K&D Kendrick and Davis Balance Tools for Truing, Poising and Staffing

/ Watchmakers / By

Do you ever venture over to the section known as watch tools on eBay? If you have, you’ll notice it’s a busy market. You can find it by navigating from All categories to Jewelry and Watches, then select work your way through all the sponsored headings and hopefully, you will find a listing of vintage tools. To save you the trouble, here’s a link:

I used to just check the preowned section under “Condition” and suddenly all the used watch tools appeared. Then I select the gallery view up in the right corner.

Once you get there, you mind find it mind-boggling.

If you don’t know what you are doing, you face a huge disadvantage if you want to shop in the watch tools and repair kit area. Who knows if the prices are fair? Which tools go together? What if it’s broken?

For the reasons mentioned above, I put kits together to accomplish specific tasks. Aside from my own knowledge, I look at books from Fried, De Carle, the Chicao Watch School, Joseph Bulova’s  Watch School manual and Technical Guides from Hamilton, Elgin and so forth. I want to know what you’re reading. Are my kits perfect? Probably not, but they are complete and the prices are fair.You won’t buy a $10 screw cutter for $55 because someone found a watchmaker’s estate when cruising flea markets and garage sales and thought they struck it rich.

This kit is designed to let you work on watch balances. The tools help you remove the hairspring, the roller table and a broken staff. When you replace a broken staff, you’ll need staking tools, which I’m not offering in this kit. After replacing the staff, you will use tools in this kit to true and poise the the balance wheel before re-installing it.

Here’s what I included:

  • K&D Collet Remover Fork to remove Hairspring
  • Hammel, Riglander V-Shape Table Remover for Large to Medium Size Roller Tables
  • Large K&D Table Remover with Handle Lever for Pocket Watches and Large Caliber Straps
  • Staking Block for Positioning and Holding Balance 
  • Adjustable K&D Roller Remover for Staking Frame for Small to Medium Size Bracelet, Strap and Smaller Pendants 
  • Screw Undercutters for Poising Balance Wheels
  • K&D Calipers For Truing the Balance 
  • Caliper Brush used with Truing Calipers
  • Hammel Riglander Poising Tool  with Jeweled Jaws-  no chips 
  • Air blower – Light Stream Control for Poising Tool
  • Balance Adjusting Wrench to Straight Wheels with Truing

Normally,you would have to assemble a balance tool set by purchasing them separately. In many cases, some of these tools do not show up for as long as one year. I understand since I assembled it.

Why these tools? As I wrote above, these provide you with the items you need to accomplish that task.

If you want to use this list as a guide, be my guest. Any of the books you read about repairing watches, will have you use tools like these or similar – the things you need to get the job done. If you want to see this offering at eBay, click here.