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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/18/15 in all areas

  1. So my intentions of journalling my progress of this project seemed to have gone awry. It has been complete for some time now, and I was so focussed on the work itself, as well as a few deadline issues, that I failed to record my progress with words or photos. With apologies out of the way, it's better late than never, here's a basic recap of how things went: I decided to send out the case and crown for replacing. The 10K RGP finish on it was in decent condition, with a little bit of honest wear, and more than a few service engravings. I wanted the finished watch to reflect some of the history of itself, so I took care of the preparation and polishing myself, making sure to improve the appearance without buffing out the sentimentality. The replating was a cosmetic decision. Mrs RustyColt dislikes yellow gold, and I was concerned that may discourage her from wearing this watch, regardless of emotional connection. I found a plating service in Vancouver, BC that could do the parts in 18K rose gold, and was fairly pleased with the results. It turns out that the plater I chose does not do a lot of watches, and I think that they are used to much larger parts. In the end, all was well. The dial also went out for refinishing. It was my first foray into this, so (partly) based on the experiences of others in the WRT forums, I decided to sub out the job to International Dial Co. Having heard that the achilles of them is their often unpredictable and lengthy turnaround time, I was sure to get the dial to them a full 3 months prior to Mrs RC's birthday (when I was hoping to present it to her). Needless to say I did not make that deadline, but I was satisfied with the workmanship of International in the end. As I had changed the case from yellow to rose gold, I had International change the hands and dial indicators to match. All in all, I was pleased with those results as well. Servicing took place while the parts were out. The Longines 10L is one of the nicer movements I have had the pleasure of working on in my brief foray into watch repair, and it was a truly pleasurable experience to have hands on such a finely made piece. On final assembly, it became evident that there was damage to the balance staff pivot which would require a replacement. I was able to source a scrap movement from eBay, which yielded a suitable replacement. This was a rather nerve-wracking part of the process however, as I have had very poor results with any hairspring work I have done thus far, and the replacement balance staff needed to have the original hairspring transferred to it. Patience won the day, and the transplant succeeded. I was able to install and poise the replacement, and at this point, I was still on schedule for the birthday presentation. I still had to replace the missing crystal and seconds hand, and for this I had taken some measurements and scoured Cousins catalogue for suitable parts. Those arrived around the time I was finishing up the service, and I was, once again, pleased with what was on hand. The crystal was bang on, and the seconds hand (I had ordered a couple different ones to see what would look best in the end) also worked out quite nicely. While it would have been nice to have had the seconds hand prior to sending off the dial and hands for refinishing so that it could have been done to match, I did end up satisfied with that being a contrasting black indicator. Regrettably, the only internal photos I have from the project are the ones I took during disassembly for reference. Joyfully, and without further ado, I present those, along with the finished product for your enjoyment:
    4 points
  2. That is an nice tool & I would say custom made. This what I use.
    2 points
  3. I'm looking for any instructions for this watch to reset everything after a battery change. It's some complex series of presses on the 3 pushers and 1 crown but I can't remember the sequence and I've lost the instruction sheet that I had. Any help would be appreciated :geek:
    1 point
  4. Hi - allow me to introduce myself. I live in Germany (but am a US expat) and, living on the border with Switzerland (and actually working in Basel) I have spent a lot of time over the last 25 years looking in shop windows while my wife looks for shoes. When I moved here, I was wearing a Timex Ironman. Eventually I saw an IWC Portofino and fell in love with it. Unfortunately it was way out of my price class. However, I started paying more attention to watches. Shortly afterwards, Nomos came out with the first Tangente, and I fell in love with that. Still out of my range. I muddled through the years with various watches, including a fairly nice Cito (minor German brand) with an ETA 2892 that I stupidly left in a restroom in Switzerland and never saw again. Four years ago I finally bought my Tangente and thought I was set. But I also started acquiring other watches, especially Gruens (I grew up near Cincinnati). I have a handful of watches from the 50s/60s. And this year I was fortunate enough to buy an IWC Portuguese Chrono, which is pretty much the only chrono I would consider wearing and for my taste is about as close to a perfect watch as there is. It is most likely the only watch in this class I will ever own. But I still have a fondness for these 'other' watches, including a 50s Lacorda I bought a few months ago. Lacorda is a French manufacturer. This one is in nearly perfect condition, I was the only person interested in it, and there was something about the dial I liked. Unfortunately it runs very fast. Which brought me to Mark's video on regulating a watch (easy enough, as it turns out, and I have some basic watchmaking tools), which in turn brought me to this forum, which looks very interesting. So there you go, and there I am, thank you for your kindness, and here's a picture of the little Lacorda. I'll know tomorrow how it's running, but I assume it will take a week or two to really get it right. Steven
    1 point
  5. A few weeks ago I purchased off the Bay a non working/for spares Bulova with 6CL movement. However I encountered a couple of gremlins with this watch and thought I would share. On the strip down the first gremlin I noticed that a previous repairer had screwed the train bridge without aligning one of the wheels & left this nice divot. Luckily no damage to the wheel pivot. The second gremlin was the mainspring had some kinks in it However when I measured for a replacement I found that the wrong size spring had been fitted. The height should be 1.40 with a strength of .08 but the spring fitted was 1.25H & strength of .06. This movement was dirty but is quite a simple in design so I have added not to many pics of the assembly. Also apologies re- the pic quality but they were taken with my mobile. Gear train Gear train with bridge fitted it was a bit fiddly to fit Barrel bridge & assembly fitted Keyless side assembled Dial up reading on the Timographer Watch finish just needs a nice strap to make it look really nice Job Done
    1 point
  6. latest revision rotating stand with no lateral pressure to the blades total cost £4.10
    1 point
  7. Welcome to the forum Watchmad. I suspect this may have a Seiko 7a28 movement in it, so try setting it using these instructions.
    1 point
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