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I found a suitable new old stock band in my stash for the Amida 500 based 15 jewel, I serviced the other day, so its getting a little bit of wrist time. I also gave the hands a polish as they were looking very dull.

I think if you read carefully it's actually phased or verified the phase at several voltages not a fixed 1.65 volts. then I assume you saw this page on the variable voltage power supply but if you scroll down they modify the meter which means you to just attach your leads they are in one about the back or someplace or put a plug on the front and bypass the battery input on the front http://members.iinet.net.au/~fotoplot/accps.htm or if you can find a sensitive enough microamp meter analogue preferred which gets to be really hard today. I'm basically using an entirely different meter so I never modified or changed my Bulova meter. then I'll have to leave a note to myself and look for something later I don't have time. When you go to the website they talk about this new procedure to phase for silver cells but is it really new? I'd see an article in a magazine that I downloaded recently so I need to track it down from somebody who worked at Bulova and I've seen other references to this what the factory did is a little different than what we do for instance here's a specification sheet we know the watches designed to run specifically at 1.35 V or else but notice the high-voltage check? Notice the year it other words the factory was checking watches at a higher voltage long before we grasped that we would have to do it. this is also why the power supply that they used in the factory was variable so they could go to the higher voltage.

attaching the vintage Omega document something that I scanned in to a PDF. Even though it's vintage a lot of the cleaning is still valid. Lubrication choices are what I would recommend. Still an interesting document. Also interesting because now you know it exists when you look at all the service guides there is no reference almost a lubrication and definitely no reference to epilam and yet here's this document talking about epilam. It's back to my complaint of we don't get the complete picture which would have an influence on our choices of lubrication possibly. 632242668_OilingOmegawatches1957.PDF

Think it's this one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001670367765.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.3.2dc850b67RQSnK&algo_pvid=2f946012-60ff-49c9-b4a7-76e0eb3d45a7&algo_exp_id=2f946012-60ff-49c9-b4a7-76e0eb3d45a7-1&pdp_npi=3%40dis!GBP!39.89!30.32!!!!!%40211bf3f816853405030362238d07dd!12000029482496908!sea!UK!4321097666&curPageLogUid=n7ynCOcv20QC

Are these also called sliding pin vices? I got mine from Cousins for £3.50, but needed to refashion the last 5mm of the jaws from 90 degree sharp corners by removing 0.5mm at a 45 degree angle. The gripping surfaces are therefore flat (not ideal but better than sharp corners). The "cutting" was done with a fine diamond file. Spreading the jaws out was done with a shard of hardwood. The hardest part was holding the workpiece. I'm a novice watch butcher, so please feel to ridicule.

This is so very insightful and true! If humanity had had access to timing machines from day one, they might have gotten too depressed and given up and Western civilization would have been severely hampered. Fortunately, as you point out, this was not the case, but the movement's actual keeping of reasonable time was looked at, and that probably made the watchmakers much happier and more inspired to continue their work for improvement. I've learned to never judge a watch before testing it properly in real life. Some of my best timekeepers wouldn't be able to make a single timing machine on the planet very happy. That said, a timing machine is of course an excellent tool in the process of trying to figure out what's going on if there's a problem.

Errr..... what's that? Denuded pith wood or old cigarette butts?

and whether giving another discussion group out there some place of the reference to price would come up. In particular pocket watch the used to field a decent price would be anywhere from 50 and 100 was getting a little too much. There's or even somebody they recommended I believe he was 125 for a full servicing of a pocket watch. Which brings up the problem is this a good price? Then there's my favorite you go look at like discussion group of high-end typically Rolex watches. They're very happy to be running their dads Rolex watch inherited still rutting 30+ years later and very happy they haven't paid the greedy watchmaker. The typical price of a Rolex servicing well it used to be the typical of prices going up a little but it was around $600 which from my point of view is a bargain because half that was the case refinishing. I could now it's more like $700 but some Rolex collectors look at that like they get the oil changed in the car and they pay money for that so if they look at like five years at $600 that's about hundred and 28 year and they're obviously driving exotic cars that have expensive legal changes. That's the way some of the Rolex collectors look at it others think watchmakers are greedy something that should die painful death someday then I can't even say you get what you pay for because as a lot of people in the group of combat as hobbyists they can or they claim to restore your watch back to new 100%. How much would they charge well almost nothing if nothing. There are actually people on the line as a hobbyist taking and watches just to cover the expense of their hobby. Some of them are very goodand unfortunately some of them are very bad but that also extends to professional watchmaker some are good and some are bad. You can't necessarily tell by price whether you're getting good or bad a watch is a sealed object you can't see what was done or was not done C can look at it this way ask all the people in this discussion how long would it take to service that movement and fix the dial feet could they do it in five minutes and our two hours how much time would it take? Based on whatever job you previously had or currently have for hourly wages could you do it for how much. Then thinking of pricing? so the movement appears to be a 6R15 I thought we could see what Seiko in the US would charge the service the movement. so this is the US price $260 to service the movement of course finding a replacement dial because I doubt they would do any of the fixing of that we would do on this group that of course would be extra. then in case you think Seiko is ripping you off I think but don't quote me on this the starting price for an automatic watch where we work would be more than that don't think I'll give your price comes I can't actually remember what we charge for automatic watches. But this is a retail mall location where the expenses are going to be higher. If you want your best pricing find the watchmaker is not a retail location find somebody preferably operating out of the back bedroom with her house that should be the cheapest unless they grasped that they have skills that are worth money than your screwed. But oftentimes the independent watchmaker will be the cheapest.. Anytime you getting work done and jewelry stores typically they double whatever their cost is and that they send it out to the wholesale watchmaker. If you find the wholesale watchmaker they send out to oftentimes they will not be as high as what the jewelry store charges. Usually a lot of times will double costs or in one shop a long time ago I worked had they increase the price by four times. then don't worry because the ripoff price of four times markup eventually the guilty party got screamed that that was the watchmaker for being greedy. Who cares about the markup of the jewelry store. https://www.seikoserviceusa.com/pages/serviceprice/

yes I notice I've been a bad influence on the group. Not just you.

Thank you for your introduction and welcome to this friendly forum. We all look forward to your contributions and continued involvement.

Hello and welcome.

It‘s a Citizen 0153 See here: 17jewels.info/citizen-0153

The hairspring looks one sided . I would say some touching of the coils is happening around the 11 o'clock area.

Did you timegraph the watch before you started work on it ?

Great tip! I'll keep an eye out for that. I've come across jewels on Sellita SW500's that have been fitted upside down at factory, so nothing tends to surprise me anymore. I had a shockproof spring on a Rolex 2135 glued in place this week. No reason to do that, as it worked fine once it had been removed.

I'm currently working on an ETA 2879, and found the same fault I found on the last ETA movement I worked on. Kalle Slaap has mentioned this problem on Chronoglide and suggests it's an ETA manufacturing fault. There is too much endshake on the intermediate wheel, which means that it can rub against the bottom of the barrel. I just push the top jewel down a touch. Worth checking on ETA movements which have this arrangement. Kalle shows it in a new video (at 57:22)

I totally agree! I never start with the keyless work, unless it's a quartz. And you are dead right when trying to fit the barrel bridge on a 2892 after the train bridge. Try is the operative word there! It is clearly a 'crock of' And why do ETA arbitrarily make up names for wheels. Calling a fourth wheel a 'seconds wheel' is ridiculous and confusing for some. Anyway, rant over... lol Here's what Rolex want treated with epilame on their 3135

BR = beat rate (e.g. 18000) T = swing period (e.g. 0.4 s) T = 2 * 3600 / BR LA = lift angle (@ t1) A = amplitude angle (@ T/2) ——————————— A = LA / sin( 2 * Pi * t1 / T) here sin(x) about equal to x: A = (LA * T) / (2 * Pi * t1) = (LA * 3600) / (Pi * t1 * BR) = (LA * 1146) / (t1 * BR) Frank

I find my Bergeon Mk3 Cat Skinner an essential tool

This probably is a standard grade balance complete whereas the ones that came in brand new GS are chronograde. I asked such a question before, answers pointed to the following. Higher grade hairsprings in chronograde, sometimes real jewel and possibly adjusted balance. Other examples for instance you get an ETA2824 for about $25 , but the same caliber in a geniune Tudor costs you perhaps $200. No, not the digits. Dr ranfft lists the entire family these two calibers are member of, starts from the base caliber and shows newer modified variants. Google; Seiko 5606 ranfft

And I came here to help manage my pathological tool envy disorder. Damn it!

I have one of these - excellent pin vice and worth the money. I rarely use it on barrel arbors - I find stout tweezers usually do the job

if you go to the Jules Borel you do get the cross reference of parts. The problem is not all of the parts are going to cross reference the grand Seiko obviously has brand parts because they get a grand price for it so everything is unique to the grand Seiko will not necessarily work on other watches or vice versa. but I took a quick look at the list and a lot of the parts look like they're all the same and then others are limited only to the grand Seiko. Then the broken plastic date wheel somewhere while researching Seiko stuff the last couple weeks I saw that apparently they're all disintegrating plastic was not a good choice. I've seen this with other plastic stuff I had a small printer that would work with my timing machine and fearing that it might someday break which it did I had a spare printer and it didn't work either because the exact same parts had broken didn't matter whether one was in use in other was in a box the plastic's in a grid with time and neither printer works. One of the minor problems of plastic is not necessarily forever this may be one of those places of the possibility someday of 3-D printing new wheels and stereolithography would have the resolution hopefully.

if you click on the parts description and go to the individual parts you find you get the cross references in other words all the watches that use those parts. Then you get numbers like this this is the Seiko part number 0310561. Then there's a description like this BALANCE COMPLETE. Then there is the other number like this? So what exactly is this which I guess you're asking? so this number 721/2009 is kind of a two part number system the first number is a description of what the item is. In other words 721 is balance complete. I also consider this the best fit number the whole thing in the rest of it just specifies which balance complete. then if you go to the homepage of Jules Borel sometimes bestfit number will show up. Now this is where we get interesting problem I don't know how far and wide the bestfit parts were distributed whether their distributor worldwide or in the US only? So if you have a physical material house in the US you can either call them email them or whatever and ask them if they have the bestfit part because as far as I can tell there are not online for the most part.

minor correction here Omega currently epilam's just about everything. There's only a couple of parts they don't like the complete balance wheel for instance. I believe they also treat every single watch now it's the final rinse in the cleaning process. then they treated every single time the watch is cleaned because they claim the modern cleaning machine will strip off the old epilam. Then for Omega if you go back to 1957 they do not recommend treating basically the pallet fork they specifically comments on that because they perceive it would stick to the banking pins. Of course this is the old day of the old epilam which is made a stearic acid. so basically the entire watch except the pallet fork is to be treated and not the balance complete as they were concerned about the roller table sticking. But the balance staff is to be stuck in the pith wood with the epilam for the balance pivots. Then for the manufacturing information of eta as far as I know for every single document I've ever seen the pallet stones are treated. The balance staff is treated and escape wheel. This also applies for Sellita who produced technical manuals that look basically identical to eta. so basically Swiss watches use a heck of a lot of epilam whether it's mentioned in service bulletin are not. As always the problem with technical literature is we seldom get it all in one place although Sellita for their technical guides to put all the manufacturing information in there so at least it's more complete. then of course there's the problem of the various companies have supplemental information that often times we didn't even know existed. Like Omega has a lot of supplemental information not found in the technical sheets.

You can find a rather extensive list ( in English ) of parts on julesborel. com for sale.

What a nice light and it hardly takes up any room and its not expensive at all.

Very informative thread! After reading through, I ordered a lamp from Amazon. Under $49 US (£39) tax shipping and delivered in 6 hours, yep! This one has 5 intensity levels and 5 color settings from 3200 to 6500. I use a binocular microscope and have the gooseneck lamp in case I need directional light. Don't mind the clutter of watches, those are usually moved off the bench when working on a watch. This really lights up the area nicely. The ring of leds on the binoculars is fairly cool when compared to the new lamp. I like it because once set it returns back to the setting when turned off and back on again.

I've just had the wood stove door seal replaced. I was hoping not to need to do that again for a few years. In the name of science I can't say I'm not tempted. I mean how dangerous can it be? Says the man who encouraged his friend the plumber to use phosphoric acid to dislodge the solidified sodium hydroxide that had blocked the bath U bend. We did take that outside first though, and yes, adding concentrated phosphoric acid to sodium hydroxide crystals and drain sludge is as bad an idea as it sounds.. so we did it several times, laughing like delinquent school boys until the explosions of brown goop stopped. The operation was a success, but sadly the patient died (or rather, melted), and we had to replace the U bend anyway. Children, please don't try this at home.

For the last couple of evenings, I've been working on an Amida 15 Jewel based on the Amida 500 movement from sometime around 1950. This is a slightly odd mechanism, as it has the initial appearance of a jewelled lever arrangement, but is in fact a pin lever. The movement is well made, and pretty easy to work on. After a little swithering, I did change the crystal. It looked original, and I would probably have left it alone, but it had yellowed somewhat, but the thing that sealed its fate was the crazing that became evident if the light struck it from just the right direction. As you can see, it made a marked difference to its appearance, although some might argue that the yellowing gave it a warmer look. I'm in two minds also regarding the hands. I suspect they might polish nicely, but the nagging voice in my head is saying, they might also end up looking uneven. It does run reasonably well all things considered. It doesn't quite qualify for the 404 club, as it came in at a rather too hefty price tag of £4.99 GBP. but since I've made a few other exceptions to the rules recently, it may just get an honorary membership. There are a couple of other issue I need to address. The first is the fixed pins and rather small lug width, which measures at a rather odd 15.3mm. I'll either need to source a strap, or perhaps use this an opportunity to make a custom sized strap for it. The second issue is.. do I dare set fire to the old crystal, just to see if it is made of nitrocellulose? If you hear a loud bang and detect the smell of singed eyebrows, then you will know the answer.

It also seems odd that they call for epilame on all of those parts but not on the pallet jewels or escape wheel.

I will be following this thread. I have a Looping travel alarm clock also, and I will post pictures of mine in a bit. But I did not find any technical documents or diagrams about it either. Addendum: adding pictures of my own movement. It is in fantastic condition and amazingly accurate. It is apparently very rugged also, because its case was a wreck. I plan to make a beautiful case for it later.

what's interesting is if you look at a watch like the expensive witschi machine you look at the time plot. You see the amplitude going up and down because the wheels are meshing ride 82 or something is worn out or was never made right in the first place because he didn't have a timing machine to impress hundred years ago. Then every time you run a timing cycle the numbers are a little different because of those problems. What becomes amusing is usually the problems on average out usually the watch would keep time if it's just running at the end of 24 hours another is the balance wheels has a decent oscillation whatever that is it can still keep decent time may not please the timing machine but they can still keep time.

The Swiss lever escapement is a surprisingly robust construction. Even with the ghastly results seen in the link you provided, I'd bet it is still a (somewhat) decent timekeeper. Well, decent enough that it would be useful to a wearer who winds it consistently once per day and doesn't mind setting the time once a week, or so.

These are super. With brass or bronse jaws.

there was a similar thread here. Frank

I should really be more careful when I go hunting round ebay. All sorts of junk tends to follow me home. This time it was a Philips (Fluke) PM3295 350 MHz Oscilloscope. I don't really need another oscilloscope of course (can you have too many oscilloscopes I wonder), but it only cost... (drumroll) 0.01p (plus shipping). My current 'scope is Metrix 803B 40MHz which I picked up about 10 years back and repaired, so if I can get this running it will be a bit of an upgrade. I can almost guarantee that the power supply will need some work (although it does have a safety stamp from 2020), but other than that I have to admit, that even when you factor in twenty quid for shipping, it does look like the best bargain I've picked up in a long time. A 350Mhz oscilloscope is obviously overkill for fixing watches, but great for any other electronics projects that come along.

I remember him mentioning in a video about having a watchpart shipped out to him in his location in Thailand. Arnt watches a massive part of their economy and have very high end luxury as common place. I say this because a mate of mine was there a few years ago on holiday and told me this story.He saw a Breitling dealer and popped in to have a word as he was thinking about buying his very lovely understanding wife a new watch . He was greeted with a coffee and a nice comfy seat to seat in and peruse some brochures. When asked about his budget he replied rather cockily " oh around 8 thousand British pounds but there is so much choice I wouldn't know where to start" The shop Owner jokingly said " how about the door you just came through sir, I'm ever so sorry but our watches start from around 36 thousand of your British pounds " . Needless to say he wasn't offered a second cup of coffee. So I assume maybe just maybe there is some very serious coin to be made there for anyone that is good with watches. I have now given up my full time job and am practising repairing every waking moment of the day

I am trying to open this mainspring barrel (automatic wind movement). Seems like it should be straightforward, I am pressing on the arbor in one case...putting it on a bench block and pressing on the barrel with splayed tweezers. Being careful not to get the sledge hammer on it! I will keep trying... Thoughts?