CRC 962/21

Description

In the 1970s, the french Montres Esperanto launched under the manufacturer name “CRC” and handful of simple windup movements.

The 10 1/2 ligne caliber CRC 962/21 shown here belongs to the top ones of that series, with a real pallet lever escapement and a date indication.

The base plate of this pillar movement shows on the left the plastic bearing of the winding system. Besides that, you’ll notice, that all important bearings contain rubies, which is not often to be seen on pillar movements.

The center seconds wheel bearing on the dial side is a bit odd, since it is not fixed, but only laid on.

Thanks to the omission of a central minute wheel, the gear train consists of unusually large wheels. The mainspring barrel drives the second wheel, followed by third wheel, center seconds wheel and finally the steel escape wheel.

The regulating device of this pallet lever movement is a simple three-leg anular balance, which is beated in two shock protections of the type Antichoc S65.

As the suffix “21” already indicates, the beat rate of this movement is 21600 A/h. It can only be regulated directly on the hairspring key.

In order to give the balance cock a better hold, a spacer is placed on the two pillars. The balance cock is then screwed onto this spacer.

Like a Roskopf movement, the mainspring barrel has a gear on its top which is connected to the mainspring barrel by a simple slipping clutch.

Unlike a real Roskopf movement, only the cannon pinion is driven by the mainspring barrel. The hour wheel is driven like on a regular movement by an intermediate wheel.

Unfortunately, this movement has to use a trick, to reach the advertising-effective number of “17 jewels”: On the dial side of the lever bearing, which is not oiled anyways, there’s a cap jewel, which is useless and even counterproductive, since it can’t be removed and therefore can’t be cleaned.

The calendar module of the CRC 962/21 is mostly made of plastic and mounted on top of the dial side. Since aged plastic is especially fragile, it was not further disassembled.

The wheel at 7:30 has a slightly longer tooth, which advances the date ring. The date can be corrected semi-fast by turning the time forth and back a few hours around midnight.

Technical data

Usage gallery