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TBH I've always just used a small electric hot plate. Lay the bezel on it and keep trying the crystal until it fits, then switch off and let it all cool down slowly. I've never measured the temp. However, a quick Google search turns up this site; https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-thermal-expansion-d_1379.html If I'm using it right then it looks as though heating a brass bezel from 20C to 200C should give you just over 1mm expansion across the diameter of a 35mm bezel aperture.

Here is my cat "Lew" helping me adjust a pocket watch and adding a hair to places one should never be.

Just an update. I received the new mainspring from Cousins today. Checked it against the barrel and as expected it was a fraction too big to just drop in. So I carefully unwound it by hand and used a winder to get it into the barrel. This is where it got a little interesting as I had problems the first time I used this winder because I used the wrong size so I selected what I thought should be correct size for this one. However, when winding I discovered that with about an inch of spring to go it suddenly jammed and I realized that the winder barrel was full and stopped the spring being completely housed. Fortunately I worked around the problem by continuing to insert the winder into the watch barrel as normal and then manually feeding in the inch of remaining spring into the gap around the edge of the barrel. I tried pressing the winder button but it was too stiff since the spring was jammed in, but fortunately with a little tap of a hammer the spring popped into place. So far so good. Then I noticed that the spring's inside coil was just a little too big for the arbor which meant it just freely rotated without catching. So I carefully used pliers to shrink the size of the inner coil. The arbor then slotted firmly into place and after returning the barrel lid, it was winding successfully. After that, I re-assembled and oiled the watch by closely following Mark's course videos. The movement is now happily ticking away with an amplitude of 274 and a nice steady beat. I think the balance might need realignment as there's a large gap between the dots on the timegrapher, but so far I'm pretty chuffed with it all. Thanks for the help. Peter

Sad news indeed OH, my condolences. We had a very bad year last year as we lost 6; 5 through old age and poor health, and 1 to the road. It is always very painful but we still have 16 others to occupy our minds, along with the tortoises and the geko!! This is Bramble. We lost him to the road last December. He was only 5 which made it even sadder. We still have his mum, sister, and two brothers (Mimi, Masie, Noah and Micky).

After a total of about 50 hours of simmering in alum solution the bleed screw finally dissolved - the same area circled on the new screw measuring 12x6mm, with no adverse affect on the aluminium calliper: No drilling, damaged threads or seat, it goes to show how useful the skills learnt from watch making can be.

Likely the the pin was hold with Loctite and needed to be heated to be released. Try to work around that by replacing the two links complete. To remove the pin the threaded side would need to be drilled out very precisely, which is not only difficult, but it may not be worth or necessary to do.

I know how much it hurts to loose an old friend like "Crumble" , I had to have my good buddy "Fred" put down not very long ago. Everyone at the VT's office cried , he was the gentlest most loving cat I ever had. My wife comments about how I continue to put his sleeping towel down every night.

The pivots on these pocket watches need to have a sharp point. I used to re-point them in my lathe using an arkansas stone with a drop of oil. You need to make sure the cups are good as they wear on the inside and can be very rough. You should be able to get an estimate where to pin by refitting the balance and threading the hairspring so the impulse pin is in the centre of the pallet fork.

Wow he is a beautiful cat, I always wanted a Maine Coon. This Is Fred a North Carolina Resting Cat. (most of the time)

My Watchmaker Cat - working at our old set up in the dining room.

I make my living as an Artist (as you can see by my question on watch repair "amateur") and my cats love to jump up on my painting table. This is "Three" she got in my Cadmium Red.

We too lost a cat, Isabella Catallini, that had been with us for 20 years. I tried to tell myself that she had a long, good life, but it seems that when a friend has been with you so long it makes it even harder when she passes.