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Hi everyone, I’m not exactly new member, but since after my short appearance here 2 years ago I’ve been silent to community I think a bit of update is good comeback. Yes about 3 years ago I’ve started watchmaking hobby due to lack of good quality puzzle. Few Amazon purchased tools and flea market soviet watch got me started all right. Number and quality of tools, new and ambitious projects eventually brought me up here. I have to say community here always helped me with my questions and I always remembered this forum as great knowledge resource. Eventually sign up for Distant course in BHI and decided to pursue watchmaking as my profession. Age 32 not easiest decision to make specially for my GF. Since all future plans and me wanting to move from Estonia to Slovakia because lack of watch interest and opportunity there. After longer talks we all were confident, this is way to go for both of us. For my surprise, took me 2 weeks to find a job in local watchmaker shop as apprentice. Basically they gave me poor salary and table under staircase (pure Harry Potter style). Long story short, I worked harder and longer then others and soon became shift leader, then mechanic watch repairer to junior manager of two workshops with team of 5 watchmakers. Meanwhile working on setting up my own shop, that consumes all of my money (honestly, learned to live of 2 digit numbers on bank account) I’m coming back here since all this time wanted to join community that I liked, helped me and inspired me to all this adventure. Cheers guys, glad you’re still rocking here! Jakub

Just got this 1956 Bulova in the mail. I'm a sucker for these with these movements with the sub seconds hands, and the black dial is something different for my collection. It's pretty filthy. Can't wait to see what's inside!

Just wanted to share current progress on my grandfather’s pocket watch handed down to me. After following Mark’s courses and working in a practice movement, I felt competent enough to have a go at servicing this.

Whatever you do you want to be extremely careful and definitely don't bend the guard pin. But it's amazing what you can find in books here's a recommendation's I snipped out an image for you. Then yes you don't have to agree with everything found in a book as this makes me very nervous.

You'll definitely be on Santa's naughty list for suggesting to replace a mechanical movement with a quartz movement. A mechanical movement can always be rebuilt to a good working condition by a skilled clockmaker, provided that it hadn't been butchered previously. Your young customer is smart lad and knows what he wants.

thanks for the replies and the help. i just can't tell you exactly what the issue is. he starts it and it runs for 1 or so minutes. i have a video of it running see the link. one thing i noticed is the pivot on the pendulum is swinging on at the top area of the escapement looks to be wobbling a bit. so that may be an issue at that point. thanks. https://photos.app.goo.gl/DVPEauZUqqpCxqg28

See if I have some "pendulum suspension spring" in my toolbox!

If you register on the Amscope site they regularly send through clearance offers. Picked up an Amscope 3.5X-45X stereo microscope on a boom stand with an LED light and 0.5 barlow lens for £240 a month ago on a clearance deal. The 0.5 barlow lens allows a good working distance and the boom arm is great for freeing up space. I'd read a lot about the benefits of using a microscope but, without being overly dramatic, this has been a game changer for me.

Would this also be a gold case then if the dial has real diamonds. Looks like a good find MSB has got himself there

That looks to be a Bulova President, not sure which model. The 1956 President 'P' had the same dial but not in black so it will have a different model designation. The dealer catalog shows the1956 price was $100, which is close to what Bulova was selling some of their 1970's chronographs for and is about $1,100 in today's dollars. I think those diamonds are real as the dealer catalog lists "9 diamonds" in the description and which makes the price make sense. If you post it over on mybulova.com they may be able to dig up the exact model name.

That's an interesting pattern on the timing machine? have you demagnetized the watch? Patterns are always interesting on the timing machine this could be because it's magnetized or power transmission problem can do the same thing Which wheel did you swap out and how many teeth did the bad one Have versus the good? If you have the right parts book like I have it actually lists all the gears how many teeth and I'm curious about what's going on here. So I really frown on when people start swapping parts on vintage watches as it doesn't always end well. Usually because wheels are specifically fit or made in batches and batches can vary a little bit. This problem actually comes up a lot with wristwatches like Rolex. This is where you have a series of watches that have the base parts in the base parts have a frequency of 18,000 beats per hour but the other ones are different frequency. So eager people who want to sell a watch will mix-and-match components and then just sell the watch is running but not necessarily specify it doesn't keep time. The reason I ask is that American pocket watches do not typically have stems. They rely on the case for the stem aspect so If the movement is out of the case it's in setting mode. Typically the watches have a way of putting the watch into a service mode which puts it back in the winding but that would assume that you understand that know how to do that. So yes the watch will run out of the case in setting mode but driving the hands will be an issue and could be a reason a watches running slow because you're driving all of this setting parts gear train that you shouldn't be.

It happens. This is a shot of the crown wheel post on the barrel bridge of an ETA 2783 that I recently serviced. Arrow A shows the outline of the original extent of the post, B is where the crown wheel has ground it back to. You can see the thin sliver of over-hang that the crown wheel has under-cut as a result of lots of hand winding and no lubrication. Thankfully a new barrel bridge was easily had from Cousins and although the wrong colour the customer was very happy.

After struggling to put a Spidel band on one of my watches (and firing a springbar across the room), I ran to the internet to buy one of those watch band holder jigs. Then I remembered I have a woodshop! Found this chunk of thick walnut in the scrap bin, cut some varying width and depth slots, and sprayed it with some rattle-can lacquer. I love little projects like this. Fun and useful.

It‘s a Chinese movement and based on the Seagull ST16 most likely. Brand new Chinese movements are a reasonable start due to the very low investment. Sometimes the material quality is below average. I had screw heads breaking off during disassambly. So you should purchase one more movement for spare parts. See Cousins UK (or Ali Express) for a varity of cheap Chinese movements with several complications.

Hello all the component parts seem to be there including the suspension , so what is the problem? Have you tried the springs to see if one is broken, Is the suspension spring (although there) in one piece and serviceable. All things considered for some one with zero clock experience a Hermle 1051-020 is not the place to start. As you will appreciate they are quite complex. These are triple chime movements. I repaired one of these for a friend a while back and he was quoted £350 pounds so $125 dollars is cheap. I doubt its a stripdown and re build more like replace the broken spring and a bit of oil. What you can do if you feel up to it is remove the movement from its case and check for the broken spring, from memory I think each barrel is removeable without dismantling the movement (picture of the front plate) to be sure. Then we have the problem of removing power from all springs before attempting to do anything and without the correct tool its a bit dodgy to do. Then we come to the obtaining a spare spring or barrel complete(best option) without tools replacing the spring is all most impossible for some one with no knowledge. If we put things into perspective the cost of parts/tools and time etc makes the quote $125 look inviting.

I wouldn't assume the fork is the wrong one. OP's movement seems to be older than the one in the walkthough; his movement has banking pins, where the other has the bankings stamped in the plate. The fork cock has a nice grained finish too, not really high end, but nicer than the other. If it was intended for a high grade brand, Nivarox could supply different levels of quality on the escapement. I've seen beveled forks in some older ETA, also in some AS (spectacular, Patek level). With a microscope you can usually get an angle where you can pretty much see what's going on. If it's the correct fork there's no way the jewel is hitting the bottom of the slot (notch), unless of course the balance/ roller isn't original. Fredrik- to me if you can see that the roller jewel isn't making contact with the fork horns (?), you can see if it's hitting the bottom of the notch. In running, the roller jewel never makes contact with the horns- those are a safety feature to prevent unlocking at the wrong time. The roller jewel makes contact with the sides of the notch, to unlock and then receive impulse from the escapement. The freedom of the jewel in the slot is around 0.01mm, so very small. On that note, depending on how the watch was treated in the past, there can be a buildup of "stuff" for lack of a better term on the sides of the fork notch. I've seen dramatic improvement in performance in watches that seemed pretty perfect except for crap amplitude by examining the notch under microscope and scrubbing the sides of the notch with pegwood. Similarly you can find stubborn deposits on the sides of the roller jewel. My gut says your issue lies around there.

Other than the movements that I'm picking up to practice on, here are the rest of mine (minus the IWC because of how the strap & clasp make it higher than the rest). All but three of the quartz need (at least) a battery. I used to wear a watch every day when I was working. Now that I'm retired, not so much and I rarely wear the mechanicals although they do get a wind every day). I figured out somewhere along the way that if I wind the IWC 3x more than what it takes the Zenith (based on the RDM) things are good. Maybe I should give the quartz ones some love? I have a 1945 Buren 10.5 Grand Prix on the way. Not sure what condition it's in and it's coming from "your" side of the pond. It actually has a case (so far none of the others I've purchased have been cased). I'm also planning to stop by some antique stores later in the week when my wife and I head over to the coast. It's crazy - we got snow this morning. First time in 80 years for the area.

Nice pieces, Wear them in good health.

some of my watches, mosty from Ebay

Chopin Thank you! I can't believe it, but I had the spring backwards in its setting! Its a wonder I didn't break it. After answering your last post I thought "maybe I reversed it and now think that its correct." Maybe I'm getting too arrogant or cocky in my skill level by thinking "oh of course I know all about shock system...blah...blah..blah...." I should have realized when it was sliding out that it was incorrectly positioned. I am humbled now. Thanks again Chopin for dislodging my thinking out of its default mode. Feels good to be human!