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I chose to wear my Alpha Paul Newman homage today. Love the look and I love mechanical chronographs.

Update - resolved. After taking OldHippy's advice and removing the balance and pallet fork gave it a few turns - gears spun up but were reluctant to restart without encouragement. On closer inspection, there was a tiny strand of fabric wrapped around the escape wheel centre shaft. You can only imagine me elation when I grabbed the strand with tweezers and the gears spun into life. One happy chap.

Verboten?nichts ist verboten !

Nice They do quite a few models that I would like to own. This one and an Omega Seamaster-ish looking one.

Haven't done one of these for a while. All stainless steel 1960's Mondia running a 17 jewel AS/ST 1686.

No. You would only expect hairspring to expand evenly on all sides if it has an overcoil. On a flat hairspring like this only the side opposite the stud and index would really expand.

The problem is that the description for part number 115 723 is incorrect. Swiss part number 721 is for the balance complete. modified with the ".1" to indicate shock protection. Swiss part number 723 is for the balance staff only. If you order 115 723 you will just get a balance staff, you need 115 721.1 balance complete, shockproof. The £49.95 (+vat and shipping) option. As @jdm says, you may be better off looking for a donor movement on eBay (other auction sites are available).......

I've wondered about regulating a watch myself and came across this. There are other pages about as well. https://tg.ciovil.li/ Mixed success The volume control is a linux utility and shows signal strength after the preamp. It was fed into a laptop headset socket via a splitter lead. This is a stable trace off a new Seiko. A 15 year old chronometer usually doesn't give such a stable trace, it's running 15secs a day slow. It still seems to get the timing error correct despite this and playing around with position may give a more stable trace. Any new watch so far does give a stable trace. General bits bought off amazon UK. The pickup is intended for a violin. Seems to be 2 problems. Bandwidth of the electronics, too high with an amp like this and probably similar, the mechanical aspects of the pickup. Unfortunately commercial microphones for this use are rather expensive. If anyone else tries to install on Linux I found that the automated build wouldn't work but the usual ./config etc did and indicated what lib files I needed to install. John -

Your watch crown has a peculiar form, so to preserve that look you would need an original crown. You can contact a local authorized service center for an estimate, I supposed there is a list is on the manufacturer website. Fitting a new crown is also not immediate because if the stem is missing, that also has to be ordered and cut to size, or if it is still present it has to be removed anyway to be tightened properly with locking agent. Nothing difficult but you would need watch tools, so again giving it to a repair shop could be more practical.

Most esteemed friends...I present to you my Mumbai Homage. Old amphibia case with 2209 movement. A glorious fake dial glued in place. However, unlike most fakes you will find the 200 meter rating is legitimate. I am sorry..I just had to.

Marc, Cousins confirms that you are correct.

Yup, and while we're at it, their Planet Ocean homage (orange bezel) too I'm sure replica watches are verboten topics here, but I want a replica planet ocean 600m, which is an updated model to the orange bezel you like @ro63rto. Naturally, if i could afford a $5000 watch I wouldn't even consider a replica, please, no flaming.

Yup, and while we're at it, their Planet Ocean homage (orange bezel) too

It sounds to me like dirt. Just a tiny foreign object will cause this. The best way is to clean the movement, that means taking the whole thing apart. You could try this if you like, that would be let the mainspring down. Remove the complete balance and pallets and then add a little power this just might spin out the foreign object. Before you attempt this just make sure all pivots are oiled, you don't want the wheels spinning in a dry hole, it could shear a pivot off.

I think that 1.1mm glass, which is hard to find, is better replaced with 1.2mm https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33059331401.html Sapphire is also cheaply available. Spectacles lenses are ground to shape by any average optical shop. A watch crystal is not different, you could try asking your local shop or just get a suitable wheel for the mini bench grinder or rotary tool and give it a go. Something that is in my plans also.

Hi when the watch is powered down i.e stopped, are the coils evenly spaced then and where is the pallet/fork in relation to the inpulse pin, the pallet/fork with the watch at rest should be in the middle of the banking pins and the balance spring between the regulator pins. The arm with the stud on it moves independently from the regulator this is so the beat error can be adjusted (difficult with out some form of instrumentation). Down load the watch-o-scope software and run the lite version it will give you a lot of information as is. and enable you to set beat error with the appropriate lift angle installed and also give you a trace as to the performance of the watch i.e fast or slow and beat error. The balance spring its self will only affect performance if it is damaged, gummed up and sticking badly adjusted, out of round, out of horizontal. So firstly we have to diagnose as to why the rate error exists, using the software will at least give you a clue and hopefully a few pointers. By the way I have no affiliation with watch o scope other than I use the lite version as a preliminary check and have found it usefull for diagnosis of problens. I then re check with a Horotec device for the final checks. cheers

Hi the only true way to determine the flatness of the spring is to fit it in the watch correctly then look at it on the horizontal in which case it should be perfectly flat, and when observed from above the coils beating evenly. as the photo shows there is a pronounced sag in the spring caused by the fixing stud dragging the spring down at an angle

That is a good idea, but affordable alternatives are already available. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33037218060.html

Stems are never threaded to the case, but the crown is threaded to the case (pendant) tube. You can look on AliExpress for a replacement.

Hi this is my first post, so be gentle. This is my work watch. I got it from eBay for about £17. It had trouble displaying the date. I rectified this by putting the correct sized cell in it and haven't looked back. The supplied cell was so big it pushed the date wheel against the internals causing it to catch.It has loads of scratches, the chrome has worn off, the dial is Sun bleached but it is water tight and the lume still shines. I love the look of it, real honest grafting watch. Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Andy, the best watches are those that comes for free... I have a 70's week, today I air one of my Japanese gems. It's a CITIZEN seven star V2 with an automatic 7700 25 Jewels movement. It has a crown push quick set day date with Japanese/English display. One push for date and a double for day, little like playing a vintage flipper. One just have to love the hour markers popping up 2 mm from the dial.

As an introduction of my daily-wear collection I today wear an olden goldie from the early 1970's, Buler Astromaster. I think the Astromaster was produced between 1972-1979. It has a Baumgartner 582 pin-escapement movement, the first of that type I worked on. I enjoy it very much and think it´s a bunle of fun for around 100 bucks. According to unknown sources any resemblance with a watch like AP Royal Oak is just an coincidence