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Here's a picture of me at my school bench. It's crowded. We have, right now, 5 students. We work in a close environment and are constantly engaged in each other's work. Our hallmark is the apron because making parts by hand is often dirty work. I apologize for my less than distinguished pose! (Why can't my pictures be "slimming"!)

I found this Summit on ebay going for not much £ - just loved the look of it. The hands are beautifully blued. A clean+oil, new mainspring and strap, it's running well and looks great The movement is a 17J A Schild 1130, which would date it to 1955-60, but it looks more modern to me. Anyone heard of Summit ?

I was going through my watch files today and thought I would post this handy chart of watch movement sizes in lignes, "Lancashire" sizes, millimetres and inches - just for reference if anyone needs it. Watch sizes.rtf

It was running over an hour fast in 11 hours. I took out the balance assembly,discovered the spring was stuck together, unstuck it, then demagnetized it. Now it's keeping time, as good as can be expected for a watch over 100 years old. Thanks Everyone who made suggestions. In future I will give as much information as possible.

Seiko hairspring are very (insert "very: 5 more times here) delicate. If it is still within repair your best chance is to bring it to a watchmaker to be corrected, otherwise a new balance complete will be needed (out of stock at Cousins at this time). I understand that you are serious having even bought an expensive tool (actually a smartphone app would have been pretty much OK), but to be honest with you I strongly recommend that you practice first with junk movements before moving to the watches that you want to wear or have any value.

Here we go... The set comprises the tail stock attachment, an alignment tool, the drill holder, and 2 collets. This is the drill plate with a variety of different hole sizes, all with a conical profile so that the staff to be drilled stays aligned. a 0.42mm spade drill in the drilling rod. and how it fits through the back of the drill plate. All together on my 6mm Lorch Triumph with the alignment tool in place. I have not actually used this in anger as yet so I don't know how well things align between the head stock and the tail stock, but I would imagine that this set up is probably better used with a safety pulley type set up which would mean that you would be working between centres. I do have a safety pulley but it is for my BTM 8mm lathe, and this kit doesn't fit that. My lathe bits and pieces are somewhat eclectic as they have gradually been accuculated from a variety of sources and although the BTM is up and running, both lathes still need parts to get the best from them. And an assortment of drills which I think go down to 0.1mm and up to 1.1mm, although above 0.5mm they don't fit this rig. This is my other pivot drill. Almost exactly what SZB has built. Sadly I have no drills to fit this.

Lorch (and no doubt others) made a tailstock arrangement for their lathes which comprised a plate with a circle of varying sized conical holes which could be brought into alignment with the axis of the lathe, mounted onto a hollow shaft into which a drill holder could be inserted, specifically for re-pivoting work. I have one somewhere, will post a pic later.

I'm also working on a Summit watch right now (ETA 1120) which stylistically looks a little older than yours. The dial certainly isn't in such great condition! But I also wondered about the make and found this discussion via Google: http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-1239861.html I love getting some historical background to watches I'm trying to repair. Please share anything else you find! Nick

Hello from me. You will find plenty on here. If you are starting out on watch repairing and have little or no experience, get yourself some old pocket watch movements and practice on taking them apart and putting together. Do not buy the fusee type get the spring driven type they are very similar to a wrist watch but much bigger. Also get to know what the parts are called. Buy a good set of watch screwdrivers, a good pair of tweezers and different eyeglasses you will need a few, you might need to practice first in holding an eyeglass.

I reckon it's a sleeper. Due to the lack of wear and abuse, it looks like an "Old New Stock" replacement movement that has never been used.

Amazing work and thanks for posting the vid. Great to see when the jewel fitted and working

Yes, but not by me. I have not enough experience with the tool. Till now i could succesfully repivot only one 3rd wheel which has 0.37mm pivot. Two drills were broken in two balances, but leesson learned. Dont wanted to remove the roller table and i couldnt anneal the balance becouse the roller jewel shellac. Since the balance was to hard the 0.2 drill could not drill itt so i had to predrill it with 0.1mm drill. All went fine untill i took the 0.2 drill and pushed it to hard. It was sticcking into the hole and snapped the tip of the drill. And made the same mistake in another balance when i realized the problem. However, the other end of one balance was succesfully drilled thereafter. The wider drill has to be really slowly pushed forward. So it is possible to drill not-annealed staffs with carbide drills.

I recommend 8301 with graphite, which is the most similar to Seiko S4. On the spot anything works well, to see the real results we should check it again ins 30 yrs. Barrel harbor should use HP1300. I understand that D5 is natural oil with a shorter life.

Quick fix on Philippines watch, got this from watchguy, finally got around to looking at it, broken winding rotor, looks like it just fell apart, think I paid more for shipping anyway checked overall movement 7s36a /cleaned brace, reblackened '60' at top with permanent marker, polished up crystal a bit and running good, like those blue dialed Seikos!

ro63rto it was a pleasure working on this watch. I love working on them, and even if sometimes it is a bit hard they are still pretty serviceable. Professional watchmakers tend to avoid them, suggesting to swap the entire movement... This is getting harder and harder to do, since they are not in production anymore and if you do find a NOS movement it will cost you sometimes more than the watch itself. It is always a matter of answering the question: is it worth it? For me, servicing them (and not just swapping the movement) is worth all the effort. but it is just my opinion...

Thanks again George for your speedy work. [emoji106] Can't wait to get this watch onto my wrist. Out of all the Flightmaster colour combinations, it is my favorite. [emoji7] If I find any more I'll know who to send them to [emoji6]

Sumo for you. All pics are mine

A screw came loose and really messed up my ETA 2824-2 Tissot Seastar. I finally got some time and dough for the fix! It only loses one minute every 15 days! Pretty proud and glad to have it back! Diamondslayer

Would it be possible to drill a escape wheel with this drill? Have an Alpina pocket watch 355 that needs a new pivot in one end. It has been here so long. I can't find any parts for it? HELP !!!!

Ugh!

I've been playing with different LEDs to make a cheap DIY bench light. I got 5 .5m rigid LED strips for about $13. 180 5630 SMD LEDs in total produce a more than adequate amount of light. It beats the crap out of the small LED desk lamp I'd been using. I've just got to figure out a wooden or aluminum mounting system.

Excellent work! Thanks for posting the video, I found it most enlightening.

I recently acquired a Waltham 0/size 1907 grade 165 pocket watch. When attempting to remove the dial, one of the 3 dial screws was rusted firm in place. In order to get this stubborn screw out I purchased some Hoppes #9 Gun Bore Cleaner from amazon. I used a small glass dropper to carefully apply some solution to the screw from 2 directions. I placed some directly into the screw hole on the side of the plate, and I also applied some directly to the dial foot visible from the plate. I was a bit concerned about potential damage to the keyless and motion work since they were both still in place beneath the dial. I needed to reapply the solution for each of 2 days. So after a full 48 hour soak, I was able to very easily remove the screw with a normal screwdriver. Thankfully there was no damage to the other components of the watch. I immediately disassembled the remaining components and ran them through the ultrasonic to remove the solution. I still recommend caution using this solution with other types of metals.... Hope this helps someone else!

I remember that Marc posted a simple but clever (to me anyway;)) suggestion last year on this. Have a collection of washers in different sizes, then it doesn't matter which way your winder goes. If you need to change orientation it you can transfer the mainspring to a washer, flip it over and press out. Saves having to have spare winders or buying another set going the other way. Stephen