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Alright, the job is done. I first filed down the stubs flat. I then used a Proxxon hand drill first with a 0.5mm bit to score a point to work from, then a 1mm drill bit to properly drill out some lug holes. I just went slowly, checking the depth as I went. I drilled the inside of the lugs, leaving the outsides unblemished. I was worried that drilling at an angle might be a problem, but it turned out fine. Lug holes don't need to be very accurate, so it was actually easy to create holes to easily accommodate a spring bar. The result is a 'good enough' outcome that worked for me. Thanks for your help everyone, loving the hobby so far. I learn so much with each project.

You are so true on a lot of what you have said. The main reason for changing the mainspring even if the old one is in good order is because it will take out your thinking that the mainspring is contributing to poor power output or fluctuations in amplitude. If a new spring is fitted that box can be crossed off as a potential source of a problem. Most customers are happy to pay the extra £20 for a new mainspring if they are already parting with a couple of hundred pounds for a service. A new spring is an investment for good running for the future.

Yeah you need more amplitude, and if this is full wind a new mainspring isn't going to get you there- there are other issues. Good news is if that's your max delta at this miserable amplitude it will probably run great when you get it up to something normal!

Just picked this up earlier today. This find just about epitomizes vintage watch collecting for me and what really keeps me going. Hit 2 antique malls today and saw a couple of pieces at the first one but just nothing that I needed. At the second one saw a Accutron 218 but it was 20 minutes behind the actual time. These "malls" have numerous booths of a variety of sellers who likely go in once or twice a week. Considering that that watch should be within a couple of seconds a month, I figured it hadn't been phased so passed on that for now knowing it would need work to run correctly and the price tag. Then I found this Excelle in a display case. I never heard of the brand, but in was an auto and had a little heft. It turned out to be 40mm lug to lug, 35.3mm case width, and 12.3 mm thick. On the spiedel once size fits most flex band. At $10.80US with tax I immediately pulled the trigger with nothing to lose. Before pictures: I spent a nice 30 minutes taking it out of the case and running that through the ultra sonic replacing the crystal and gasket and recasing, but spent five minutes first getting it running close on the timegrapher. Had a new crystal already in stock. I probably could have sanbed and polished the old one, but for $3 there is nothing like a new acrylic that makes a watch pop, in my opinion. The caseback gasket was hardened and just glad it wasn't tar. Changed that as well. Here is the after Pic on a temp black strap while I decide on a leather or steel bracelet. An added bonus was doing some research and finding out the Elgin connection and the movement is a PUW 1563T which is German I am pretty sure and probably why it doesn't say Swiss made on the dial. This movement is supposed to have a hack feature and quickset date by pushing the crown. But neither of those complications seem to be working. Not sure if the stem is cut too short because there is no gap for the crown to move. Either way at some point will need to be serviced and check the keyless works to find out what is going on with the quickset and hack of the sweep second hand.

The front, runs lovely now and alarms works great.

Is magnetism such a major problem that we (as home hobbyists) need to spend $$$ on a fancy demagnetiser? I use one of the cheap blue Chinese demagnetisers (£10 from ebay). It works, and has never failed to demagnetise a movement, or my screwdrivers. Magnetometer - who needs one? Take a very small screw. If it sticks to the clean part, it is magnetised

Hi All, I'm Geoff and I've been working on/with watches and clocks since I was thirteen. My dad was a watchmaker and while he did not want me in the field as a profession, I've always maintained a pretty good working knowledge. In the '70's I kinda got pulled back into things because Quartz revolution began and he only had limited electronic knowledge. So we combined skills. He the watchmaker and me the electronics tech. Being here in NY helped because we got to know the folks from Bulova, Seiko, Citizen, and WOSIC. H.B. Freid was my Dad's teacher and I was fortunate enough to get to know him too. I still maintain a bench here at home and occasionally work on watches for friends although the hands aren't what they used to be. Not going to be working on any FHF59 or AS1012's any time soon. Oddly enough though my years working with the field taught me how to work on almost anything else mechanical and mostly electronic. Since I was the one in the family who maintained Dad's cleaning and timing machines. those experiences carried over quite nicely into the worlds of recording and audio as well as others. I look forward to the discussions and maybe still learning a trick or two. Cheers to all and nice to be here.

I use on of these Eclipse demagnetisers. https://www.eclipsemagnetics.com/products/workholding-systems/table-top-demagnetiser/ I got fed up with those Mickey Mouse blue things and went industrial You can pick them up on eBay from between £70 to £100. They will demagnetise anything. I mean, anything, from a hairspring to a hammer head. The table is about 5 x 6 inches. You are not going to find anything close to being this good! It will demagnetise the biggest and chunkiest of cases with the movement inside. You'll never wonder again if your demagnetiser did the job.

I can remember in the army, doing a tactical night march and the officer leading the march had the bright ide of taping his compass (with tritium tipped hands) to the end of the barrel of his rifle so he could get a better bearing in the dark. We ran around in circles for hours until he realized that the compass was reacting to the steel of the rifle barrel. To say he was unpopular was a bit of an understatement.

Do you use them? I have several pairs but never used them for watch repair work. The problem is the spring tension is already too high and may cause a "ping" when you release to grip the object. A conventional tweezer gives better tactile feedback. I use the fine grindstone on my bench grinder, then polish with a nylon fibre wheel to get a satin finish. I grind off about an 1 inch zone to distribute the stress to prevent metal fatigue from the repeated flexing. Take a close look at our College tweezers. Most of them have a thinner section just after the joint to give them flex.

I picked up this alarm watch at a flea market several months ago and recently decided to investigate. I am not finished, but well on my way. As you can see, there was significant water damage. Running these parts through my L&R cleaner was not enough to clean them, so I did manual cleaning with one-dip and cotton swab (the dense pointed kind). The wig-wag was stubborn--the two gears would not release from the plate. I soaked it in Kroil overnight and that did the trick. There was some rust on the balance staff, but not actually on the pivots themselves. Nevertheless, I chucked it a step-chuck on my lathe and burnished the pivots. The watch is running and I have confirmed that the alarm drive train is functioning. Since I am missing a stem for the alarm, I have not done the final assemble of the alarm components. Surprisingly, there are lots of parts available for this movement on Cousins. I will probably get a couple of stems and maybe some other parts that I deem necessary. The watch is running at weak amplitude (about 190) and shows some poising issues. I will work on that. The last two pictures are after partial reassembly.

Morning OH, absolutely not, that has never been the intention, there does seem to be a lot of emphasis placed on that point. Its only a contact storage location. Honestly OH , i cant get my head around why anyone wants to think why members would be pulled away from a forum that works so well. Your fear of losing the forum OH is exactly the same as everyone else's. Hopefully it will wont happen for a very long time, but not having a back up would mean that everything would be lost if it ever came to that. Scott has set that up for anyone that wants a failsafe, if they are not comfortable with it then of course they dont need to participate. Its entirely of their free will.

Problem solved. For some bizarre reason, the hook on the wall of this barrel is not properly centered vertically, but is oddly high on the wall, maybe 3/4 up the way up. When replacing the mainspring, this caused the outer coil to be displaced upwards as well such that it protrudes out of the barrel and caused the barrel lid to not sit quite flush to the barrel. Since this is a motor barrel, the lid is actually the first wheel and inner coil tube/hook all in one piece, with no “snap down” action that would have made the problem more immediately obvious. Maybe with an older mainspring the spring’s end hole was enlarged such that this wasn’t an issue, but hard to say how it ever worked otherwise. Replacing the barrel with one from a different model 1900 where the hook was properly vertically centered allowed the lid to sit flush without mainspring interference and the friction problem went away. The bridge was far too thick to be bent (and isn’t), for those of you thinking that was the problem. Placing the removable arbor in the watch without the rest of the barrel proved that the proper end shake was actually there as long as the overall height of the assembled barrel was correct.

I think my missus is mad ironing clothes, but what do i know ?

Hi All, I started this forum over 10 years ago and never intended for it to me a 'for profit' concern. Since then, I launched an online course and I draw funds from that business in order to fund this website. There is also a little bit of funding from Google ads but I don't rely on it because they keep changing the goalposts. The forum costs a few hundred pounds per month to run and Im comfortably managing it. Why a few hundred pounds? I am OCD about backups and not relying on a single company to host those backups, I use amazon S3 to backup hourly and daily, I also use Digital Ocean. I use a separate mail service to handle the serious amounts of emails sent from the site, I am on here most days admin'ing and updating the site or servers/applying security patches and the like - its not a big deal, I enjoy it. In short - you might not see me a lot posting (for my sanity as it's addictive (same on all my social media)) but I certainly do a lot behind the scenes. I can't control my mortality and so there's always that - but other than that, I'm damn committed to this site as I am committed to my commercial site watchfix.com which supports this site. I have no interest in shutting down, selling or otherwise changing this sites format. Having said that, if anyone wants to consider taking on moderation tasks to help (in particular, making sure people post in the correct place and moderating new members posts) that would be very helpful. (Only members who have been active for more than a year please). Finally, thanks very much for your support and kind words - I truly appreciate that. This forum has to be one of the friendliest I am part of - a massive refreshment after reading some of the Facebook groups I'm part of - except mine FB group - that's also great with great people

I've never had a hairspring distort on me by passing the movement or just the balance in a plastic pot over this demagnetiser. Have you seen how fast a cleaning machine spins to spin-off fluid and that does no harm to a hairspring. I was a little concerned when I first used it, thinking it might be too strong, but I was wrong. It is strong, but it does no damage. I pass the part over the demagnetiser and keep going for about an arms length, so about a metre, to properly demag the part.

Landeron 248

Yeah, those were the days! Now, sorry for going OT again but I just can't help myself! As a kid, I saw Draken (The Dragon) pass over my parents' house almost daily going to and fro the air base about 15 km from our house. Me and my friends used to play in the basement and when my mother called from the kitchen "Now they're coming" we'd drop whatever we were doing, ran out and looked into the sky. The roar from the engines felt like thunder and when they had passed we'd look at each other and say "That was the Hammer of the Commander-in-Chief" and it made us feel invincible. Happy days! As said in this video "When it thundered into the sky it immediately became one of the few war birds that Soviet Russia ever truly feared".

Welcome, Simeon! I'm into Soviet watches too (not the political system, and yes, I am able to make the distinction, unlike some). They offer amazing value for money. I like your "Big Zero" profile image. It's a true classic and I have one of those myself. I noticed that the hands aren't the original. Not that it matters a lot but here's an interesting article about the Big Zero if you haven't already seen it.

Hi Murks. The shape of the stone face tells you which is entry or exit. I have attached a bit of reading for you. TM 9-1575.pdf TZIllustratedGlossary.pdf Hi Joseph Bulova School of Watch Making.pdf

Which is why we never gave a map or compass to the bloody Rodney’s! Tom

Ha ha, reminds me of this: "Don't go puttin' none of that stuff on my sled, Clark. You know that metal plate in my head? I had to have it replaced, cause every time Catherine revved up the microwave I'd pi$$ my pants and forget who I was for a half hour or so. So over at the VA they had to replace it with plastic."

I use the same thing on my android:

Here is another option, if you have the patience to sort through the parts you usually find 50-100 screws as well as some other cool stuff. Most times I get an order from these guys I get a 250g box, takes a few days, but end up with hundreds of spares and all you need is for one of them to be useful and it pays for itself. Also helps hone your tweezer skills!

As Hector said they have too much tension, that tension is also fixed and not easy to control. Conventional tweezers have infinitely variable grip provided by us.

Donor movement showed up, so I stole the bridge screw from it. Which made me sad, because it's in such nice shape! It seems a shame. Maybe I'll find a use for it one of these days. Unfortunately, the stem is for a different style of case and is much too short. Fortunately, I ordered a brand new stem from McCaw Company. Unfortunately, the crown on the donor movement is thoroughly stripped out (it unscrewed in a shower of brass) so i just put the old stem back in for now until I source a new crown. As you can see, it's just a little too long for this case. Overall I'm super pleased. I didn't think I'd like the bracelet, and even that is growing on me. Anyone have a favorite crown assortment?

Personally I would salvage the missing screws from some donor movement. I also bought a random selection of screws "Assortment of Stainless Steel Watch Screws" for next to nothing. As for using an Alum solution - I had great success with that removing a rusted stem from a stainless steel crown. The best piece of advice I read on doing that was to keep the solution warm so that the reaction didn't take weeks! I did it in a couple of hours with the solution in jam jar and the jam jar in a saucepan full of water which I left on an induction hob maintaining about 60C in the Alum solution.

Much like @mikepilk, I took a chance on a movement-unseen Citizen Square Custom. If I did my serial decoding right, it should be vintage 1969. Some discoloration of the dial, but otherwise looks to be in nice shape with the original bracelet. There's a video that shows it running and the price was right, so fingers crossed.

The UK lots can be a 404 hit or miss, 6 - 10 watches can come in anywhere from 20 - 50 quid. I once had a 404 division of 8 watches for a fraction over 30 quid, one of them was a Smiths Astral model National 17 an absolute certainty for winner contender. The crystal was scrached up to the point of being very difficult to see the brand, something triggered a gut feeling in me and it paid off.

The best and almost only way to achieve the magical £ 4.04 individual watch cost is via the loophole ploy of job lot buys Ross. Dividing down the outlay by the number of watches purchased. I've managed it many times in the past, this then gives you the extra edge of choosing any watch from that lot. Maybe we should have an all time winner, whos prepared to troll through the last four years of posts and pick some worthy contenders. Unfortunately i have a poorly shoulder so i cant raise my right hand and my left shoulder is out in sympathy for my right shoulder. Put your right hand up if you think i talk a load of bull 🖐 Tom's comment is purely restricted to the Bergeon culture of " lets rip off everyone on the planet " Voted , i thought to keep it in pounds as originally designed and out of respect for Andy . Personally i would have kept the £4.04 as I'm very traditionalist and dont like change but i know how hard you overseas guys are finding it and i believe in fair play. I expect to be posting the occasional Omega or Longines but then you brought this on yourself so dont get jealous Scott

I have the perfect solution for this, i just dont invite anyone round.

The more I get into this hobby. The more I am amazed at the standard of those preceding. Amazing people and amazing skills. We wear their history on our wrists.

I've been contemplating getting one of these for some time now, after working on a few spring loaded centre seconds pinion movements. It's not an absolutely necessary tool to have, hence the procrastination. Then it hit me, all I need is a flat base with a screw in it. So I scrounged around for something suitable and ended up with this. This is some rubber thingy that is supposed to stop furniture with casters from moving around. In fact, any flat material with sufficient thickness to hold the screw in the centre would do.

Back about 6 decades ago - I started collecting pocket watches. My favorite Saturday morning activity was going to a local flea-market, wandering the isles of outside tables, looking for something cool to buy. I found what I liked to buy was pocket watches. So I started buying them. It wasn't that frequent that I found one that met my standards (more than 15 jewels, balance wheel still spun, and affordable - around $10-15), but when I did, I usually came home with a new treasure. I continued this search, but there got to be less and less interesting watches at the flea-markets, it seems that others had started doing the same sort of thing and had deeper pockets than I did. So I had this bunch of pocket watches - not a large number - maybe 10-12 total - most of them needing at the least a good cleaning. Somehow I found my interest moving toward railroad-grade watches, and I managed to collect a few - including a Hamilton 950B with a broken mainspring that I had to dig deep to buy - $35 - probably around 1977 or so. This focus has resolved itself to 23 jewel pocket watches meeting the Ball standard for railroad use. I'm trying to collect every 23 jewel watch made for railroad use by every major watch manufacturer. These are usually marvelous movements and a real testament to the sort of precision manufacturing the watch industry in the US introduced in the late 1800's. Then life got it the way, my interests changed and the watches were sitting in a drawer collecting dust. They stayed in that drawer for about 40 years. For some reason about 2 years ago - perhaps Covid isolation started it - my interest in the watches reignited. I pulled them out of the drawer to see what I had and what they needed. I did have some minimal watchmaking skills 50-60 years ago, but my hands are no longer as delicate, or my eyes as good as they were back then, so I found a watchmaker I trusted - and sent him my 950B to restore. If you've heard of "Tim Tells Time" (Tim Chaney) - he does marvelous work. My 950B came back looking at least as good as the day it was new, maybe better. And running just as well - accuracy about 3 seconds/day on the timegrapher (depending on position +/- 3 seconds), 285 amplitude. I also now found a new way to find watches - on-line auctions. These can be addicting. "LiveAuctioneers" is one I frequent a bit, and of course eBay. My background is in engineering and technology - and I found myself collecting Accutron watches from the tuning-fork era. That's since also branched out into other "electric" watches - ones that don't have an "IC" chip - but use a battery and perhaps a transistor to make the movement tell time. Anyway - way too much probably - but I'm hear to pickup tips on repairing the electronic/electric watches and perhaps chat about some of the better railroad pocket watch movements. Thanks for having me.. Don Eilenberger Picture below - my wife's pendant 0 size watch - by Waltham - after being rebuilt by Tim Tells Time..

I'm also rather impatient, but when you have your head down and are in the zone 4 hours feels like 10 minutes, my wife often jokes that I have watches and clocks all around me, but no concept of time once I 'get in the zone'

You need to write Bergeon on it.

Updated photos with new leather strap and original signed buckle. I like the minimalist strap - plain back with black thread...

OK, a little bit more from today's lecture about the main springs. Generally, the spring in the barrel is limited and can't unwind fully. With the blue line is shown the reserve/torque relation when spring unwinding is limited by the barrel. The green line represents the same when the spring is free to unwind fully And the red line shows the minimum torque that is needed for the movement to keep running. The yelow graph shows how the torque changes (from the blue) when the spring gets weaker (set) after 100 years of work. The purple line represents thinner and longer spring in the same barrel. As You can see, using thinner and longer spring will increase the power reserve. The 'set' spring will have the same reserve as a new one with the same sizes, only the amplitude will be just a little smaller. Of course, this is true only when the movement othervice is in good health ( the red line is lo enough)

After a 3-week work fiasco that took up 137% of my time, I was finally able to get back to restoring a G. Boley 8mm lathe I picked up on eBay. I still need to do a bit of polishing on the tailstock but it works very nicely. Before and after pictures below. In any case, when I was reassembling the motor I wasn't quite sure which side the pully attached to, or if it matters. My question is ... does it matter? The listing photo below shows it the reverse of how I have it now, but it seemed that the cord and the reversing lever(s) should be on the right away from the belt.

The diameter is that of the ring - afaik, will have to look it up. “Wiggle room“ doesn‘t matter as long as the spring length is in the ball park. Essential sizes of a mainspring are thickness, width and length. Diameter is just a hint if you can push into the barrel directly or will need a winder, it is no property of the spring. Frank

Wow what a difference. As long as you are happy with the set up and it works for you it makes no odds. The belt is in line with the pulleys so no problem there. No questions are silly on this site.

I went with 8.90£ because 12th century Italian mathematicians are always excellent topics to bring up when trying to get your guests to go home.

Welcome to the forum. Yep not a cheap hobby by any means , Ali Express, the Chinese Amazon has some decent tools but should ask the members their thoughts before purchase. A little reading to help you along. TZIllustratedGlossary.pdf

Your amplitude needs to be higher to get a more reliable reading. Low amplitudes will amplify escapement issues and poise errors not the mention the hairspring may be toing and froing from to regulating pins and the stud. You haven't said what the movement is.

I too have a cal 59, but it's in a gold case with no movement ring. What I'd do is look for a job lot of movement rings on ebay, and tweak one to fit. They are easy to cut and bend, and you don't have to be exact on diameter as there is a cut out for the stem

Ross yes we all love the forum and yes a lot of these facebook groups are awful and will never compare to what we have here. But facebook is exactly what you make it for yourself, some let the world know what they had for tea and if they threw it up again lol. It took me years to enter into the realm of facebook and 95 % of it i ignore completely, i use it to my advantage, I'm not an addict of it like most of the world is. My profile contains absolutely nothing about me, its not even my real name, all it is for me is a vehical for me to access information, if i dont like what i see i ignore it. You develop an attitude of indignation towards the vast majority of it.

Thinking. Mark has said he would be here for the foreseeable. I have looked at other watch forums. One will not let me join as my 'browser' is not set? Another feels very complicated. Another has showing of collections of Rolex etc, all vying to show what they have. Not what they do for watch servicing. And, the criticism of others is so prevalent. I asked a question and received, "Read a book more often" as a reply. I was given advice and constructive criticism by members, who advised the book, but realised as a result of my dyslexia, my difficulties. And so spent time assisting me. I like and enjoy this forum. I am at 2 1/2 years into my self imposed 5 year apprenticeship. Averaging 10 hrs per week. I can do virtually anything that needs to be done. I still lack some tools. DIY skills makes a lot of things available to me. Someone made the comment about 'Facebook'? Open my life for the inspection of others? No thank you.

Just come back form a 2 week holiday. Bride had a wonderful time. Day two. Full blown tooth ache which had been on/off for two flaming month. Ever tried to concentrate on making repairs when a tooth ache is attacking? Sorted today. Call me gummy! So glad to read Mark's posting, and to note the comments. The members who are active may be few, but we do have, and give access to a large community out there. Mark reigns. Some of the greatest names we see on the web give homage. Individuals and companies acknowledge Mark. So pleased to be part of the learning circle of WRT.

The K&D (Levin made the same style too, probably others as well) are a clever design and work well when you get used to them. The only issue is if you wind the spring so that the tongue goes in, there's a really good chance it slips futher and then comes out the next slot, usually breaking off. Best to size it so you can fit it in the barrel with the tongue sticking out.

Except for large pocket watches, this is all I use. I have made some custom arbors (easy to do on a lathe) for them in certain cases. Yup. It has happened to me. I just slow down when close to the end of the wind.