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Thanks for your post and the links. Very much appreciated, especially as I've been looking for these. I didn't know they were called "Bakelite dies" but had been searching for "Domed dies" (with no success). Anyway, once I searched Cousins (I live in Europe) for "bakelite dies", there they were!

Thought I’d show off a watch project that I have been working on. Wanted to create vintage inspired watches. Tell me what you think so far!

My new till for my future watchmakers shop. I have to figure out how it works, as you can see it is not fully functional but it seems to have all parts. I love the bell sound when it opens. I don't have the keys. And it counts how many times you opened the lid, 25561 so far.

Then watch in drawer or Ebay? JUST JOKING

Watchmaking, clockmaking, toolmaking, machining, designing, plating, chemistry, electronics, drawing, CADding, 3D printing, photographing... We could add another 250 arts and crafts that are closely related with this forum. We can't master them all, neither we're Renaissance or Industrial Revolution men inventing something new every day, someone is more versatile, someone more specialized. In my opinion all what matter is that we take genuine pleasure and enrichment from whatever we do while keeping in balance with the rest of our life, if we like to wander from a thing to another, so be it.

According to Ranfft it should have a power reserve of about 38h. http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&&2uswk&Omega_38_5L_T1 Very little torque gets to the fork and balance. It takes very little to stop the watch. It could be that you have not got it completely clean, or have excess oil where it shouldn't be. Not starting after winding is a sign that it's out of beat. Did you check that, do you have a timegrapher, and if so, could you post plots ?

Hello again, Thanks to all who took the time to respond. To Plato: I was waiting to see if parts where available before I started dissassembling the movement because I'm pretty sure with a loupe I can see wear on at least one of the gears, however if no spares can be found I've nothing to lose, thanks. Nucejoe: no worries, just glad it wasnt me not understanding. watchweasol: many thanks for the manual. When I open the pdf file, although the front page states it covers the 86xx calibres, on the Specifications page it only covers the 8625A, 26A and 27A calibres, and the diagrams in the manual show a diifferent design to my 8620A, however I can get a good understanding of how the various gear trains work together in this type of watch so I am very grateful for you posting this. I guess having taken over 30 years to get this far, I cant be in any rush so I'll continue to scan the internet and secondhand shops, etc for a donor watch, and being ever the optimist, hope I may happen upon some NOS parts one day. I will continue to monitor my topic, so if anybody stumbles across it and has anything else they think might help me, I will be very pleased to hear from them. Thanks again.

The idea was it would help the rate in the vertical positions, but as you note the increase in inertia did away with any benefit.

The site watchparts.org lets you post the parts you have for sale, which is to be in a spreadsheet, I sarted to but gave up, I too find it dull, specially that had to learn spreadsheet as I was going.

Hands on movement, movement into case, bracelet onto case.

Do people really use spreadsheets outside of the workplace? There's nothing more dull in life than a spreadsheet, no offence intended.

I also purchased a Bergeon press (the 8250) after finally deciding on not getting a Robur. The Robur was significantly less expensive, but the dies are significantly more expensive than M6 dies that can be found on ebay/Aliexpress. But then I also couldn't find any of the M6 domed dies, at least on ebay/Aliexpress where I was looking. But then I saw that Bergeon actually makes Bakelite domed dies, the Bergeon 5500-E. I didn't need the whole set and Ofrei sells them individually so I picked up the three that I thought I would use the most. They have worked great so far.

Just bought out all his escapement stock. Lucky I still work:)

Glass fiber brushes won't really mark steel, and are effective for removing rust spots. They will mark non steel parts. I only use them on steel and as seldom as possible as the little broken fibers get EVERYWHERE.