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Sorry for the question, but, do You know how to replace such jewel? It is rolled one and not pressed like modern jewels. You must not screw up the way the movement looks by deforming the stone seat or leaving any kind of marks there. This is not a movement to learn on.

If you can make a stepped hole in the bridge you can avoid the need for solder. Here's a fix I did on a JLC 838, this has a suspended barrel, so 100% of wear is on the bridge and there's next to no material to work with. The worn portion protrudes down toward the barrel a bit and up toward the ratchet wheel. I did the bridge work in a faceplate, the stepped bushing was all lathe work. In the last pic the the barrel arbor looks low but it pulls up when screwed to the ratchet wheel.

Tomorrow it is finally time to hand over the watch to the owner so this may be my last post in the thread. It feels a bit solemn. It has been an educational and fun time to have had the privilege of servicing and repairing this beautiful Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date with its fantastic movement calibre 3135. All the help and information you have so generously shared has been crucial, so again a big, big thank you. Special thanks to @Jon for sharing his professional and in-depth experience and to @Knebo for the encouragement (and facts) between us enthusiasts. I am sure many others will appreciate and benefit from this thread in the future. The final challenge was to regulate the rate with the Microstella tool as described in my previous post, which I did in two rounds, most recently yesterday. Here are the final results measured with PCTM. Each measurement is averaged over three minutes. It is very satisfying to see that all values and performance tests, including the rate, are now well within Rolex's specified limits.

Well my friends, it is a Friday-Before-Black-Friday miracle. I have got this watch running again. This is my first significant hairspring repair and I feel like I just leveled up. When I removed the balance complete from the cock, I found it had 2 coils swung underneath and looped around the roller table. I might have made things harder for myself by lifting them over in the wrong sequence. But when the hairspring was removed, it didn't look that bad. The overcoil had several issues but no kinks. Concentricity looked very decent and flatness was a little out, but I discovered while fixing the flats that what looked like concentricity defects were actually tangles. There were two tangles which I could not see well under a loupe (have no microscope) without a 3D view. The first two photos are what I started with: I did not know the strategy for removing a tangle I first did one in the outer 2 coils by manipulating the stud through them - which worked but was very challenging and probably dangerous. The second tangle was much farther in and I didn't see any feasible way to pass the stud through there and have it pop out untangled. I figured I could maybe get some oilers in between and just push tangle around and around until it made its way out to the stud where I could lift it through. This worked. With the tangles out, I was left with not too bad a state, 2 or 3 minor concentricity issues and the overcoil pointing down a little. Also the collet was twisted at a slight angle. Because I don't know any theory on forming overcoils, I decided I would just try to wing it. I mounted it back to the balance cock and pushed here and there until it was pretty well centered. Any additional adjustments to the overcoil I have to make while the whole balance is in the watch, because I can't work out the 3D relationship. Someday I will learn to do this the right way but for now, it's just YOLO and poke at the running balance until it looks right. I took the opportunity to check its poise, which was fine on this tool. I probably won't go to the trouble of dynamically posing this watch. And now it's running in! I have it at 1.4ms BE and honestly, I think I may leave it here. After my first service attempt from a year ago, it was at >3.0ms BE but running flat in all positions. How I got myself into this mess in the first place was by going back in to dial down the BE and reclean the balance jewels, then my ocillations test and my tangled up hairspring. Right now, the verticals are very good (>250°!). I'm okay with the BE since there's no mobile stud carrier (and this is a vostok not a patek which has already caused me a lot of trouble). The horizontal traces are noisy a bit irregularly wavy. I will go back in to clean those jewels once again, because at one point before messing up the hairspring I swapped the lower from a spare movement while end shake seemed too high. I can swap that back and I expect to see some improvement. Thanks for all the encouragement. I didn't expect I would actually fix this one rather than toss it in my "USSR box"

The lathe bug has grabbed me firmly by the danglies ....my first attempt at cutting away the staff hub from the balance wheel using a lathe. Its off a pocket watch...but a clean cut with no damage to the wheel....took me around 3 minutes....overall I'm chuffed. I throughly believe if you have a lathe and can handle a graver this is the kindest way to treat the balance wheel...no more staff punch outs by this chappy. Pictures 2 and 3 , work related thumb damage

Ok so its not ideal and a its very " builder's rig " set up......milk crates..actually....newkie brown crates....solid lightweights...batterns and scaffold poles omitted for this small simple rig . And i just need to change my slippers for Rigger's boots. But its got me sat in front of a lathe so how about a round of applause for motivation and initiative fellas . Fully set up with a cuppa and a proper builder's size slice of homemade tea loaf, Archie wasn't available today so Donald has offered to chip in with his input .

Hi everyone, been a while since I posted, but just moved house and then getting ready to move back to the UK to start a whole new career, so my watch shenanigans have had to take a back seat. Anyhow, I recently managed to sneak in a Seiko 7005, I think it was made in April 1969. Here are the before and after shots. Here is the front, I had to replace the cracked crystal, but it was hiding a nice dial, not 100% convinced it's original, but suits the watch: Here is the back of the watch, with a generous helping of arm cheese: And here is the finished watch, I managed to save the bracelet and everything else is original, apart from the crystal and mainspring , and bearing on the rotor.

Woohooo! The screw is out. It came out completely intact, nothing left behind in the arbor, and YES, it is left-hand thread. The parts are all OK apart from some surface blackening from the coca cola. I applied screw loosening fluid to the screw head and left it to be absorbed for three days. The final result came from heating the screw with my soldering iron at 450C for one minute, then squirting the screw head with a tetrafluoroethane freezer spray. This was quite spectacular, with the whole ratchet wheel becoming instantly covered with frost. I tried the screw both ways as usual, but this time it came free on the clockwise turn. Thank you everyone for your helpful advice. One more question: I think the black carbon stain can be removed from the ratchet wheel and the click with a very light polish on a lapping plate, but what about the barrel arbor? Should I try to polish away the black from the bearing surfaces of the arbor, or is it better to leave it alone?

Easiest way to do this is not to destroy your lathe by playing with them. As others have said they normally do not come out and you do not want to re-grind them. It really just looks like surface something like cleaning should solve the problem. The lathe itself doesn't exactly run on that surface anyway it basically runs on a film of oil. To just clean up whatever that is without modifying the surface if you can do it and make sure you have good oil and add oil from time to time. One of the most interesting problems I've seen of watchmaker's lathe is the failure to grasp that you need to add oil. So typically end up with people running their lathe's dry which is definitely not good at all.

Anyone close to Hull? If so can you nip over and reset Rich, looks like his algorithm has jumped into verbose debug mode Tom

The drilling attachment I got with my recent new to me 6mm Wolf & Jahn lathe works with these classic spade-type drills, but is not big enough to hold the 3,17mm shanks of the carbide drills I also have. Online I found ER collet holders with cylindrical extended shanks. There are also versions available that hold ER8 collets and have a 6mm shank. Combined with a 7mm OD, 6mm ID brass tube, I now have something that works. Turning it doesn't show any wobble under my microscope, so I guess it is accurate enough.

Back in school......Just my first step in getting to Uni mate. I have no school records so I'm having to start from scratch, I'd like some qualifications under my belt besides my building apprenticeship before next years intake. Access to learning can be hit and miss for us 'old uns' and I didn't want to rely on a Uni's clearing process to scrape in. So I'm studing English , Maths and IT.....inbetween bits of work.....absolutely loving the refresher learning.

Sometimes I have to make some missing screws that my watchmaker friends can't source. Here are photos of making 3 missing screws for Omega buckle. The thread size is odd - 1.4X0.2

I showed this one as part of a lot in the 10:10 club thread. Was not working and one a speidel flex bracelet A 218 1 from 1975. Presentation piece from Goodyear. Could use a crystal. Sourced an accucell. Put on a decent band. It was a bugger to get going. Will need a full service but could feel the buzz but just would not move. Finally after reading the chapter and going back 2 or 3 times to the book realized it was probably just gunked up. Can't find one dip so used a slight bit of carburetor cleaner and a fine oiler to clean the debris off the pawl stones and micro adjust them on the index wheel Since I got it running about 4 hours ago it has not lost or gain 1 second. It is as smooth a sweep second hand I have ever seen in person. Very mesmerizing...

Today I had to make a broken fusee wheel

It's a screw extractor. Here's a video showing how to use it.

Examining the horizontal positions with the best magnification I have (which is not good at all) I could see there were times when the overcoil was rubbing at high amplitude. I could see that was because it was angling slightly downward near the stud, which pushed the Breguet bend up where it could touch the balance cock. I was able to fix that and it took all the noise out of the traces. Of course I could not let it stay with 1.4ms beat error... It took way too many tries to get it down below 1ms but now it is as low as 0.3ms (or as high as 1.0ms, which I think is an imperfection still in the terminal curve). Final product: a Vostok 2214 from the scrap bin that now runs like a demon. I had to redo the shellac on the pallets, and ultimately my only mishap today was dumping my container of shellac flakes into the carpet. Pictured DD, while the verticals are a little faster but narrower at +30/255°/0.3ms. I had planned on selling this but now I may have to hold onto it as a trophy.

Rjenkins is right on the nose- you don't want to disturb these. If there is some rust, remove it with steel wool. The lathe will still run fine, even if its lifespan has shortened. It may only do another 100K hours before needing a little touch-up.

Definitely do not try to remove the bearings - they are likely pressed in, but then finish machined & ground in situ. Any disturbance could wreck the spindle. Either tape them up thoroughly or paint them with a peelable mask liquid first (or both). This is a cross section of an original WW style lathe headstock, for info: (From "The watchmakers lathe, its use and abuse" - available on archive.org).

Post script to this story. The owner of this watch is a good friend of mine, and when I found out he'd inherited it from his dad and it never worked, I offered to take a stab at repairing it. While I was working on it, it inspired him to get into the hobby, and he's been tinkering away. I gave him the watch and he was ecstatic. He can't stop talking about how smoothly the date ring snaps over now. Last night he asked me out for a drink. He started talking about how much he loves the watch, how he knows he owes me money for the parts I laid out, and then he pulls out this box and says he hopes I'll accept it as thanks for all the work I did. He knows how much I love Bulova Accutrons, and we often talk technology about them and the f300. So behind the scenes he found this non-runner DeVille on eBay and fixed it himself (including texting me questions about it!) so he could gift it to me. I am blown away by the thoughtfulness and absolutely love the aesthetic of this watch. It is, however, weird to have a watch I don't have to take apart and repair first...

Chucked up and ready to go . A quick touch up to graver and we're off Absolutely no way i can do this under a loupe....not today anyway...this difficulty proves to me the shear skill of anyone that can work on pieces dimensionally under 2mm using only a loupe. The added complication that the bush needs a finishing height of 0.3 is not helping.....why would it... ridiculously stupid barrel arbor bearing design with an insanely thin shoulder.....not happy.....not happy at all..... I need a different plan, the maximum diameter of the bush has to 1mm and even that risks breaking out of the side of the plate...think I'm pretty much stuck just now. At least the lathe got an airing

I've been sitting on an Autocrat for over a year, it needs a balance staff after I replaced some jewels but the one I installed initially is incorrect and I have not returned to it. Finally a worthy contribution: $10 US, a "Splendor" skin diver in a monobloc case. I was hoping for an EB8800 movement, but could tell by the slow calendar change action that isn't it. I also assumed a 2 piece stem and firmly pulled a 1 piece stem right out! But apparently this is by design? It reinserts and still works correctly. Also expected a tension ring crystal I would have to blow out, but no it is a basic crystal removable with a lift tool. The dial is pretty marked up unfortunately, and the hands don't look great. The movement I expected was a Baumgartner 866, but I'm not sure yet what this thing is. Edit: Ah, the movement must be a Brac 500 series something or other.

YouTube the home of tools that are interesting but not necessarily practical.

Finished this watch last night, I'm guessing mid 70's So it's a 17 jewel Corvair, I've not worked on this brand before, looking at other Corvair watches, they all seem to have Swiss Made on the dials, but this one has Fr Ebauche on the dial. So no surprise then to find a FE 104 2-A movement within. Again, never worked on an FE movement so all good experience, all pretty straight forward, although 16 of the 17 jewels all in the normal places, but to my knowledge, I've not seen one here before: I will say though, the day date change really is excellent on this movement. With no quick set I was expecting hard work getting it set, but with careful back and forward hand setting it was actually quite quick and easy. The only real issue I had with this movement was the hairspring, ran fine with very little wind, but with full wind the spring coils colliding killing the momentum. So a bit of manipulation and eventually running well on full wind. I admit, hairspring manipulation not one of my strong points so some good practice and experience gained here, more needed though.

…my Watch O’ the Day today. This one is under monitoring as it was a mess and I just buttoned it up. A bit of a scam this one was as it was messed up in a way only someone experienced would have done… The hairspring was out of the regulator and bent in a way so the balance wheel would turn just enough so the auctioneer could write ‘ticking’. The banking pins were bent outwards about as far as they could move and it tricked me for a long time. A picture from WatchGuy solved it… …the roller was supposed to look like this but someone had replaced it with a one piece far too large to fit, though it looked fine in the watch. My mistake . I filled the wheel with the missing screws and rebent the over-coil to see what the escapement was doing, so I get to the bad roller in a roundabout way… I sourced a new balance. The hairspring needed some heavy correction and so far its holding. I may go back and repeat the service as I spent much time messing with the escapement…

Testing flycutter and milling setup..

I remember when I was teaching I had a student who giggled every time I said "cock". He lost it when I told him the pivots in cylinder escapements are called "tampons".

Like John says, you want to treat the pallet stones, but not the fork slot or pivots. When I had my machine that applied stearic acid vapor, the instruction was to not treat the fork at all, or balance, but everything else got it; this machine was made in the 60s. 25 years ago we were taught to treat the whole fork with the more modern Fixodrop (and service manuals also said this), but it was found that areas like the fork pivots and slot, that remain unlubricated, could have issues. When running the escapement dry to "wear off" the epilame, the actual epilame layer is like a couple of molecules thick, and the contact area also extremely small. There is no measurable amount of epilame removed. But the now non-treated areas hold the lubricant, while the treated areas prevent it from creeping away. There is no issue with the epilame contaminating the oil. I use it on all watches, at least the escape wheel, pallet stones, and cap jewels. Depending on the design of the movement, I might treat other areas if there's a chance of oil creeping away.

When you start putting things back together, begin with a check of the barrel assembly before putting the gear train in. This is where amplitude originates, pop the lid off and see that the mainspring is properly seated and has some light lubrication. If the mainspring is tied up inside the barrel from incorrect sizing then the balance is never going to receive enough energy to run with a decent amplitude. When you are happy with the mainspring's ability to provide enough power then inspect the end and side shakes of the barrel arbor in the barrel itself and between the plate and barrel bridge. Please yourself that the barrel can operate with free motion within the movement without rubbing anywhere. When you're happy with all this then progress to the installation of the train, checking, pivots, pivot bearings, wheel teeth for damage, end and sideshakes, wheel and pinion meshing as you go, and finishing with the free motion check of the entire train up to pallet fork....looking for exhibits of friction. If all is good...a good sign will be the escapewheel giving a few seconds of backspin.....install the crown and winding works to give you a better feel of the energy you are winding in...no pushing the barrel .

My grandaughter that just got married has a musical rotating porcelain bear in a clown suit that had seen better days. It plays a short part of 'Send in the Clowns'. To wind it, it should have been lifted up and the plastic base that attached to the winding arbor of the music box turned to wind it up and then ireplace it on its base to rotate while it played. What had been done is people had pushed down on the bear while it was sitting on a bedside table etc to wind it. The result of that is the base centre that attached to the winding arbor had completely broken out of the base and the cover of the mainspring barrel on the music box had completely broken from the pressure of winding. All the bits were there so I took it apart as much as I could as it is riveted together so cleaning was going to be difficult. I put all the parts of the music box into the ultrasonic cleaner which has done a great job of cleaning it. I was able ro remove the mainspring which was quite set. I spent some time running the spring over a piece of round in my vice. I was able to increase the diameter of the spring and finally got some of the coils to come away from others. Allow had to fiddle around with the centre coil as it was not grabbing the arbor very well. Lubricated the mainspring and wound it back in by hand. Then worked out a way to clamp the broken part of the cover to the main part and used some 5 minute Araldite to glue the cover as well as the plastic base. Got that done before I went into hospital so the part stayed clamped for about 3 days before I took the clamp off. I should have taken more photos, but I want to get it done and sent back to Sydney before Bec & Jarryd's baby grows up. I have to make a new wooden cover that the music box is screwed to which is in turn glued to the porcelain. Hopefully get the base cut and drilled tomorrow and get it all back together. The click for the mainspring is a molded plastic setup on the arbor underneath the mainspring in its barrel. Nothing I could do with it after the damage sustained from the incorrect winding. It still works, but I will be telling Bec that if it fails again, it'll be unrepairable. I'll take some phots of it all tomorrow. Ok. It's not a clock, but principles are the same. Hey, I'm working my way up to a clock. It'll be my grandmothers Hettich first as that has been in bits for years now. A bit embarrassing really.

And sometimes you get too much amplitude. Years ago I started on pocket watches, and putting modern mainsprings in 100yo watches sometimes resulted in rebanking. I'm currently working on a 1957 ladies Tudor (ETA) 1137. Being a small, old movement I took time to make sure all the pivots/jewels were perfect, and fitted a new mainspring. It fired up at 320° before I'd oiled the pallets. After a day it was 340-350° and re-banking. Some HP1300 on the pallet pivots wasn't enough to stop it. Very strange. I measured the spring and it is correct size. Fortunately I hadn't thrown the old mainspring away, and refitted that. It's not run in, but just started about 280-290°. The "correct" new mainspring GR3200 1.30x0.080x200 The original measured about 1.34x0.072x210. So a lot weaker. Which is why I changed it - the shape was fine but the thickness was a lot different.

This rust remover solution was mentioned in another thread, and I thought I would do an experiment to see what effect it had if metal parts were left in it for rather longer than required. The mix is five grams of tetrasodium EDTA per 100ml of deionesed water, plus a tiny amount of citric acid to bring it to around ph 6.5 - 7 I've also used disodium EDTA, which seems to work pretty much the same; these are used in such as cosmetics, so not toxic, though I'd not inhale any dust, on principle. I normally soak parts in it for between 30 mins and a couple of hours, depending on the level of rust - and generally use it for tools and such as keyless mechanism parts, rather than movement train wheels. For this experiment, I used a couple of items from a big clock part collection I got a while ago. They were suspended part way in the solution; the one with the single thick wheel was at roughly 45' with the wheel half in the liquid, and the other was vertical with around 3/4 of the pinion submerged. This is the result after something over nine hours; the first two photos are the parts straight out of the solution, with just a rinse under the tap: And this is after drying and removing loose residue with a paint brush. They were in quite a bad way, rust scale and pitting in places, which is why I used those parts. You can still see the heavy rust on top of the small pinion, where it was not in the liquid. The pivots and steel pinion leaves do now have a matt surface; I don't know how much the size would change after re-polishing them. The brass wheel has obvious colour changes, more coppery where it was immersed, but still shiny rather than matt. This was using a fresh mix of the solution for this test & I may have added a bit too much citric acid. For comparison, this is a more normal use - a lathe bed from ebay, which had significant surface rust. Around one hour in the solution and it looks vastly better! The slight "marbling" is probably due to me initially trying to use a cloth wrapped around it & soak that; once I realised that was not working evenly I made a crude trough from cardboard lines with a bin bag, so it was fully immersed. And after; dried then oiled and thoroughly cleaned off, to avoid further rust. The stuff does definitely work very well, under appropriate circumstances.

Cant see the wood for the trees (idiom)......too fixated on a particular small fact that the big picture problem has become invisible. Thats nice to know......that we have a group that understands, cares and takes the effort to help another member. Unlike some facebook groups that belittle with sarcastic, condescending remarks with gatekeepering tactics. We are literally the best watch forum on the planet

A pic of the assembled watch for anyone who’s interested. It’s my friend’s grandfather ‘s Omega watch and it hasn’t run in about 30 years. To me, there’s nothing about watch making that is more satisfying than fixing a watch that means a lot to a family member. Again, thank you to everyone who helped. This forum is literally batting 100% in helping me solve my problems.

Too complicated ( complex : synonym ) for me ( pronoun ) to attempt (verb) ) Nicklesilver ( proper noun ) Besides ( conjunction ) I ( personal first person pronoun ) dont have ( auxiliary verb ) the ( definitive article ) tools ( collective noun ). But ( conjuction ) Wow ! ( interjection ) thats fantastic ( adjective ) work ( noun ) matey ( pronoun ).

As you have a original Omega balance complete you should never be rotating the collet to adjust the beat. This is because this watch has a movable stud holder and yours is currently at its maximum of one extreme. I've pasted image down below see you can see approximately where the stud holder should be. Then down below I have a link as we recently discussed the movable stud holder I'm giving you that link also.

Ok I wanted to publish my findings as I ended up making a "commercial" solution yesterday and used it to clean a movement. I measured using a scale to dial in the percentages accurately. My recipes are as follows: SwissSeiko's 111 Ammoniated Cleaning Solution 65% Mineral Spirits(Klean Strip) - Pretty standard 20% Light Naphtha(Klean Strip) - I think this is what we all have access to, but it has the same carbon atoms as the L&R 111. Dark Naphtha has more carbon, and has a much higher boiling point, which decreases its volatility at the temps and times we are using. 5% Store bought concentrated Ammonia(Ace Hardware). This is slightly less potent that pure ammonia, but it is essentially ammonium hydroxide(with slightly less ammonia per weight), which L&R calls for. 5% Kirkland Dish Soap - This one is interesting as its taking the place of Oleic Acids in L&R's formula. It has the amino acids were looking for, but with additional degreasers, and a scent that helps cover the ammonia smell. 5% IPA 99% - This takes the place of the amino alcohol in their solution, of which has propylene oxide, which i'm not sure citizens have access to, Its very toxic. It is used as a solubilizer. SwissSeiko's #3 Watch Rinse 80% Mineral Spirits(Klean Strip) 20% Light Naphtha(Klean Strip) This one is very simple and works very well And there you have it. A commercial quality cleaning solution that can all be purchased at your local hardware store, for relatively cheap. I think if you had to buy it all at once, it would be around $65, but you could make nearly 2 gallons of it. I did a lot of research on chemical properties to try and match the medical grade chemicals they are using, but with easy availability. Obviously you need to be careful when handling chemicals, and you need to have a vast understanding of chemical reactions before you jump into making your own solution. I pulled the MSDS of all of these chemicals to make sure I understood their makeup, and to eliminate any dangerous reactions. The results are very good. It has exceeded my expectations as a home brew concoction. Parts come out brighter than when I was using Liquinox, and that's due to the ammonia. I'm not quite ready to give up my Liquinox, but its handy to have an additional non-water based cleaning solution that works well, particularly for vintage movements, which I mostly service. Don't sue my L&R, this info is all public on your website.

Shock is one of the best things to release a rusted together part. If you have a staking tool, rest the barrel arbor in a stump, and come down with a flat face punch on the screw, good contact, then one sharp smack with the hammer. If you don't have a staking tool, you can try with some other means of support and punch but would be less ideal. Then work the screw, putting pressure in both directions, until it starts to move. As said, there's a chance it's left hand thread, but sometimes going the "wrong" way a little helps loosen things up.

The screw heads of the ratchet and crown wheel screws look the same. This in some movements (Usually AS ones) is a sign that they both are lefthand threaded. Did You try tho turn the screw clockwise? Using Evaporust is totally wrong, throw it away.

Well I am very pleasantly surprised. The 3am communications in imperfect English were not indicative of a ruse. I got 3 watches, all runners, with beautifully hand painted dials. The Statue of Liberty is missing a caseback and is a very thin model, possibly a Luch slim. I'll see if I can find a replacement case but I'm excited about these. The cosmonaut is a total surprise, as it was not visible in photos.

There's no problem removing laser welded collets. I do. You just need to close the hole up top and bottom with an inverto staking set with 2 domed stakes before refitting. Use some scalpels to lever the collet off the balance staff. Here's a video of me doing just that in my cloud storage https://drive.google.com/file/d/11S-CURADm81ZdZaaZfEF-sts9g0oXgci/view?usp=sharing Here's a pic of me closing the hole up before fitting back onto the staff

There may be a misunderstanding about need of a heater. It is necessary with IPA rinse, too. Evaporating water or IPA needs energy. This comes from the part, the part gets colder than ambient and air moisture will condense on the part to water. If the part is steel, it gets prone to rust. A heater will avoid this. Frank

Happy that it's working but getting it right and it being safe are different things. Each metal part should have its own earth as currently if there's a short at the motor for example and the case becomes live the only path to earth would be you when you touch it.

Sounds like the rotor is fouling something. Could be that the rotor bearing is loose which your watchmaker should have picked up on. Alternatively, it might be that your watchmaker swapped some screws and the rotor is fouling on the screw heads (I did that with the case clamp screws on an ETA 2472, so I know it's possible). In either case, you don't want the rotor scraping against anything and potentially shedding metal shards into the movement. I'd suggest going back to your watchmaker and asking him/her to take another look.

Here is my haul from the Friday swap meet and 1st Saturday of the month vintage fair. 11 watches for $9.50US (£7.30) each. They all work except the accutron (hopefully just an accucell which is on its way) and the Gruen with a broken staff) the Illinos pocket watch (from 1919) is missing the crystal and the dial is beat but really runs nice and the movement is very nice. It was part of a lot that was $1 and pulled down the average of the other 10! The Tissot rock watch is in the original box and the receipt from a cruise ship in Jamaica from 1991 shows someone paid $110US. Love the hunt, and then the opening and research into the piece. The Ultramar has a Felsa 690 auto with 25 j. The center seconds pinion is broken and seconds hand is missing. Had the correct new acrylic. On the Accutron nice case and original crown. It was a presentation piece for 25 years at Goodyear 1975. 25 years for a rolled gold watch. Oh well better than nothing; hope he got a good pension as well. The Autocrat A new bow is on the way as well as crystal.

Yesterday I regulated the rate using my newly acquired Microstella tool. What I feared could become a difficult and gruelling experience turned out to be very pleasant. When I finished, I reflected on how much easier it would be if all movements were regulated similarly to this Rolex calibre 3135. It turned out to be not only quite simple but also very precise. @Jon's tips and video as well as @Endeavor's and @Mark's tips (links in previous posts) were very useful. I don't have a tripod for my phone so I can show how I held my hands but at least the picture shows my setup except for the watch itself which is a junk watch as the Rolex watch is currently spinning on my Cyklomat. I am right-handed so I held the tweezers with my left hand which could rest safely on the wooden box and handled the Microstella tool with my right hand which could rest safely on the work bench. The advantage of this type of small (and inexpensive) case holder as seen in the picture is that the Cyclops eye above the date display is in a cavity in the holder which means that the watch case wont tilt. In general, I think it's easier to regulate the rate while the movement is on a movement holder as seen in Jon's video, but I still decided to do the adjustment with the movement mounted in the case, and since Rolex advertises the Microstella tool this way I wasn't too hesitant. By letting the inside of the tweezers rest against the balance bridge (the yellow dots), as Endeavor describes, I got good stability and could grip the rim of the balance wheel without the risk of accidentally moving the tweezers sideways, lengthwise, or vertically. After that, it was no problem to place the tool over the Microstella screw (the red dot) and rotate. Following Rolex's instructions, I stopped the balance wheel by pulling the crown out to its extreme position and then carefully rotating the balance wheel until the first of the two screws needing adjustment was aligned with the most convenient way to hold the Microstella tool in relation to the screw. What I didn't realise, which scared me a bit in retrospect, was that the impulse pin could have caught on the outside of the fork horn as I rotated the balance wheel. I guess you can probably feel if that would happen, but I think you need to be a little observant of this which is why I mention it. The tool itself I bought at Cousins. It is a rather expensive Korean clone of the original Rolex tool and works well but does not give a feeling of really high quality. What is critical is that the fit with the Microstella screws is precise and there is nothing to complain about. Something to complain about is the weight on the inside of the tool which is supposed to always hang vertically and indicate how much you have rotated the tool. On my copy, the weight rotates so slowly that it almost loses its function. Perhaps I got a Friday afternoon model but maybe it can be adjusted. To compensate, I made marks with a permanent marker on the wheel to make it easier to see how far I should rotate it. It worked well. When rotating the Microstella tool, you must try to keep an eye on both the screw and the tool. There is a risk of focusing only on the tool and slipping off the screw, thinking that you are still rotating the screw but in reality, you are only rotating the tool. The screws are seated with relatively high friction (as Jon mentioned) but because we are working in a microscopic environment, there is still a risk that you do not notice that you have slipped off the screw while rotating the tool. So, that sums up what proved to be a pleasant experience. The current rate while the watch is spinning on my Cyklomat is +1.6 seconds/day so I think I'm done, and I'm pretty sure I didn't upset the poise. I'll do some measuring on PCTM a bit later.

I would like to second a point already made by a few others, just so it's clear. This looks like a real collector's item, and worth more than perhaps you realise. I advise you not to attempt anything yourself and to get professional help with it.

While attempting to make a new ratchet wheel (btw, does anyone please have any suggestions on the steel I should use? O1 perhaps?), I decided to try the other route as well, if only for the learning experience.. So I cut a slot in the wheel and silver soldered in a piece of steel wire that was ground square(ish). The result isn't too bad. But before I go ahead doing some polishing to make it look a bit nicer, should I heat treat it? If it was hardened originally, I imagine the soldering will have made the part softer. Or am I overcomplicating things now?

Got a submission for the club, as previously featured on the what's coming in the post, this Citizen Valiant So price criteria met It's either 1963 or 1973, with the plastic movement ring will probably go for 73, and the movement is the 1802. I've had dealings with this movement before, it's one of those that just will not sit nicely in the movement holder so you end up fiddling around with it until you tighten onto the balance, then you hear the pop and your heart sinks. Learnt my lesson there so made sure the balance was out whilst on the dial side. Only part purchased was the crystal, replaced the crown which I have a bag full, and the strap was a freebie from cousins. Cleaned up the case, didn't go to town on it but now looks a little more respectable. Beat error was really out and took an age to bring back but fluked a 0.0. I do wonder how fixed stud balances get so far out, this one certainly wasn't loose. End result +5/6, 270, 0.0 Believe it or not, that was the time I took the picture, although I did wait a couple of minutes.

The endshake of the balance is too much. You need a little, but not too much. I try to imagine the correct amount as being about the pivot thickness. The arbor to barrel end shake - you need a little, but not so much that the barrel can hit anything. To reduce it - It's also important to check the sideshake in the barrel and bridge. These are things I always do. Too much at the bridge, the hole can be closed using a rounded punch as shown below (then use a smoothing broach).