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I have to agree with everyone else. They look good to me. Panerai hands can be kind of tough because there aren't a lot of reference markers. Add the fact that production accuracy (of the dial or movement) may not be a high priority and you have a perfect storm. It may not be a good business practice, but If if were me and the customer is that picky I would send the watch back free of charge and not accept anymore work from them. You just can't please some people and it sounds like you have bent over backwards trying to do so.

There are a few lessons here that I wish to impart upon those who like to do this kind of stuff and have experienced all the pratfalls of watches and the diagnosis and repair of such. I picked up a two tone 16s 15 jewel Hampden pocket watch a few weeks ago, complete with decent hunter case. My expectations were not really high because usually these type of two tone, (gold wash) movements are getting harder to find, hence the price goes up. I own a few, but not in 16 size. Anyway, this one comes up for $50 + ship, I saved it to see if any bids were received. After a week, nothing, watch get's relisted @ $30 + ship, so I threw out a bid and didn't expect a win. Long story short, it's mine now. So I get this and immediately start evaluation, ( does it run, wind, hands move, etc) Much to my amazement, it runs, but poorly. So apart it comes and here is what I found: No hands, sub second has funny twist, which is why it ran bad. Next out of case and off with dial, balance, bridges removed. Of course it's filthy. After an bath and overall assessment of jewels, mainspring, pivots, roller jewel/balance cock assembly, it got a bath. back together with lube and love she's running but missing hands! So I found another comparable movement, and it was also a two tone, but a little more common, after a few bids, it's mine at $14 + postage. Now the unknown, I know the hands will fit to complete the first watch which is really all I wanted/needed, enter How not to ship watch, this is what I got today and of course I had to tear it down, ALL I WANTED WAS THE HANDS!!! At first I was, well PO'ed, but I got over that... when I saw what I got. In all fairness, seller did describe what they were selling, but here's the rub.... until you get it apart, you'll never know what you have, kinda like Forrest Gump " box of chocolates" First the hands were bent from packing, okay I can straighten them, then jewels were cracked, okay I can replace, (only if donor is found), then mainspring was out of barrel, I can fix that too...but roller jewel MISSING and appears to have been superglued in ARRRRGGGHHH! See the T end in opening, not where its suppose to be cleaned up jewel out jewel in bent hands from shipping, Now I don't expect to get to the roller jewel unless I find a suitable replacement, (swap wheel and spring), which in a manner of speaking makes it a minor franken. The point to all of this is: Whilst I achieved my preliminary plan to find some hands to make one watch complete, I now know have an additional movement, (dial cleaned up nicely) and the requirement of more part searching and effort to make complete, which I can sell off as a partial and maybe get some $$ back. All told spent ~$60 usd and one watch is working, Is it worth it???????

It's going to be hard to satisfy someone who wants perfection from a replica watch. rgds Anil

Maybe he's just complaining to try and get some discount or refund. Some people are just j3rks.

Maybe if he wants any better--He should fork out for the gen watch, where the perception of expenditure will re-align his eyeballs!! Alignment looks pretty spot-on to me however!

That's not such a crazy idea, although it would be best if the second microphone were also in the watch stand, but isolated from the watch. That way, any noise picked up by vibration of the stand itself would also be cancelled. If you have a regular sound card with a stereo line-in, you wouldn't even need a second card, just some software changes. In fact, you may not need a second input at all. Simply wiring the two piezos in series, with one pointing in the opposite direction, should have the same effect. In fact, that's exactly how the microphone in the headset I'm wearing in my avatar works. One mic faces my mouth, and the other faces away, and only the difference is picked up by the plane's audio panel.

I have a suggestion, tell me if this is crazy? If I were to have a primary contact piezo microphone touching the watch under test as always and if I also plugged a second microphone into my PC that was basically just hanging off the PC not involved with the test. Could you take the input from the second microphone and subtract it from he first? My thought is that you could do active noise cancelling that way it and it would remove all of the environmental noise, leaving just signal. I looked and a second USB dongle microphone/speaker "sound card" costs like $7.00 now. If this worked, it would be a really solid feature.

I am not a professional but after several attempts I succeeded in replacing the battery on my Casio 1572 A168. I decided to post a picture in case anyone searching needs one. Here is the procedure I used*. 1- Undo the 4 screws to remove the back cover. Note the correct orientation for reassembly by observing the writing. 2- Gently pry out the mechanism. 3- Undo the 6 clips round the circumference of the mechanism with a pin or watchmakers screwdriver. The top half should come loose. There is also a 7th clip which can be more easily unclipped from underneath. Replace the battery. 4- Note the correct position of the small spring. This spring is necessary to make the watch speaker work. 5- Note from the picture the correct position of the special contact which connects with the lower board. If this does not connect properly then the display will disappear. 6- With the battery in place, the watch display should work properly. If there is a problem try connecting the two all clear contacts with a screwdriver, paper clip or small piece of wire to reset the watch. 7- Reassemble the watch and make sure the rubber seal is in place. The seal on my watch was slightly deformed so I used a very small amount of silicone sealant on the tip of a screwdriver to tack it down properly. 8- Put on the back cover being careful not to overtighten the 4 screws and damage the threads. The cover needs to be positioned correctly and not 180 degrees in reverse so the spring will connect with the correct place. When you look at the front and back of the watch the writing should be the same way round. I hope this information will be useful to someone. As I mentioned I am not a professional, so if anyone has some additional advice it is welcome. Kind regards Chris *Looking at the picture it might also be possible to replace the battery by removing just the one clip that is closer to the spring. However I found that that clip is more easily undone from underneath, so I preferred to do a more complete dismantling. This also gives more freedom to reposition the battery.

SR41 is a 392 battery as in picture, remember to put them in the correct way as in picture. I just put esa 942 711 into google images to get picture.

It's the same as on my "fngeen"s (try saying that if you dare) The watches themselves aren't ugly and I even sold one for 30 bucks . The others go for gifts anyway I didn't took pics on the timegrapher... just the memory of that is enough

Oh sure it's worth it. Isn't that what we do? Start with a watch that needs to be brought back to life, buy a parts watch to accomplish that, look at the parts watch and say "gee, that would make a very nice watch if it was complete", but another parts watch, and - repeat ad infinitum.

Great, let us know how you get on. A donor movement is good to have, you can practice on it rather than the important one. Have Fun!

For a picture of what's inside the TIMETRAX microphone can be found on page 6 of this discussion found at the link below, at least a picture of the older style I imagine the constructions the same it's just a different housing now. The cost fortunately is still the same to hard to justify making one. Then I don't think I ever got around to posting the inside of the watch pickup which if anyone is interested I could do it's actually quite simple inside. http://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/3002-d-i-y-watch-timing-machine/?page=6

Because the engineer had the idea of making a single movement where you fit a wheel or the other according to the need. And then the maker had the idea of fitting both to make it look as it a complication in the hope of selling more.

I will have to let this customer go. I so prefer to work on genuine brand watches as my day job, but you'd be surprised of some flaws I have found with these too, the latest, a Tutima, the inner chapter ring was misaligned.

If it's the one that takes 2 batteries I think they are size 392

Thanks for the link JohnR725, and my eyes are looking forward to a sensor of these. Hi jguitron, do you have a sound file that you could share with us to see the sound quality that you get with the TIMETRAX? Thank you very much.

They look good to me

I've actually never had a customer complain about the precision of my hand setting, and that's not to suggest mine has always been perfect. In my experience customers are usually extremely ignorant of the hand setting accuracy, they bring watches in that are off a solid 15 minutes and don't notice until I tell them. Pretty typical you'd get someone so picky on a replica though. Tough situation. I second about the dial printing, I also think that many genuine watches of various brands dont print their dials in a way that allows the hands to show truly perfectly at every position. He surely expects too much.

At six o'clock its bang on too. Using the dial printing as a horizontal rule, with the hands set at six o'clock, I have four perfect right angles (45 degrees reference points). Agree with the slack on some movements, this movement is an Asian 7750 and it does indeed have quite a bit of play. Some people with these reps have far more unreal expectations of them than any of my genuine watch brand customers.

Its a replica. I'm guessing the dial printing is off.

Hi folks. Sorry I have not been on much lately. I have uploaded the Service document to Google Drive. Hopefully this will allow everyone to get to it again. Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bw4CFczC5vh0XzI0TjVTRDQzaWc Please let me know if you have any issues accessing it.

Happened to me once....couldn't believe I lost an arbor....it's quite big and chunky. Finally found it in my workbag which was about 4 feet away. Anilv

As You know i am brave watch butcher but to replace a balance staff... even i had no guts to try The correct way to remove the balance is to cut the staff from the support side on the lathe. By simply pushing out the balance staff from the balance can distort the balance and scrape the balance hole making it bigger, so the new staff with the same size may wobble. Staking back would be an easy part, since one can make a simple staking tool and turn the desired stakes. This is actually on my list