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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/28/20 in Posts

  1. Just finished servicing my Zodiac Rotographic containing an AS 1624 automatic movement. 35mm and a really nicely coloured dial.
    3 points
  2. Within the normal distribution Nickelsilver spoke of, there is a regìon of compatibility of the HS and wheels. Old wheels did not all weigh the same, that is their inertia distribution graph showed big variance. As production know-how improved, the question of standardisation became inexpensive to address, thence we had narrow inertia distribution of the wheels, (small variance). This means improvement of compatibilty region. Compatibilty means the two can be vibrated to produce the desired or design beat. In short if donor and receiver are of the same caliber, compatibilty is more probable to 95% or more. Practically just give it go, if the balance complete runs fast free sprung, nothing you can do in case of anulare wheel. If it run slow, you are on and at worst may have to cut to shorten the active length of the HS to get the design beat.
    2 points
  3. Hi In view of the damaged area you started with and the constraints You have done a creditable job. The art of dial refurbishment is a skill all on its own. Be proud of what you have achieved. well done
    2 points
  4. They aren't really interchangeable. On modern watches the balances are made and then grouped by inertia, a dozen or so groups. The hairsprings are grouped similarly, then they are matched up. The grouping forms a sort of bell curve around the "standard", so most springs and balances fall somewhere in the middle, but that doesn't help much. If you have a balance with screws you have some adjustment, either adding washers or removing material from the screws, with solid balances there is little adjustment you can do. On older watches the springs were individually fitted to each balance. Again, the balances are nominally the same, but as you'll see when you get to using timing washers, very very little difference is needed for a balance to not want to mate with a spring that wasn't intended for it. It does work sometimes though. You can try, sometimes you get lucky, but no, they aren't interchangeable.
    2 points
  5. Here we go again, another 70's beaty. ENICAR MRO STAR JEWELS. Under the hood one finds one 17 Jewels ENICAR AR 161 ripping away at 21800 A/h.
    2 points
  6. This was a "porcelain"/enamel dial repair that I did for my friend's Jacques pocket watch. I won't pretend I do dial repairs often. I used the Bergeon 1591 enamel from Esslinger. I learned that the drafting ink I used to repaint the numeral was VERY black. I also learned that unless I seal the surface with something like a size (I used a thin cyanoacrylate) the ink will "spiderweb" in little radiations. I used a #00 brush. I tried so hard, and put my soul into this, and still I am not quite happy. Yet, with what I have on hand, I cannot do better. I wanted perfection. A dial swap was not desired by the owner. Could you esteemed and experienced veterans tell if I am getting the hang of this? Can you tell me how I could do better? I want to become good at each aspect of watch repair.
    1 point
  7. it depends upon your balance wheel as to whether you can just swap a hairspring or not. If it was an American pocket watch for instance the answer would be yes. American pocket watches if you look in the parts book had hairspring is available separately. That's because the hairsprings are made to very exacting specifications with the over coil and it's too hard to vibrate and then bend that. Not that they didn't do it at some point in time it was easier to make the hairspring first. Then the balance wheel has timing screws which were also available. then typically with wristwatches at least up until now they hairspring is vibrated to each and every balance wheel. There was enough variation with the balance wheels and even just pinning the hairspring that they have to be vibrated together. which is why typically on the parts list it's a balance complete. then the quoted paragraph above another thing that helps today is having a floating stud and regulator. previously on watches your regulation range was limited and now you do have considerably more range. but for timing purposes everything really asked be really really close or you're going to be really often timing. So ideally to get this to work your balance wheel has to have screws unless you have enough hairsprings you can find one that's slow for the balance wheel then you can take weight off a screwless balance wheel.
    1 point
  8. there is a classic way to reduce amplitude on a watch action there is a couple of classic ways. I've seen currently one of the Swiss companies if you're having that problem they recommend heavier oil for the balance pivots like HP 1300. Then there is the other classic method the pallet fork pivots are never supposed oil try putting some HP oil on that. Between the two you should reduce the amplitude down a little bits. Then as far as I know there's no formula to convert carbon steel mainsprings to the modern mainsprings. Somewhere in the universe there is another discussion group were within the last year somebody said its toll crap that modern Springs are stronger than the original blued steel Springs. But they're made out a different how always and stuff. It's always been my experience that the new Springs can be stronger or different. A lot of times I have really interesting back curves that the original ever had. So because we don't have the proper tools you can't test the original spring to know what its strength was an you don't know how to compare it to the new spring. So you basically assume the new Springs are stronger and always go with a weaker spring. That anything resembling calculations for mainsprings are problematic because they don't take into account how much energy is actually needed to run the various escapement's. Or if you a seven jewel watch versus a 17 jewel watch there is less friction but does the mainspring calculation take that into account? Plus even just the escapement designs the modern watches are more efficient than the old so any calculation you have is going to be an approximation anyway. then there is the other approach when I was in school the instructor I had said give it a couple of days to settle down. That occasionally works and not sure how or why it works but given a couple of days and see if it gets better all by itself. Which is a very strange approach but in some cases it does seem to work which is basically do nothing.
    1 point
  9. My watch of the day, just finished this as a present for my daughter's 16th this Friday. Seiko 4004 Quartz from mid 70s. The lengths I have gone to with this watch, I even had to find a case back for it as the one it came with was from another watch and stuck on with double sided tape. She will love the retro look.
    1 point
  10. Some are to far gone to be re-formed, these here by the time you have re shaped them the depth will be to shallow and the wheel will skip those teeth.
    1 point
  11. Making a key for the lock should be pretty easy, you can get the blanks online. Most junk shops have piles of similar keys for pennies, cutting the tab to shape is not that difficult for a small lock like that. Look on ebay for "pipe cabinet key blank" or similar. Then find the correct tube diameter. You could of course, make your own from a bit of brass stock and some brass tubing. A little silver solder or brazing, some fret saw work and some filing and you are done.
    1 point
  12. As mentioned, the finish is damaged. You *may* get a little better results with a q-tip dipped in distilled (white) vinegar, but the more aggressive you get, the greater the risk of further damage. Remove any excess with clean water with a drop of dish soap (washing up liquid). Use distilled water, if the water in your area has high levels of minerals, as these can leave a white bloom on the dial. Keep away from any lettering, as it is more likely to lift than stay in place if you rub it. A replacement dial would be the way to go, assuming you are not able to get satisfactory results with your cleaning, but that might be a little tricky to source. You might be better to leave a little patina and live with the thing's history.
    1 point
  13. Just remember this about carriage clocks. If the movement has had a new platform fitted leave it alone, the value will have decreased a lot. Good dials are a must, any cracks no matter how small will also effect the value. The glass panels can be very expensive to replace.
    1 point
  14. It sounds like you have a problem within the keyless work to Investigate you will need to remove the hands and dial , The stem and get the movement out of the case. When you pull out the stem the setting lever will move position and be held with the setting lever spring this moves the crown up and down the stem depending upon position selected. the setting lever or setting lever spring are the most likely culprits we shall probably need a picture or two of the front and back of the movement.
    1 point
  15. oh, oil on fork pivots too.
    1 point
  16. Looks like ANCRE movements, some ancre are similar to ETA or AS, anyway.
    1 point
  17. You're a brave man, I wouldn't have attempted to go that far. I would have just tried to prevent the damage from getting worse.
    1 point
  18. The first picture looks to be mostly American movements. I can also see in other pictures German movements. My advise is, if you intend to repair clocks don't throw anything away, you never know when you might need to look through what spares you have for a part or even a screw.
    1 point
  19. I read a while ago that it was an aesthetic decision to increase symmetry of the dial. Quite interesting actually! https://www.hautehorlogerie.org/en/amphtml/encyclopaedia/glossary-of-watchmaking/s/roman-numeral-iiii-on-dials-1/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    1 point
  20. Scraper. Alternatively, sandpaper. Do not just put finish on fuzz, no es bueno! Depending on what it is and how the grain is oriented, if you set your block plane for a SUPER fine cut, you may even be able to clean it that way.
    1 point
  21. the company that makes your cleaning fluid is very unhelpful as there is no material safety sheets or chemical properties of their cleaning fluid other than vague terms. But it does comment that makes metals bright shiny which makes me suspicious there's probably ammonia in the cleaning fluid. Ammonia is really wonderful for cleaning watch parts it is the substance that makes the parts bright and shiny. But as spectre6000 and I have found out even using cleaning fluid specifically designed for cleaning watch parts a little cleaning is good a lot of cleaning is bad and throw in some heat that would be very bad. So even commercial watch cleaning fluids are very time-limited because at a certain point in time you go past cleaning and you have the possibilities of cleaning the metal right off the watch parts and putting it in solution.. ttps://www.carbusonic.co.uk/ULTRASONIC-CLEANING-FLUID-JEWELLERY-JEWELRY-WATCHES-TATTOO-DENTAL you have a unknown water-based solution and your cleaning wheels which are made out of brass and steel which definitely could form a undesirable electrolysis situation. the answer to his or something wrong with your cleaning fluid yes it's not designed to clean watch parts. But if you insist on using it try five minutes or find something to practice with it's disposable and see how long it go before bad things happen. then for the performance issue if your pivots are feeling rough that would be undesirable.
    1 point
  22. Another of my recent haul - I’m a sucker for the 70s....surprisingly it’s keeping very good time! Its a strange feeling having a manual wind - not usually my thing, but price was good; and the seller said it just needed batteries
    1 point
  23. Here we have a bonus watch I got in a lot a few weeks ago, thought it was quite interesting since it is a SLAVA watch made in Russia for import to Sweden. The dial shows EXACTA SLAVA 21 jewels imp. The watch is powered by the double barrel SLAVA 2414, a quite nice movement by the way.
    1 point
  24. I bought this one for parts / practice. It looks to have a broken tooth on the ratchet wheel, but otherwise in descent shape. It also came at the bargain price of $10.53 to the door.
    1 point
  25. I had a similar gaffe recently. I did 10 minutes X3 cycles (clean, rinse 1, rinse 2) and stripped the nickel plating off the majority of the main plate (but nothing else surprisingly). Shocked the hell out of me, because nickel on brass should definitely be hard enough to not have issues. For the most recent cleaning, I did 3 minutes for each cycle, and that seems to have been plenty. I'll try two next, then one to see where the curve falls. It definitely seems like more makes sense, and there's nothing really out there in the literature about how long to use an ultrasonic cleaner (at least not that I've seen). This forum is great for hammering out those little details...
    1 point
  26. Hi Khan, I've had the same problem on both the 2461 and 2481 movements, which use the same push-crown date quickset mechanisms. Scratched my head for a couple of weeks over it (I'm a newbie, but engineer by trade). So the setting lever and spring on the keyless works side operate the little date shift finger, what I found was both my setting lever AND spring were ever so slightly bent, this was then effectively reducing the travel on the finger. I also found the opposite to you! Once I'd straightened everything it still wouldn't quite work so went back to the date jumper spring and reduced the tension a little, then made sure all the keyless side and date change side were properly lubricated. Works a treat now!
    1 point
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