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You may have noticed a few changes - I have removed the Gallery section and the CMS pages app from the site as it costs too much to 'rent' those modules with comparatively very little use by members - it just did not make sense to keep them going. I apologise if this inconveniences or annoys anybody but I think it is better to keep the core of this website to be a discussion forum. The WRT website is costing me a lot of money per month to run and I am making a few changes to help with that - there is a little income from eBay affiliate ads but not enough to cover the cost of hosting and some help from Patrons and for this we are very grateful. The site has over 30GB in uploaded media now!!! And the notification emails generated is quite high too - I have to use a separate company to handle this so that the site doesn't get email black-listed. One of these services suddenly and without notice stopped our service a few months ago and it was a few days before anybody even noticed (password reset emails were no longer working). I did manage to find a new email provider and things have been running smoothly ever since. Getting back to the uploaded media, as mentioned it's over 30GB and this covers images in topics going back several years. I do back this up every night and I backup the site database every hour in order to protect the content should we ever have a disaster I have a Synology NAS here in the office which has a full backup on and I also keep a backup offsite on a cloud service. I have also decided to use Amazon Cloudfront to host all the uploaded media. I am in the process of migrating this content over and you may notice broken images for a very short period during the migration. But ultimately this will maintain and even improve performance of the site. Anyway, all being said, this is a fantastic community and I am fully committed to continuing with it's administration, keeping our little corner of the net alive - Just a little update to let you know what's happening -

It might be a bit like some guys modifying cars.... tell them its made out of aircraft billet and the price doubles but they'll turn their nose up at 6061 AL Afaik there is no advantage to a synthetic oil over regular mineral oil until the temps get over 135C, and if you're getting your lathe than hot you've got other problems. I've not heard anyone advocated synthetic oils for machine plain bearings, some very exacting like say Schaublin or Jones Shipman, as it just doesn't get hot enough to need it I agree with you, a slow speed, well made plain bearing is going to be forgiving so its all good. Of the many I've had apart, lots over 100 years old, I've only seen one that was destroyed and pretty sure it was just abused/not oiled

Thanks Mark, we ALL appreciate all your hard work that you do to keep this "GREAT" site up and running.. Len

Appreciate all your hard work, WRT is the best watch related forum that I know of. Cheers!

It's 100% ok for plain bearings to get warm in use. In fact many old ultra high precision machines were run for 1 hour or so before being put "on line" as they were adjusted to run at that temp. Synthetic automobile oil is an old and contentious subject in horology. I remember talking to a tower clock guy years ago who had gone to Mobil 1, and then reserviced a number of clocks for free after finding that the oil turned abrasive after a certain length of time. I haven't been able to find literature on it recently but there was some 15+ years ago. Auto oil is changed on regular intervals in addition to being filtered. The demands, as measuretwice spelled out, are very different. In a plain bearing watch lathe the oil goes in and goes out- "total loss". So really anything relatively thin will work. In a larger machine it's an issue, as motor oils are designed to keep contaminants in suspension to be grabbed by the filter, and most machine tools don't filter their oil. Contaminants fall out in the sump- which won't happen with a detergent based oil that keeps things in suspension. But back to watch lathes- almost any oil is ok, sewing machine oil is great, iso 10 or 20 hydraulic oil, awesome, 3n1 fantastic, Hoppes gun oil, killer, just no WD40.

The movement looks familiar, French I think. Take a look here.

Hi Welcome to the forum. Attached the tech sheets for the JLC 489 and JLC814, Hope you find these useful. JLC 481.pdf JLC 815.pdf

There's no tech guide for these old calibers, just a part list if you're lucky. You might find a guide for an A. Schild alarm movement, should help a little. Pretty much a normal watch. You need to lubricate the alarm escapement with something heavy like 8300. All moving parts in the alarm system need a bit of lubrication, when in doubt use 9020 or HP1000, and too little is better than too much. Take pics, there are a lot of parts on the dial side. As I recall the set lever and bridge and winding parts are either the same or mirror image and easy enough.

Most members on here use Moebius watch oil. Here is a link to their chart. Follow that and you can't go wrong. https://blog.esslinger.com/moebius-oil-charts/

Very nice, shame you did not take pictures of dismantle etc. As a first project you done extremely well. I gather the crud was stopping the keyless works.

I haven't messed with a Timex dial but I have with others similar. I used a very thin piece of brass sheet and cut it to a T shape. I bent it at 90 deg then used JB Weld to fix it to the underside of the dial with the top of the T on the dial and the leg of the T used for the tang and left it to fully harden in a warm place for a few days. As JB Weld sets very hard and can be filed etc when hard, any excess can be easily removed to give a flat surface under the dial. The brass plate should not be too stiff and the dial part big enough to avoid the dial part peeling when bending to fix the dial. Obviously there must be room between the underside of the dial and the movement, for the repair to allow the dial to sit flat. If its metal to metal then maybe superglue would work as well.

Klassiker, Unhardened drill rod can be purchased off of the interned and is very inexpensive in smaller diameters. One of the problems with threading using a die plate is the lack of quality steel they are made from. A regular commercially made die will do a much better job cutting a thread than a die plate. When you make another one, cut the thread first before investing your time and work machining the rest of it. Make sure that the stock has been turned to the correct diameter before threading. If the diameter is just slightly oversize it will cause problems. david