Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
The Model 2
1888 to 1900
The Model 2 was the company's first hunting watch, conceived in 1886 and produced the following year. It was a skeletonized 3/4-plate design with a graceful cantilever over the center wheel pivot that continued the use of the long pallet escapement, and were available in either gilt or nickel, or the rare flashed-gilt and two-tone plates. With the exception of a few key-wind examples, all the rest were lever-set and were available in jewel counts of 7 in gilt all the way up to 20 for the rarest Model 2 of all - the Henry Molineux.
Grade Assignment
The Jeweling
The factory seldom jeweled the center wheel on the pillar plate, resulting in a 16-jewel watch that appears to be fully jeweled. The company also produced 17-jewel variants, but without pulling the dial there is no way to visually tell the difference. None of the known advertisements list a 16-jewel Model 2, even though the factory catalogs show them, so it's not clear if there are any missing grades yet to be found or if it was intentionally misleading advertising. For ease of research the 16- and 17-jewel grades have been combined.
* The 11-jewel nickel Grade 156 has been assigned.
The Confusion
The Grade 152 was defined in every publication as a 15-jewel lever-set nickel Model 2, but if the word "Adjusted" is milled onto its plates that very same watch becomes a Grade 197. Add a center jewel and those become Grades 191 and 180, making a total of four grade possibilities. In the middle serial number blocks those four grades alternated with each other seemingly at random on consecutive movements. Adding to the confusion, the four standard 15-jewel grades - the gilt 52 and 97 and the nickel 152 and 197 all had "upgraded" grades, which simply swapped the basic single-sunk dial for a double-sunk. Since it's impossible to know if a dial is original to a given movement, the lower grades have been used in all the search returns. If yours has an original double-sunk dial, then you have one of the higher grades of 71, 102, 171 or 202.
The Grade 508
The 16 and 17-jewel nickel Grade 508 is Adjusted to Temperature and Position, according to both the plate engravings and the period ads, while the Henry Molineux is simply Adjusted, technically making the 508 a higher grade at the same jewel count.
The Grade 408 is the gilt version of the 508 and was listed in several trade catalogs, but so far a single example has yet to be reported.
The M2 Named Grades
Bismark
Henry Molineux
Henry Molineux
The rarest Model 2 named grade was the Bismark, an 11-jewel Grade 156* with only a hundred made between SN 86401 and 86500. It is not known for whom it was made, and all reported examples have the same pattern.
* This is an assigned grade
Henry Molineux
Henry Molineux
Henry Molineux
The Henry Molineux was the firm’s second-highest grade, named for a man born in New Hampshire in 1832 who was a personal friend of Seth E Thomas, Jr, the founder’s grandson.
The Damask Patterns
15-jewel gilt Grade 52
15-jewel nickel Grade 152
15-jewel nickel adjusted Grade 197
15-jewel nickel adjusted Grade 197
17-jewel flashed-gilt adjusted Grade 180
Courtesy of the AC&WM
17-jewel two-tone adjusted Grade 180
Courtesy of Fred Hansen
17-jewel nickel adjusted temperature and position Grade 508
17-jewel nickel adjusted temperature and position Grade 508
17-jewel nickel adjusted temperature and position Grade 508
Henry Molineux
1832 - 1900
Henry Molineux was born in New Hampshire around 1832, managing the Pacific Coast interests of the Seth Thomas Clock Company for 30 years until 1883 as an a stockholder, an employer, and a buyer. He was a personal friend of Seth Thomas Jr and served the public trust for many years in California as county treasurer, clerk, and official recorder of Sierra County. In 1881 he was elected supervisor of the 5th ward, and was also president of four San Francisco Banks during his time in the west, dying in Boston in March of 1900 at the age of 68.
The company created a grade in his honor, which was the second-highest named grade that Seth Thomas produced, offered in the Model 2 in three jewel counts.
The Production Totals
Roughly 380 of the Model 2 Henry Molineux were produced in four runs, starting with a block of two hundred at SN 55001, followed by two small runs of perhaps forty each, and finishing with a block of a hundred at SN 505401. All were lever-set and were offered in several patterns with different signatures on both nickel and two-tone plates.
The company advertised the Henry Molineux with two jewel counts of 17 or 20 early on, and added a count of 19 near the end of production, with the 17-jewel variant accounting for well over half of the total:
- 17 - jeweled to the third wheel and the escape wheel capped
- 19 - jeweled to the center wheel and the escape wheel capped
- 20 - standard count of 17, capped escape, lower pallet capped
All known adverts list the Molineux grade as Adjusted with no mention of any positions. There is one known PL Model 2 that has an identical pattern, jewel count, and hairspring stud as a regular Molineux grade:
- SN 70540 for a Walter Grunert from Oconto, Wisconsin
The Lever Brothers Watches
The British manufacturing firm of Lever Brothers ordered hundreds of private-label Model 2s from Seth Thomas. They were all 7-jewel gilt Grade 34s with matching dials in demi-hunter cases, which have a small crystal in the front cover to tell the time without having to open it.
A huge company like Lever Brothers had no reason to retail low-grade watches, and since their pride in their employees was well known it's likely these were presentation pieces.
Higginbotham's Patent
Charles Higginbotham, Seth Thomas's master watchmaker, invented a unique hairspring stud for the Henry Molineux grade, found on both Models 2 and 3.
Every other 18-size Seth Thomas model utilized a cylindrical hairspring stud, seated in a round hole and held in place by a set screw. This means the stud can be raised or lowered slightly, altering both the beat rate and the beat error.
Higginbotham's new patent addressed this problem by trapping the hairspring stud in place with a bracket (Fig. 3 & 4), which has an edge (I) milled into it to mate with a corresponding notch (J) in the stud (Fig. 5 & 6), preventing it from moving either vertically or rotationally.
For further info visit the Records page.
Period Ad Cuts
1889
1889
1889
1895
1889
1889
1898
1889
1898
Seth Thomas Highlights
The rarest regular-production two-tone pattern of all, made in one block of seventy - and then never again.