PUW 361

Description

One of the most successful caliber series of the PUW was the series 360/1360 in the 1960s. It consisted of 11 1/2 ligne windup and selfwinding movements and was loved because of its very good construction and reliability.

The PUW 361 shown here is the windup version with date indication.

The really good construction made this movement to be equal with the high quantity movements of AS, ETA or FHF these days.

You can see the high standard on the base plate, which leaves lots of space unused due to using a large mainspring barrel, and of course uses rubies of all important bearings.

In good tradition, this movements uses a directly driven center minute wheel, which is beared under its own small bridge.

The rest of the gear train is also classical, with third theel, directly driven center seconds wheel and stell escape wheel.

The PUW 361 uses a large modern anular balance, which is beared in two Incabloc shock protections. New, compared to the predecessor series 260/1261 is the moveable hairspring stud, which allows zeroing the beat error and thus ideal power transmission between the escape wheel, lever and balance.

The contemporarily slow 18000 A/h can be adjusted on the hairspring key, which is prolonged and even has got an additional hole for making the adjustment easier and safer.

A typical detail of the “large” PUW movement is, that the ratchet is always located on the inner side of the bridges, here on the inner side of the gear train bridge. On the selfwinding versions, this saves a little height.

Of course, the PUW 361 uses a yoke winding system, easily to spot at position 3 o’clock.

The slowly switching calendar mechanism is still a rather simple construction. It consists (besides the usual lever and spring to lock the calendar ring) only of a transmission wheel, which connects with the hour wheel, and a switching wheel, which advances the date ring.

By turning the hands back from midnight to 8pm, the calendar is not set backwards, so this mechanism allows a semi-fast correction of the date.

The PUW 361 is a wunderfully pragmatic mass series movement, which was understandably very popular in the 1960s and was on par with the swiss mass series movements of that time.

Technical data

Usage gallery