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My interest in watches was sparked when I bought a birth year (and month) watch off ebay only to find it didn't work. I rang a few watch repairers and they quoted me about £300. No way was I spending £300, the robbing ********. So, one year later and £4,000 worth of tools I finally fixed my watch. Who's laughing now eh?

I don't think it's the cannon pinion as it would cause your watch to stop every hour. Try removing the calendar works and run the watch. If it works fine then that confirms your suspicion.

This project has been ongoing for about six months. Another specimen from the box-o-watches. It was a mess when I dug it out. The dial was a wreck. It had the alarm, minute, and hour hand but no second hand. At the time, I did not know it was supposed to have one. Found out later that the center wheel was busted. The first threshold was to see if I could get the dial refinished. I won't go into the ordeal, but it took about four months from start to finish! I had a crystal in my stock so that was not an issue. I bought a donor watch that had some of the parts I needed and the dial finally arrived. This week was the reassembly event! The last challenge was the second hand I got from the donor. When I snapped on the bezel/crystal, the second had would not clear and the watch stopped. This was extremely aggravating and tedious. At one point, the second hand took flight!!! I called the wife: "Help!!" She has a knack for finding things. I heard it hit the skin drawer. It was not there. It had bounced off and on to the floor. I found it!! Anyway...it is now running on the bench. Regression testing as they say in my business. I am showing two pictures because I turned off the LED lamp so I could bet better color balancing to illustrate that the watch is gold (gold plate).

I used audacity for those pictures. But I have also added ability to generate spectrograms into tg-timer, https://github.com/xyzzy42/tg/tree/trentpi/python Looking at sound again, it seem very clear that something is ringing inside the movement, but this happens only on every other beat. Maybe pallet fork is vibrating after each beat, but only in one direction, due to some difference in the pallet jewels? Or escape wheel vibrates depending on which pallet jewel is locking it?

Nothing really special this but I'm very pleased with the result. I picked up this non runner for £25. I like Smiths watches and have a few of them. It was particularly dirty. Bakelite? Water had got in through the crown and rusted a few parts. Most of the parts cleaned up really well but I had to replace the setting lever. I dug out my spare parts for this movement and found some industrious previous watchmaker had done this. No matter, I staked the post out of my rusty one and staked it into this one. Here we are all cleaned up and cased with a polished crown. A bit of light sanding and polywatch on the crystal and, well, I think it looks great. I'll take that for a 1 jewel pin pallet. Like I say, nothing really clever or special but I love the result.

It's not that easy to to fit a different movement into a case that isn't made for the movement. First you have to be able to line up the winding you have the height, the diameter and it needs to be able to fit properly in order for the case to close. The dial can cause problems for the bezel. It isn't impossible but it is highly unlikely that it's a marriage. Who's to say the file markings haven't been made by someone that was inexperienced in re-casing this movement. An apprentice as an example.

My personal fascination is more along this bent. I took an online course on special relativity while recovering from an especially bad car wreck a few years back, and gained an entirely new perspective on time. It's a difficult lens to translate, but time pieces are incredible. I've mentioned elsewhere my buddy's work on the new experimental resonator for the atomic clock. It's so accurate, you can measure the difference in elevation within earth's gravity well within a cm... I am also a fan of history, and my first mechanical watch accidentally turned out to be a WWII German issued officer's watch from the eastern front (D# scratched out to remove the Nazi stink), that received a battlefield repair with the pointy end of a bayonet, and ultimately ended up either traded for something out of a POW camp or picked off a corpse as a battlefield trophy. I knew none of this when I bought it on eBay from a seller out of the Ukraine for $35, having only recently discovered the existence of hand wound watches, and some of it is educated and evidenced conjecture that can never be certain, but imagine the awe every time I wear it (which I almost never do because I'm afraid I might damage it). I'm an outlier though. I only know of one or two other watch enthusiasts that are my age, and they're both of the fashion variety. One guy thinks a little outside the box, but definitely no watchmaker. Aside from the watchmaker back in Texas that fixed up the WWII watch mentioned above, I've never knowingly met another in real life.

Then nothing would have been better. Unlike a combustion engine a watch can run dry for a good amount of time without damage. Have you taken the canonical "watch doesn't run" tests?

I'm Kenny from Rock Island IL. My son came to me one day with an old 1911 Elgin pocket watch that was my great grandfathers when he worked on the rock island lines. it was old dirty and did not run...I was intrigued and instantly hooked. many $$$ tools later and a drawer full of watches that didn't work. I found myself fixing and restoring. I like doing old pocket watches. cheap .. or kind of expensive. its the challenge that gets me. I'm very patient and normally figure out the correct way to fix. I've only had one failure out of 12 attempts so far. I saved it for later as I increase my learning. I hope to learn more. 1 dollar watches or more expensive, I love bringing these back to life. I have a pocket watch that is giving me fits so I will be posting it soon on here. I thought it would be easy but it its more of a throw away type disney pocket watch. I will win this one but releasing the stem is the problem...I am a bricklayer by trade and this helps me unwind. lol no pun intended. I'll attach a finished product of one of my pocket watches. an old flea market find from wapello Ia. dirt and stem needed adjusted. 40 bucks. I believe its 123 years old.

That'll learn 'em. And so it begins....................

Hi I take it its ok at 9 25am and on wards untill the 9 25pm point, First in line is the remove the extras as mentioned by Hector re fitting the hands and observe the action over time

Sorry to say another spring is required.

ETA2892 no filter

Looks like you are getting similar results to what I am.

I have a Lotus Esprit S4. (Yes, it’s red before anyone asks) I would not call it a rich persons car. There are many other cars a lot more expensive than mine. I have it because: 1) I have wanted one since seeing one in The Spy Who Loved Me 2) It doesn’t have a whole heap of bells and whistles. It is just a plain old rocket ship. I initially found this site as I was looking for information to fix my Seiko. (all on another thread) I am now looking into the clock side of things. Twofold reason here. 1) I have clocks that need work. 2) Watch parts here in Australia are very difficult to get locally. The analogy that I see between my car and watches is that analog watches can be a thing of beauty. Different hands, dials etc. My wife wanted a smart watch. I got her a Garmin Vivomove because it looks analog-y. Things like an Apple Watch are just a black piece of glass with rounded edges. I have commented on this watch. That wins handsdown over any smartwatch in my book. No chronograph buttons. No date. Just time. And stunning. Well it is to me. And if @GuyMontag ever wants to sell it, I’ve called dibs first, so get lost, the lot of you. ?

I suggest you do a test with eTimer, disabling the filter. With this you can see what is the real value of the noise signal coming from the mic + pream.

It seems to me an excellent result. In my case I do not exceed 52 dB. But that is enough.

It is my empirical and partly technical opinion working with sound. But above 40 dB it is very good. Between 45 and 50 is almost perfect. More than 50 would be the ideal. The WOS screen is also not used as a reference, as it shows very little noise and the peaks are very high. Furthermore, WOS does not apply any gain. What I interpret that determines that the signal is very good.

Made a new Amp and updated my microphone. Sounds better now. Waltham 18s no filter-new amp-updated mic.m4a 2892 lower gain-new amp-updated mic.m4a

I have been looking into this and I'm sure this is not a swiss fake. The swiss faked American P/Watches because they were so expensive and high quality movements, they also had similar American names printed on the dials. This movement is of very poor quality, no jewels for the train. The reason I asked about how many feet the dial has is this can also help as to if it's a fake or not.

I think the obvious thing to suggest is that you do get the right drill bits. If you go on ebay, amazon etc. and search for 'micro drill bits' you'll find you can get sets pretty inexpensively. You've then got the accuracy and precision you need. Not sure how else you'd get a hole to the precision of half-a-mil without a proper bit.

If we assume the quartz crisis was more of a quartz revolution (what you call it depends on your perspective), then make parallels to transportation, mechanical watch enthusiasts are a lot like horse people (enthusaist? owners? caretakers? I don't know what you'd call the equivalent). The car came around, and no one needed horses any more. Cars are just lower maintenance, lower cost of entry, more accurate... So everyone ditched horses, and I guess a bunch of glue was made. There are still horse-ists out there, but now horses are much more of a hobby than a necessity. The cost is considerably more than it used to be. They're not appreciated as a means to affecting the culture's status quo daily life needs; they exist in the capacity they do for their own sake. If you compare the cost of acquiring and maintaining a horse pre- and post-automotive era, I think the parallels are pretty precise. Mechanical watches are the horses of the engineering minded. They're almost categorically inferior in their previous utility, but immeasurably superior in a host of other ways. Additionally, I think there's a fashion/status symbol component that magnifies the cost difference. I am in no way qualified to speak to the nuances of anything in the same ZIP code as fashion. I can say that Rolex bros make Rolexes so much more expensive, and then everyone adjacent wants a piece of the pie. The water rises, and all the boats float higher. I don't understand expensive handbags, the gadgetry flavored "luxury" cars, or any other nouveau riche trappings either, and there's a heavy dose of that at play. I would suggest that someone of that bent would need to chime in to explain that aspect, but I'm not sure this is the right crowd... More of a WUS domain.

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My father always taught me "Pick the right tool for the job". But my favorite quote is "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

1930s for early 1900s pocket watch. When I'm in the nude, I mean mood...... VID_20200612_135726.mp4

I love this. I had a similar pallet fork in a 137 year old Elgin I’ve been working on...

I am on a roll, the flat ones got a dust cover too:

Hi there all, here's when the Italians meet the Swiss, this is a Meccaniche Veloci chronograph with eta 7750. Note the pushers placed where you can hold the Watch in the hand if you like and you have comfortable access to the pushers when timing. This one is number 56 of 250 produced. It is made of titanium and shaped like a piston. No date or day. Just a pure chrono. The dial is made from Lamborghini panel steel and painted with lambo paint. The dial look represents quattrovalve, 4valves.The white digits are painted on the dial and are lume and the black ones are on the back of the sapphire crystal. Note the crystal distortion from the side yeahhhhh. It gets a few comments when I wear it. I personally love the dial, it's certainly different as is the whole watch. This watch is about 10 years old. By the way the title is Italian for watch of the day Cheers Graziano

Hi all, isn't it cool to see some of the inventions that have made our lives so comfortable over the years.

I forget just how I decided to start learning about watchmaking, but here I am. Other than my Garmin watch that I use to track my backpacking activities, I only own one "real" watch, a 1928 Bulova Surrey that I bought on Ebay 15 years ago. I think it was probably that watch that sparked an interest as it stopped running many years ago and has just sat in drawer ever since. I remember looking at ways to service it over the years and I think I just figured I'd try and see if I couldn't do it myself and here I am ? I've gone through the first two of Mark's courses and have been practicing on some scrap watches I got off of ebay. I'm a retired dentist and some of the hand/eye skills do seem to carry over but as I watch some of the videos I have filmed of myself as I've stripped and then rebuilt movements I do see that I'm a bit heavy handed. I need to add another fine motor gear or two into my repertoire ? It looks like there is a great community here and I'm looking forward to climbing that road to where I can at least service that beautiful Bulova in my drawer. OK, I'm off to post my first of what I'm sure will be one of many questions ?

Make sure this part (red arrow) isn’t damaged and can lock and be freed. Some types cannot be moved so check for damage. You need to have the most pointed stake and see it it lines up center to the holes (black arrow) make sure none of the holes are damaged and not blocked. The black arrow part must be able to be un-locked and locked. All punches should be able to fit into the stand with ease. Keeping the stakes in good order and the plugs will also help in the work you will undertake when using this type of tool. It is quite easy to clean the stakes/plugs with very emery cloth or the sticks, if you have a lathe it’s even better. Don’t forget this type of tool is used a lot for watch work such as b/staffs, jeweling and riveting just to name a few. Yes if you do not have a jeweling tool but you have the right punches with a stacking tool you can use it for that. The main thing is make sure things line up.

I had to tighten the offset cannon pinion on a Zodiac Sea Wolf 72B 17jwl and wanted to share the process, along with the tools that I used to do so. This worked first time for me. My first attempt at separating the gear from the wheel was by taking tweezers and using the wedge method but this was too uncontrollable and dangerous on the fingers and parts. I located an old roller table remover tool that seemed to work fine. It had a threaded post and nut to use for closing in the two arm jaws but threads were stripped. Once removed, I used these two to tighten the cannon pinion. DON'T FORGET TO LUBRICATE THE POST BEFORE PLACING THE CANNON PINION BACK ON! I'm sure that this dry wear was the culprit in it being so loose at this point in time. I also came across this cannon pinion tightening tool in an old watchmakers bench that looks quite handy. I would attempt to use on a standard cannon pinion but like the control of the process outlined here for the offset style. I hope this helps others in their encounter with the offset cannon pinion.

Well finally got time to work on my Tameside clock decided to put the new mainspring back in the barrel with Ollie Baker Winder, and i was having a problem getting it in the barrel with the retainer i used to take it out it was to big so ended up putting the next size down but that was to small i then had the problem with getting the arbor to catch so i thought what a good idea if i got smooth nose pliers to hook it on ?and i ended up snapping a bit of spring off?take it easy with me just wondering if it could be salvage or is it another new mainspring at £42 a go.What do they say about you learn from your mistakes.