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Hello Everyone, This arrived in the mail today. Seller stated: So, onto the timegrapher it will go, to see what he means by "It run fast". I'll let you know results soon. g. ----

Happy Birthday to me September 1, 1947. That makes me 75 years old today. Thanks for letting me waste the bandwidth. Now back on my knees on the floor looking for that Croton's very small wheel that I dropped. (I just might have to buy a donor movement on E-Bay)

Well... First things first: thanks all for all the advice! In the end, and given the fact that the spring was broken towards the outer part, I found a way to fix it using the weird insert. I mounted it and voilá... working! I have ordered a couple of springs with similar characteristics, so I will try when they arrived. For now, the good news is that the restoration is almost complete. Unfortunately, I broke one of the very deteriorated hands when removing them, so that´s the nex struggle! but, as you can see below, the before (not running) and after (already running) photos, the difference is noticeable, and I´m really proud that I managed to disassemble, clean, fix and assemble again this nice watch. Thank you! Thank you so much. I was finally checking in Cousin´s list and ended up exacty in that list! I´m still waiting for the spring I ordered. The only available that looked similar (GR6840TR). Still waiting for it unfortunately. Indeed I suspected what you mentioned about not to trust the current mainspring. Definitely this watch has been already through a few services in 100 years!

Hi Karl It may be stamped Hamilton But the movement is Hermle 340-020 probably a bought in movement. done a few of these they are nice clocks . Its an eight day Westminster chime movement with underslung hammers. the Floating balance is a nice feature and as long as its not maltreated in any way, very good. Cleaning and oiling the balance , when dry its recommended that you use Moebius 8000s but I have always used Windle's on the top and bottom of the tube carrying the wire. Its beat rate is 150 BPH. Never had one to bush as yet. For $35 a cracking buy. I did one for a friend some time back that he retrieved form the repairers after a 3 month wait and a quote for £300 plus.

Probably still catering to that fashion phaze of big bold bling is better, It seems to be hangjng around far too long. I blame Breitling for that. Its about time the general population of watch collectors developed some actual taste and went back to sensible classical watch styles and sizes that actually fit the wrist. Big car compensation mentality ?. Dont mind me I'm just having a shit time, so venting the spleen and letting off steam.

I'm working on an oldish French clock, barrel movement, with a Thevenet platform escapement. I'd guess it is late 19th century so it probably has natural jewels. It's not precious but it is valued by it's owners. The clock has been knocked to the floor. Luckily it was carpeted. Less luckily, the owner had left the winding key in the barrel. The escapement wheel was bent out of true, but this was easy to rectify. It looks like the balance took the brunt of the impact as the lower cap jewel was smashed and the lip of the bezel setting was torn. I made a replacement setting using a pressed in jewel: The difficulty come with assessment of the condition of the remaining jewels. I've examined them closely with my old microscope and took some photos through the eyepiece with my phone. I'm not familiar with how much damage or wear and tear is acceptable. Whilst I'd be able to replace them with pressed in jewels in brass chatons, I'm not equipped at present to deal with rubbed in jewels, nor do I have a source of them. So my multifaceted question is this: would you replace these jewels, and if so, with what and from where would you source it? Upper escapement jewel: Upper balance cap jewel. A bit chipped at the edge but nicely polished in the middle Upper balance jewel. Looks smooth in its centre bore but the edge of the hole shows chipping Lower pallet fork pivot jewel. Bit rough around the hole Upper pallet fork jewel cracked and chipped Lower balance pivot jewel, looks pretty good Upper pallet fork jewel, cracked. Lower escapement jewel, pretty good Fitted together as is, the clock runs for eight days at a wind. The pivots mostly look in need of a bit of TLC. Balance upper, looks a bit scored. Also is it normal for these pivots to be cut without a square shoulder? Isn't the arbor rough looking Balance lower, seems to have survived the impact Escapement pivots seem better. Lower: Upper needs a polish: And finally the pallet for pivots. Upper corresponding to the badly cracked jewel: And lower looking a bit grubby:

You do realise that before you even think about poising, either statically or dynamically, you need to get the end-curve of the hairspring adjusted correctly, so it always sits exactly between the regulator pins with no power on the movement. So, when the regulator index is moved from both sides of extremity the regulator pins never touch the hairspring, if the end-curve isn't sorted then the regulator pins will either push or pull the hairspring depending on the position of the regulator index. If this isn't corrected, then putting the movement in vertical positions may emulate poising problems, which it isn't. I would be very surprised a smooth balance that has been balanced in the factory needs poising. They tend to be made of Glycudur, if it is a fairly modern movement. I've never had to poise a glycudur balance

Alles gut zum Gebürtstag!!! Much luck to you for finding the wheel to your Croton. Step carefully. And try placing a single layer of pantyhose over a vacuum cleaner nozzle, secure it with rubber band, and sweep the area for many square feet around. Viel glück! May it be undamaged when you find it!

Just brought this home from a local thrift shop. In an effort to step out of my "comfort zone" of pocket watches, I saw this charming old Hamilton on a shelf, needing some TLC, and decided to buy it. It was only $35, so not too dear. Now, my knowledge of clocks is sparce, and is primarily mechanical - and related to function. I'm a little ignorant regarding striking clocks. This one seems of good quality and I am familiar with the Hamilton name. And it has a floating balance, and I am more used to working on balances than I am upon pendulums. All that said, if O.H. or any of the rest of you clock veterans have any tips or caveats, feel free to share. I am preparing to clean, and to locate my clock oil. And I plan to search the forum for wood refinishing posts, and how to tell if a clock needs bushings, and other fun stuff. Wish me luck.

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a great, especially finding that wheel

Enjoy

Lol. Happy birthday matey. Afternoon in the pub

Happy Cake Day! I hope you find the small wheel. Matt

Apparently it is an SNZG15 Here's the Case/Movement: 7S36-03J0 Here's some info on it I found on the Information Superhighway: http://www.watchsleuth.com/seiko5finder/search/?MOD=SNZG15 g. ----

I hadn't encountered the movement or, so far as I know, the maker of the Ingersoll Skeleton. If you are interested, it is probably ca. 1975 and it runs on a 12 "' 2100 bph Sonceboz ES 95 The Sonceboz company still exists apparently. -> https://sonceboz.com/en/ "Originally founded as Ebauches SA, the company now sets innovative trends in the fields of mechatronic systems, stepper motors and linear actuators, which are usually tailored to customers' requirements ." I've been wearing the Ingersoll/Sonceboz off and on today, and it is keeping fairly consistent time, at around -20 sec per day. I'll regulate it tomorrow and see how it goes. Its actually quite a small watch, more in keeping with the kind of style I like, and quite eye catching. Somewhat more refined than the oversized Chinese "Winner" skeletons and similar. I've never quite understood why the Chinese market isn't awash with well designed skeleton dress watches with decent build quality rather than those big pot metal frying pans. After all the Chinese Standard skeleton movements are roughly the same size (11 "'' as I recall) as an 11 "' Chinese standard movement should easily fit in a refined dress style case.

just as a reminder especially if it's a vintage static poising actually works really really well. Because sometimes with dynamic poising if you're not careful you can go in directions you don't really want to go in. Just depends on how good you are looking at all the numbers and figuring out what you are doing. so usually for vintage I find it easier to statically poise and I can still get within about 15 seconds with just that. Which is more than good enough for vintage watch of and of course when your dynamic poising the balance staff has to be absolutely perfect. Otherwise you can end up with issues from a staff that's not quite perfect and never achieved poise at all being confused about the pivots not the balance. then if your dynamic poising it really helps to have a watch like a watch with the Etachron system because it allows such a great range of regulation. so as others have stated if you remove weight from the balance wheel it runs faster. Faster in all positions everything speeds up. This is where dynamic poising is more to just make things a little more perfect as opposed to drilling a whole bunch of holes through your balance wheel and totally destroying it. I'm not sure of ever seen that by the way but you do have to be careful. Because you can end up with a situation where you cannot regulate out how fast it's going. This is where having screws are nice because once you get all that perfect it's running insanely fast to put some timing washers on. then slow thing back down again C can regulate its.

„but you endup pushing the horizontal and vertical rates apart so thereare large differences.“ No, you don‘t push them apart. You will make hor and vert rates faster equally (about). Frank

This is a modern carriage clock. You can tell by the shape and style of the screws and the shape of the click and the click being black looking and not blued. The platform has been some what hacked about it should have four screw round hols to hold the platform (what a mess) From what I have found out it looks like A C G is the trademark of Huber (WJ)

Running on the bench...keeping good time. BTW, it is sitting on a movement holder I printed specifically for this watch.

you forgot natural and yes were still using natural. then of course there's been some reference material that indicates that the natural oils were the very best who cares that they were really short shelf life. where it should be or not lubrication is probably the number one controversial subject of all time in watch repair. One of the reasons for this is proof how do you know you're doing it right. This means that people have opinions and when you have people with opinions then you can have disagreements. up until we have these modern newfangled timing machines that measure amplitude using wrong lubricants how would you know. Then we watch is sealed up how would you know if you lubrication is failed until you get around the servicing a watch and if you have a lot of watches you may never get around to servicing it again. As opposed to you put her on timing machine and think all my that looks really bad that some clue perhaps that you lubrication was wrong choices. And yes there are other groups out there at least in the past are getting a little better about it where basically lubrication discussions were forbidden because of well opinionated people. if you really want to see something weird going find a catalog of tools in the 60s and look at the price of things and then compare other things in the 60s and see how much they went up. As far as I can tell the Swiss just raise their prices they never go down ever and they probably I've never actually looked at this but the rise probably faster than anything else on the universe. Oh and the quality of tools seems to be decreasing. then you look at the Swiss tool distributors I think for the most part they do tell you or at least hand that they're just old distributors the most part they don't make their tools. Which means the Swiss will buy their tools where with her cheapest which is China right now. Then a course they put them in those pretty yellow probably made in Switzerland boxes and need to recoup the cost of printing with all that yellow ink I'm sure that yellow ink is really expensive and that's why the tools were expensive. my two cents on this you are wrong about who makes the oil. I suspect they do make the oil in little tiny batches versus trillions of gallons needed for the automobile industry which is one of the reasons is so damned expensive. then they take the tiny batches of oil and package them on really tiny little bottles which of course as the cost of everything. Although one of those tiny the bottles will last you a very long time. Unfortunately lubrication in horology has very special properties which unfortunately also seems to come in a very expensive price. So for instance if they don't make their oil who does detail at how one experiment run out to the local automotive store and buy the cheapest oil he can and lubricate all your watches with them and then see how it performs now and five years you can come back to us with the results. Until is how stupid we are for using expensive Swiss oil unless of course your watch disintegrates then well maybe it isn't that expensive after all. Oh and then there's the other minor problem with lubrication. Moebius is the preferred choice so that's basically the only one we can buy not entirely there some other brands out there. But often times there totally lacking in anything resembling specifications. Especially if you get away from some of the Swiss oils and go to horological oil on Amazon r eBay for instance it's really cheap but what exactly is it. oh if you want to save money here's a popular brand and its cheap https://www.hswalsh.com/product/oil-superfine-wrist-watches-10ml-economy-ho277

Nice work! With 1000 grit followed by 2000 grit and a final polish with Polywatch, you could improve the crystal. Alternatively, I bet you could fit a GS crystal for it.

Actually the most controversial subject is should you buy Chinese made tools from China or Chinese made tools packed into made in Switzerland boxes with the price hiked ten fold. I also would not be surprised if we found out Moebious etc do not actually make the oils they sell as watch oils but buy them from an existing oil maker in bulk for a lot less than they sell them for to us fools to pay exorbitant amounts for. Hat coat door bye.

Fascinating reading Graham Another cool looking watch Andy . I missed on ebay a similar looking Marvin a few weeks back. Not having much luck on there at the moment but i have got something coming in line with your 70s style.

This animated web page has a load of great information. Of course, Mark offers a series of online, self-paced instruction at https://www.watchfix.com/ that is quite good.

If what is pictured is the part that came adrift, between the movement and dial, it is the cannon pinion assembly and it goes back onto the tall staff right in the center of the movement (which drives your seconds hand from the center wheel)

Here is an update on the movement holder. When I store an unfinished movement in the popular domed parts carrier, it tends to flop around if I try to place it in the center. The solution was to put a base on the holder that sits nicely in the center partition.