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I wanted to post an update on how my project was "progressing" As @grsnoviand @JohnR725already remarked, swapping parts of old movements may cause problems. Even though the donor movement has the same diameter, has the same look, has the same number and has been made by the same manufacture; just about NOTHING did fit. Earlier I tried to swap just the balance assembly of the donor but GGF's watch wasn't happy. I tried the combination of donor escape-wheel / pallet fork / balance assembly, but the escape-wheel prevented the wheel-train from running smoothly. So I tried just the pallet-fork / balance assembly ... that didn't work either. Back to the idea of swapping the whole donor movement in GGF's case. GGF's dial fitted, but GGF's hour-hand was too big for the donors hour-wheel. So I changed the donor hour-wheel for GGF's. GGF's minute hand did kinda fit, but GGF's little seconds hand just dropped over the donors seconds-pivot, so I had to use the too long donors seconds-hand Attempting to get this already Franken in GGF's case didn't work very well either. I probably could make it to fit, but that meant modification to GGF's case and that was for me a step too far. I reversed to whole process, all the parts belonging to the donor back to the donor and what belonged to GGF's back to GGF's watch. To avoid any mix-up, the donor movement is back in its own case, with its own dial & hands, ticking happily away. It seems that there is only one way forwards, and that's restoring / repairing the original GGF's-parts, in this case mainly the balance assembly; restoring the hairspring / replacing the missing timing-screws / getting the balance in time and do the poising. Delicate work which, apart from manipulating hairsprings, I haven't done before. It seems to me a bit of a "Do or die" scenario, with no room for error Lots of work done with no real results, but valuable lessons learned

Those special pinvices are rather costly and rare, and different sizes will be needed. You could make (I did once) your own one with low cost. Take a cheap indian sliding pinvice (#330, its opening is zero) and a jewellers burr with ball shaped tip of appropriate diameter. Then mill the center of the pinvice to the needed depth. The mouth of the pinvice is mild steel. It will last and keep its shape for very long. Frank

Way too early to celebrate, but after working my *ss off today, GGF's movement is kinda ticking again. Replaced the two missing timing screws and brought the balance "in-time" again. Poised the balance wheel and now I've a reasonable a Dial UP and Dial Down again. Vertical positions are no good yet, but I suspect still more work has to be done on the Breguet hairspring and the messed up regulator. Amplitude could be somewhat higher too, but we may have a starting point .......

EB 8800s seem to be one of the more frequently recurring characters in this game.

I had a chance to take this apart and clean it yesterday. The movement was spotless and went back together very easily. I enjoyed working on this EB 8800; after doing a pile of Timex pin pallet movements I didn't expect this to be so pleasant to assemble. It's even simple to get it into beat. So I feel like I got my one dollar's worth on this piece.

That is the reason of your trace and missing beat rate detection. You cannot tell from the traces if the watch is way too fast or too slow. You may try what John suggested (set 18000 manually, but it will not make much difference, I suppose) or test the rate "by foot" with a stopwatch and counting swings. Then you will get the rate error but not yet its reason. Frank

The result of all that hard work is, you now have a clear idea of the way forward. No more ifs and buts. Take your time, no deadlines. With your patience and attention to detail, you have a good chance of success.

My guess, the timing is off by more than 999 s/day.

When I see traces like that is when pivots are broken or when HS coils are touching or bunched up. I would focus around the balance area and spend some time making sure everything is perfect. If an end cap is cracked, I’m inclined to think the pivot that goes with it is compromised.

New macro focus rail. 18 images focus-merged. Didn't think about the fact that the second sweep and minute hand would move during the 18 separate exposures (so a quick edit to replace the whole second hand dial).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus I have faced this dilemma and it is tough. GGF rarely saw the movement, but always saw the case, dial, and hands. I think I would swap the movement and continue to work on the original.

Hello everyone, Just registered and thought I'd say hi and introduce myself. First off Wow!!! I'm hooked this subject is fascinating one of the most interesting things I have come across in ages. I'm an engineer by trade and I CANNOT WAIT to get my first watch to pull apart and learn about, gonna start easy at first seiko 5 or something like that "thoughts please" Not sure I'm ready to pull and 8k rolex apart yet lol. Anyway I'm scott and I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions along the way as I get started.. Have a great day..

I picked up a bunch of ex retail display stands from ebay. I snagged 30 of them for six quid, which I thought was a suitable price for displaying a bunch of 404 club watches. They are a little scruffy in the sense that some of them still have sticky residue from the old price stickers, and some even had the original stickers still attached, so I thought why waste those. Here are eight mechanicals and one bizarracle, from the 404 club, for your amusement. I'll clean up the rest of the sticky mess from these and probably leave them blank, although I might print a small detail card for each one I display. Oh.. and for those of you who were wondering if I was managing to keep the new watch bench immaculately clean... well mostly, but there is a fair bit of clutter on it at the moment.

Yes, it does look good. From time to time, I have seen other TV watches and have passed on them all. They always reminded me of the 70s, specifically parts I didn't like. Since your original posting (I can't say why) they now remind of several aspects which I did. Thanks. Nice job. Shane

If you've never actually taken a watch apart and put it back together I would suggest purchasing a clone of a 6497 off of eBay. In other words a brand-new running watch. Then it be nice if you in a timing machine either the Chinese 1000 or 1900 works. Although the 1900 is slightly nicer. Or you could service your Rolex. The reason I always recommend purchasing a brand-new watch is for learning purposes. So in other words you are brand-new watch you wind it up you put on the timing machine you see how it's doing. Taken apart put it back together you put it back on the timing machine and who to blame? Wife kids the dog the Hootie want to blame if it's not running? Yes watch repair it looks simple but it isn't always simple depends on the individual. If you start by servicing an existing watch in unknown condition you may or may not grasp as to whether your hand eye coordination is quite as good as you think it is and maybe the reason is not running is your fault. So it helps to practice on something disposable first and work on your hand eye coordination before servicing watches. But we have had people start with a Rolex watch. I assume your Rolex watches currently running so in other words was not running afterwords and a lot of times people do better with expensive lessons like a balance complete. Otherwise I get a clone of a brand-new watch the 6497 you go to eBay their lesson $50.

Seems we are thinking the same on the screws of the balance. I did not look at the serial number on the bottom of the wheel. I will do that. No rust on mainspring and really not much at all. Edit: (I meant hairspring) it’s time to go to family dinner, so I’ll respond later, after a bunch of turkey, wine, yams, cranberries, pumpkin pie, etc… hmmm…maybe I better limit the wine part.

Out of curiosity why do you think the escapement would make Your watch runs slow? One of the problems with inheriting a watch in an unknown condition is we don't know what's happened to it before you obtained it. In other words we cannot assume that this watch was running perfect and then you service did and now it's running bad we get to assume that it was probably not running perfect and you didn't fix the problem when you serviced it. This is the problem of vintage watches they've gone through a lot a hands and things have happened to them so we don't know what's happened to the watch in the past but I can make some assumptions and will run a test to see if I'm guessing right. Then when you're servicing the watch did you pay attention to the balance wheel serial number? Typically but not always on American pocket watches the serial number is scribed on the balance wheel. Then running extremely slow with seemingly perfect amplitude and everything else looking perfect is definitely a bit odd. This is why was asking about the pallet fork because it's probably not A escapement issue if everything seems running perfect it's just really really slow. Then looking at the pictures I see black spots which are usually the signs of rust has occurred at some point in the past. Did you see signs of rust anywhere including the hairspring? What makes you think the balance staff has been changed? Then just a reminder about swapping hairsprings. Yes it's a replaceable components and you're right the 914 and it looks like the 900 components like the balance wheel hairspring are all the same. So let's do a mixing and matching what harm could that do? On watches with flat hairsprings every single hairspring was vibrated to the balance wheel it's on. But watches with over coil hairsprings like this the hairspring is made separate from the balance wheel. It's easier for manufacturing to get the over coil in the exact right place if it's manufactured separately. This means that the factory when they bring the balance wheel and hairspring together they put on a special timing machine and they had timing screws to bring it into the proper rate. Then they would find tune with the mean time screws it looks like you have Four of those. There's a lot of things that can cause fast there is actually limited things that would cause slow Especially if everything else is supposedly perfect. It would be nice to have a picture the balance wheel out of the watch in other words you can taken out leave it on the bridge just flip it over so we can see The balance wheel. It looks like this watch has four mean time screws they look like they're probably fine. But I can't see all of them in the pictures you have. So let's try an experiment in the balance wheels out of the watch carefully remove one of the balance screws not the mean time screws. Just one of the Screws put it someplace safe because we might put it back in again. Then but the balance back in the watch and give us a timing machine results of dial up and then flip it over and give a style down and see what if anything has changed. https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/search/result/hamilton/1757942

It was worth a shot!

The EB 8800 can be a little fiddly sometimes, but certainly a lot less so than a Timex. They are robust, they were immensely popular so there are loads of them out there if you need spares. I know they more than a little agricultural, but they work reasonably well and they appear to be pretty easy to bring back to life.

I know this doesn't help the situation, but this photo would make a good motivational poster or something. Desktop background. I dunno. Something about it.

Yes they are cheap and good, they are designed to heat feet and hands or to be put in pockets but I find them good to dry parts, I didn't think of using them to heat my butt to be honest Buy the carbon fiber ones not the wire ones those are not so good and can cause problems.

You want to be careful with which Pin vice you order. They do make a special pin vice just for this. They come in a variety of sizes and I don't think the Chinese of clone them yet so there expensive. Then picture underneath shows a variety of pin vices this to remind you that you want to make sure you get one that has a suitable and for holding arbor. The one on the far right is one of the barrel arbor holders. Depending upon which pin vice you get some of them will work for holding Arbors some will not open up enough to hold an arbor it will depend on the size of the watch.

It would be nice to have the background history of the watch for something like this. In other words the watch was running perfect and now it's not or recently acquired you have zero idea what the background history is. Servicing I assume means entire disassembly cleaning of everything did you change the mainspring proper lubrication etc. I assume all of that was done? Then we really need better timing machine diagnostics here. Wind the watch up let it run about 15 minutes up to an hour works. Then we need dial up, dial down and at the minimum one crown position and as it's a pocket watch crown down. It would also be nice to have the other Three crown positions. Each time you rotate the microphone let the watch sit about 30 seconds then let it time for another 30 seconds and get a picture we really need to see it in more than one position. Then it would be nice to have a close-up picture of the balance wheel in the watch preferably when it's not running so we can see it. Any idea why you think the pallet forks the problem? Then your pictures aren't showing us one little thing that I'm curious about. It's supposed to pick up the frequency Of the watch and automatically select the Beats per hour it perceives the watch is but we don't see that In the pictures it be nice to know what that number is. As you're so far out it's possible The machine is confused over what Rate the Watch is running Had. Otherwise you could also go and just manually select 18,000 and see if that changes anything.

Just between the two of us, so do I, specially Seiko 5's

I’ll take it apart later and take a better look at the impulse jewel length. I didn’t use IPA or anything that dissolves shellac. The balance end-shake looks and feels good. Really strange amplitude is good, at least dial down, but trace is sooooo whacky.

Quite a number of makers stamped a Federal/Swiss cross on the movement. There are also a number of makers who used that cross as part of their makers mark, so as others have said, and as I suspect, the keyless work is more likely to yield a clue as to the maker. .. for example .. You may find makers marks on the hidden side of the bridges or under the balance. There is no consistent place to look unfortunately, and some movements, particularly older ones, are really difficult to place. Brevet incidentally means "Patent" so far as I am aware, and is not a particular manufacturer. For example this piece that google provided when I searched for Brevet watch

what a lot of youtubers experience and what they choose to show us are often two different things. I used to watch an American hobbiest, when he finished a reassembly and placed the watch on his tg the result was almost always no or very little beat error and within a couple of seconds of time keeping, i might add with no regulation whatsoever on old vintage watches. "hey look at me i can strip down a watch fix it, oil it and reassemble it in a couple of hours and it runs perfectly every time woohoo '. Yeah right of course you can, can we now see the actual full footage with all the fluff ups Billy no mates. We cant believe all that we see and hear, in fact very little when it comes to being popular and money is involved. Mike at retro watches can be a complete numpty sometimes but at least he doesn't hide it.

Another machine modded to do the Master-matic forward/reverse! Huge thanks to Jimzzila!!

Welcome. It is a lot of fun. It will drive you batty. It will empty your bank account...but it is a lot of fun...did I say that already??? This forum is the best place to come for answers.

Recently there were several rants about the dreaded 3 pronged Russian shock spring. I have done quite a number of Russian movements but never had much problem with the shock springs until a couple of days ago. This Slava 2427 had the most uncooperative shock springs that I have ever come across. Just cleaning and oiling the two balance jewels took me almost an hour. I think it was a combination of a stiff shock spring and badly polished shock spring seats. I could get 2 prongs in but after that, the friction was so great that it became impossible to turn the last prong after it was pressed into the notch. It was then that I decided to make a tool to fit the shock spring in. My mentor described how to make this tool to me several years but I never made one as I never had much problems with shock springs before. It is rather simple. The tube was taken from an old spring bar and expanded slightly to fit the hole in the shock spring seat. Three shallow notches were made in the rim of the tube to catch the 3 prongs of the shock spring. The notches must be shallow, so that the tube can depress the prongs. It only took me 15 minutes to make the tool and using it to fit the shock spring is a real godsend. If any of our members have problems refitting these 3 pronged springs, I strongly advise making this tool.

This piece has been floating in and out of my job queue since summer but it's finally all done. I had a second specimen and after chatting with someone I sold a different Timex to, it turns out he was in search of this exact model. I then found a third with an unsalvageable crystal but perfect dial to swap for my own bad dial. So between mine and the one for the other guy I've got 2 in great condition now. I put mine on a blue faux crocodile strap.