Thought it may be worth to share;
I received a pretty beaten up, none-running 1890-1900 cylinder-escapement pocket-watch. It had all sorts of problems, a list too long to go into details.
Among those problems was a bend/broken minute hand. It inevitably broke off when trying to straighten it. The center-hole diameter of the minute-hand was 0.5mm and the length was 15mm. The hour-hand had a hole diameter of 2.0mm and the length was 10mm. Searching the internet to find an identical set proofed futile. The watch is a heirloom so originality was a priority.
The hands turned out the be made of bronze, a copper-tin alloy. Therefor it made sense to attempt soldering but the part that had to be soldered had a thickness of only 0.3mm.
Both parts had to be fixed in place with a sort of clamp capable to fixing both parts, being heat resistant and "none-sticking". A soldering iron, even with the smallest tip, would be far too big for the job and to avoid touching the parts, I choose to use a hot-air gun used in electronics for soldering SMD-components to a circuit-board. A few test were made which tin to use and at which temperatures. 300 degrees C with tin used in electronics seemed to work fast and made the tin to flow nicely. I used a soldering flux-paste.
The clamp consisted of two metal rails, slightly diverting from each other to give many clamping options, bolted on a plate of gypsum.
Pulling over a #1000 grid sand paper, I made two 45 degrees chamfered edges on either end of both parts;
The two parts were clamped in;
Applied some soldering flux, heated it all up to 300 deg.C and applied a tiny bit of tin. Once cooled down, I removed some excess tin with a small diamond file.
Here a picture of the back side of the minute-hand;
And here the front; the tin didn't flow further away from the soldered joint or around the edges
Most likely not the strongest repair in the world, but when not touched it should be strong enough to do the job. On the picture the hand color looks black, but that's due to the lighting. In reality the hand hasn't lost any of its shiny patina at the front ......
Anyway, I thought to share this repair as one of the many different possibilities