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A mainspring winder is necessary when it comes to clock springs. Winding in by hand can distort the spring. This can cause the clock to be poor in timekeeping, cause unnecessary rubbing/wear to the inside of the barrel and barrel top. With the rubbing, it can weaken the spring. The same can be said about watch springs. New watch springs come wound, you can just press them in with no distortion. There are many different types of spring winders if you are going to invest buy a good one, with watch type ones, find out if they will undertake the task of all size springs and fittings. The same goes for a clock winder.

Sharing a vintage Favre-Leuba Daymatic today. I believe it's from the late 50s or early 60s... Date was first included as a window in the dial around this time.. The pioneer was.. Rolex. Up close the dial looks pretty aged but at least it's legible and even across the dial. Case is not overly polished and the edges are still distinct if not sharp. Crown has marking but not FL. And between the lower lugs the number 1944 is engraved. Probably a serial or model number as this watch is not that old I think. The number 1944 is repeated on the case back as well. Perhaps 1944 is the model number and 64003 is the serial number? The case back is nicely done and we can see the hourglass which was later stylized to become the FL trademark. This inside of the case back is only marked with... Vacuum.. An inside is a nicely finished movement.. I think it's a Felsa of some sort. Again we see the hourglass.. Quite a good effort. But what really attracted me to this watch was the band.. It's in really nice condition and fills the lugs nicely without any gap.. Not surprising as its... ...meant for a Favre-Leuba! ..this is a stylized version of the hourglass on the case back. It's manufactured by Aristo..anyone heard of this brand? Hope u enjoyed the pictures! Anilv

Well I could have done with one today, I went from this: To this: Ok, it’s a 40 year old ms but I’m not sure that it wasn’t at least partly me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's usually the terminal curve which is off. The rest on yours looks ok to me.

Have you tried ebay? I see you are in England try auctions or even second had shops that sell tools. How about old watchmakes near you. When I lived in Lyme Regis I woul go to Bridport on market day as a stall sold second hand tools.

This is very interesting! Where does the gauge live when it's not being used? Any chance of a picture? By the way, I've been doing electronics and computers most of my life, but with the ever increasing levels of integration, both have lost a lot of their attraction. Thus the relatively recent fascination with all things mechanical

Hi. When I first started in this hobby, I decided not to go cheap on the tools so bought really good quality tweezers and screwdrivers, etc. This leads me to my question on screwdrivers which is that as the screwdriver set I bought (there are 9 of them in a rotating holder) and came with multiple replacement blades for each size, I assumed then that when a blade chipped, I just junked it and put in a replacement blade, however due to my inexperience I found I was replacing them really often, and in fact soon had to order more of the smaller sizes so: 1). Is this the right approach, i.e., just junk any damaged blades and replace them with new ones and if not, why not considering how cheap the blades are? 2). If I should be sharpening them, can I use a diamond stone as I already have a set of these that i use in my furniture making hobby? I also have water stones - would these be better? 3). I watched a YouTube video yesterday from the AWCI, which stated that not only should a screwdriver be just the right width for the screw slot, it should never bottom out in the slot but rather sit just above it so that the screwdriver actually jams up against the slot walls, which will prevent it slipping out and damaging the screw and/or screw hole. Is this correct because I assumed that the screwdrivers, especially given how expensive they were, would be inherently designed like this? Does this mean that even replacement blades should be adjusted on a stone to assure that they do not bottom out, and what if some screws have shallower slots than others for a given width, should I then customize the screwdrivers to ensure the correct fit? I should mention that, although I'm getting better at it, I still have screwdrivers slipping out of the screw slots and wreaking havoc, well at least on my ego, if not the movement itself. Should you have any other advise regarding the maintenance of screwdrivers, I'd love to hear it. Thanks from sunny Edmonton, which is now being subjected to a plague of mosquitoes thanks to recent heavy rains. And we thought we were going to escape that pleasure this year!