Kienzle 058b25

Description

After WW II, Kienzle was one of the most important mass-producers of watches, which in its heytime supplied almost every fourth german wrist. This can only be reached with cheap mass products, with pin lever movements.

Nevertheless, Kienzle also tried to reach the “upper” marktes with either swiss movements from ETA or EB, or with own, better movements, such as the caliber 058b25 shown here.

It was constructed in a rather cheap column-type construction, but uses a swiss-type pallet lever escapement. It allows significantly better precision than a pin-lever escapement. Additionally, a large balance is used, which is beared in two KIF Trior shock protections.

The construction of the movement was very modern, especially compared to the older pin lever movements, since it already uses a decentral large driving wheel, which drives the minute hand indirectly and allows the use of a very large balance to allow better timing results.

On the dial side, there’s just a simple rocking bar winding mechanism, but at least the mainspring barrel uses an elaborate click mechanism.

The slowly advancing date can be corrected semi-fast by turning the time back and forth a few hours. To achieve that, the driving wheel uses a spring mechanism. The date indication is realized by a disc and not by a date ring.