a watch was as small as possible.

The silver colored base plate shows, that we don’t have a precision movement here. There are no bearing jeweils and the adjustment of the depthing of the cylinder wheel into the balance cylinder was made hands-on with a forceful bending of the U shaped balance wheel bearing.

The gear train with its pretty large gears already reminds of that of later lever movements, even a decentral seconds indication of 6 o’clock was available.

The minute wheel is directly driven by the mainspring barrel, and the steel cylinder movement is beared under an own, flat cock.

The brass anular balance is of course not yet shock protected. On the dial movement side, where you can see it, there were two jewels used, bearing and cap jewel. On the balance wheel cock you can also see the long regulator arm for adjusting the beat frequency.

The ratchet on the dial side is well executed, even though it consists only of one part.

At position 8 o’clock, there’s the steel plate, which covers the metal bushing for the balance wheel. In terms of quality and longevity, this is the least preferrable solution, which causes additional wear to the balance wheel.

Pretty odd is, that this movement has got a caliber number with suffix (here: A). AS used suffixes only very seldom, so, why it was used here, is not known, unfortunately.

Technical data

Usage gallery