Rules and Practice for Adjusting Watches

Walter J. Kleinlein’s Rules and Practice for Adjusting Watches, first published in 1920, is one of the standard English-language texts on the fine adjustment of mechanical watches. Kleinlein wrote it in response to letters from working watchmakers who had read an earlier trade-journal article of his and wanted a fuller treatment—and in his preface he calls out the preceding twenty-five years as the period of greatest progress American watch adjusting had ever seen.

The book is organized in three parts. The first covers the adjustment to temperature, including compensation-balance theory, rating cards, and correction methods. The second covers the adjustments to isochronism and positions—the work that distinguished an ordinary movement from a certified railroad-grade watch. The third gathers special notes on balance poising, hairspring truing, and bench workflow. The math is kept elementary by design; Kleinlein wrote, in his own words, for the “average watchmaker.”

A practical, period-correct reference for anyone adjusting high-grade pocket movements—Hamilton, Waltham, Illinois Bunn Special, Hampden—or applying the same principles to modern mechanical work.