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I have one of those testers that has red yellow and green. It showed the battery between yellow and green so I guess I made the wrong assumption. You learn something new everyday. I have basically serviced the movement now and the problem has been fixed. I placed back the old battery and the seconds hand started to rotate twice rather than once which is what it does when battery is low. I installed a fresh different battery and the movement works fine but that battery doesn't sit right inside as it's thinner so now I will just wait for the proper batteries to arrive. Thanks everyone! Maybe the old battery drained while in storage, somehow ?

This popped up on ebay last week as a £50.00 buy it now During the Great war the British military had been issuing pocket watches to serving personnel and hadn't supplied wristwatches, these where instead bought mainly by officers privately for use at the front lines with wristwatches improving and the introduction of the water resistant cases, unbreakable crystals and radium dials the Trench watch was born and became an item of necessity for serving personnel. It wasn't until 1917 that the war department purchased the first batches of wristwatches supplied in two forms the first being a classic trench watch of water resistant case, black dial with radium numerals and unbreakable crystal and the second type being a large cased snap back, black dial with radium numerals all had 15 jewel Swiss movements. These watches where purchased for the purpose of evaluation to assess the usefulness of issuing wristwatches to serving personnel. This watch is of the snap back type and has a unusually large for the period 38mm case made of nickle, the dial is black enamel with radium numerals. All the snap back models have issue numbers that follow the same form a five digit number beginning with a nine followed by a letter M there is also a Broad arrow mark or Pheon crudely stamped on to the back some watches are stamped with two broad arrow marks that touch at the tip this is thought to indicate that the watch had been withdraw from service. The movement in these large snap back models is the same in all known watches where as in the water resistant 1917 watches there is some variation. The movement is a good quality 15 jewel movement and no one has yet been able to identify who manufactured them there are no identifying marks but there is a brevet patent number on the dial side so it may be possible to trace that and establish who made the movements. No one is sure what branch of the armed forces these snap back watches where issued to but it cant have been to front line personnel because having no water resistance would have rendered them pretty useless in the field, many have speculated that they could have been issued to the flying corps because the design mirrors quite closely the pocket watches already issued to them at the time, these snap back models where only issued in 1917 and withdraw from service shortly after, but the water resistant watch became a regular issue watch there after It is however an interesting footnote in the development of the military wristwatch and is amongst the first officially issued and stamped British military watches of the Great War.

nice restoration

Batteries do not have an infinite life.To understand batteries particularly used in watches two separate tech sheets. The discharge curve is interesting it's much higher than what we would normally find in a watch so obviously time is going to be much shorter. But it does give us an idea initially a brand-new fresh battery voltage is much higher. With the digital meter it's around 1.6 V this is the only way you can tell if you have a fresh battery without destructively testing it. So the discharge curve is destructive testing place a load see how long the battery lasts. Like for instance looking at the 364 data sheet you can see a nice flat discharge characteristic until it's reaching the end of life. So to measure the voltage anywhere from almost the beginning to the end you're getting a voltage but no clue as to what the life of that battery is. Notice neither sheet gives you an exact life of when your batteries going to die. It does tell you though that storage affects the life and the temperature at which you are operating your battery-powered device affects things. So no matter what at some point in time the chemicals In the battery will no longer function and your battery is dead. Battery- 357-303ZB.pdf 364z Battery.pdf

Agree with comments re the rotor gathering magnetic particles. What I do is, once its removed I clean it as best I can with rodico to remove as many bits of magnetic and other debris, then again with some new clean lighter fuel, and when dry, again with clean rodico. I then store it separately in a small re-sealable plastic pouch, having cleaned the inside of the pouch with lighter fuel and then run a magnet inside the pouch to ensure no debris is present that the rotor will attract. It also helps to demag any steel parts (not coil or circuit board) before cleaning so that any debris will not remain adhered magnetically to the part. Before assembling the movement with clean parts I pass a magnet around the immediate work area to pick-up and debris that could stick to the rotor. I also make sure my drivers and tweezers have been de-magnetised and are clean, especially when handling rotor.

Are you saying that your battery tester is showing them at 1.55v? or it has 1.55v inscribed on it? You said the power was at about 70% right? the batteries are made at 1.55v but when the power drops its the voltage that you're measuring, the voltage that drops.

I enjoyed the Watch Repair Courses 1 and 2 and I've just joined the forums. Until now I have been exclusively interested in American Vintage pocket watches. I have quite a few (will later post photos with my collection), the most recent are Hamilton 992 and an Illinois Bunn Special. Both are Railroad type and are amazingly accurate. I am currently working on making (fitting) a stem for my 16s Waltham Royal pocket watch. It's a fun project using my lathe, some filing, and making threads, and some metallurgy. Hope it will work :). That's the usual problem with vintage watches - can't find parts, so, one is almost forced to learn watchmaking to make parts that might be otherwise not available the easy way. Being retired, I recently decided that it's time to enjoy my collect/repair hobby with modern, mechanical wrist watches. So, I got my Chinese knockoff of ETA 6467 ($42) to practice, and will soon get a 2801 to practice, and also plan to build one later for my daily use based on ETA 2924-2 (Chronometer Grade). I love mechanical watches and am always amazed at the engineering involved in cramming all parts into a smaller and smaller space, how they've been made to work reliably, and how beautiful they are!

Quartz watches like this have similar characteristics to mechanical watches. Specifically they have gears that rotate. Unlike mechanical watches Quarts watches have way less power. This means the gear trains have to be very clean ideally with the proper lubrication should be used and they really do need to be cleaned like a mechanical watch from time to time. Then when the movements out of the case you have to be very careful to keep it away from everything one little speck of dust in the wrong place and the watch will stop. Then the rotor with its really strong magnetic field likes to attract steel particles equally as bad They actually make a device to generate a magnetic field the spin the rotor this is really a temporary fix. Just as removing the balance wheel and pallet fork from a mechanical watch and letting the gear train spin is not a substitute for cleaning and proper lubrication. You do have to be careful with the demagnetizer because it is designed to demagnetized things and if you try really really hard you can demagnetized a rotor. Then parts list attached plus service guide. 8222A,8223A,8229A.pdf 8229A.pdf

finally, a good use for sinthetic motor oil. vin

Probably need to go deeper in. The rotor could have found some magnetic particles and making it stuck. It's a good thing it stutters as it probably just need a good clean.

Wait for the battery, most watches will operate fine between ~1.3-1.5v at and below 1.3 will be a watches 'lower working limit' sounds like you're probably around that limit, coupled with the fact you're using the wrong battery then interrupting the process (be that the electrical process or the mechanical) is the straw that breaks the camels back and it won't start up again. Not surprising.

Makes the hands spin like mad to release it from the grip of dried up oil.

Its a little device who makes the wheels in the watch turn very fast and making all the gunk fall off, its on ebay and very cheap Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Agree probably gunked up a bit. Just had Rotary with an ETA556.115 quartz movement which would not run even after normal circuit checks etc and with a new fully charged battery. As this is an early movement , electronic parts (electronics and coil are integral to circuit board) are not available and a replacement alternative movement is quite expensive (for value of watch), I decided to strip it, check mechanicals, clean, lube and re-assemble to see what happens. It now runs perfectly !!!! Interestingly this movement has no plastic parts, all good old fashioned metal throughout.

Probably old oil. When power ran through, it kept the oil more or less liquid but once stopped, the oil dried and blocked it?

Try a cleaning or a line release treatment Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Get a new, correct battery before even worrying.

I had a Seiko some time ago that had a similar problem. I put it carefully over the de-magnetiser (not too close) and ran the stepper motor for a few seconds. This cured the problem but I never found out what the problem was. Probably a tiny bit of dirt in the gear train ? Maybe it really needed a strip and clean etc but it is still going fine for some 2 years now.