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I hope this works!

Who likes working on ladies watches ? Personally i dont mind it, some of the watches i started with were pretty small, in a roundabout way it makes working on bigger men's watches more pleasurable. All of these where described as ladies watches, how many do we think are not ladies watches. Its a shame that almost no folk want to wear them or want to work on these such small mechanical marvels. All but the expensive brands are not considered worthy of repair, but there many makes that still deserve some attention. A few here might be Oris, roamer, helvetia, medana, and opening them up may have a nice surprise or two. These work out at £1.13 each, there is one that i think is worth the grand sum of £42 that i paid ?

This is a homemade quartz watch movement assembly aid that I use for those pesky rotors that just won't stay in their holes. It's made from popsicle sticks glued together with a strip of magnet on one side. The magnet holds the stator and the rotor down on the bottom plate and stops them from sticking to each other. You have to try to believe how effective this trick is. Another thing I forgot to mention, anti-magnetic tweezers are an absolute must. I prefer brass or titanium tweezers.

I drive a Hummer and strap a wall clock to my wrist!!! Hehe. I have over 100 genuine ladies sized watches and movements. I'm never going to do anything with them, so free to a good home.

Perhaps too "Mickey Mouse" with a 11.5cm disk, but I like to try this small 2nd hand machine. It probably needs a speed-control modification with a triac, but that's a bonus & added fun We'll see how we get on ......

OK, You have lo amplitude, so You need to investigate the reason. I don't know is it connected in any way with the cleaning and with ultrasound. But You are able to understand is it balance problem or not. Just do the free oscillations test. Do it in both DU and DD positions and tell us what the result is. The result will show the direction where to go further.

Well, I got the machine for $300. Did some rewiring and major clean up and she works great! The jar lids are a bit trashed, so Im using thick plastic sheet as in intermediate cover, but other than that Im very happy!

Ah no the one i had in mind had a strong reflection on the glass hiding the name. An Invicta trench watch, i forgot it was in the lot, the biggest by far at 30mm its a canny looking thing. Full of crud but its trying to run managing around 15 seconds. No idea what it is yet , rubbed in jewels so I'm hoping for the best as that is not my thing at the moment.

This is why I like this forum. Members have different views and offer them freely without rancour. There are many variations on a theme. If it works , then it's correct for that person. Another may adapt partially or not at all. Professional or hobbyist, all give recommendations. We watch, listen, use, pass on observations. Guidance is offered from experience and not to deride. I look at many things in a totally different light than one, two years ago. I do things in a totally different way. Great place to learn this.

There's this, probably cheaper options too.

I blame Marshall Sutcliffe! It all started when we were working from home, and I somehow stumbled across Wristwatch Revival. He is an outstanding presenter, and I could see that I could easily buy old watches, fix them up, and have the satisfaction of returning a piece of heritage back to a running condition. Then reality set in. The reality took out both legs and left me prostrate on the floor. Then it kicked me when I was down! I took the Mark Lovick courses (obviously) and started down this road, needless to say its been humbling. I am slowly getting it and even started making my own Kiwicleaner which is 90% complete. I am convinced that Marshall has driven up the cost of the L and R Mastermatics (and probably every other ebay watchmaking tool) due to his popularity but I wouldn't have it any other way. I have used some of the advice from this forum over the last year so-Thanks!. Cheers, Jim

They were drowning in a sea of Swiss watches. In an attempt to stay afloat, their lifeboat the Smiths Empire still only to be shipwrecked. Tbf it was a piece of shite. Not inc. Dial hands and case , around 30 parts and only 9 screws in total, just look at that barrel its huge, yum. What more could you want from a watch ? Okay at least some level of accuracy would be nice , oh and maybe a smidgen of reliability wouldnt go amiss as well, bless it.

If this has been discussed elsewhere feel free to delete. So for things like the train bridge shock settings in 7XXX series seiko movements it's impossible to set them wet and have a good oil bubble. You gotta set them dry and oil from the other side. When i started out i was told you basically have to have an auto oiler for this. I got one, i hate it, it works, sometimes, but it does a terrible job at metering the oil flow and there's about a 20% chance it will overfill it instantly causing me to have to reclean the jewel and try again. On top of that, for things like the 3rd wheel in the 7s26 it according to most SHOULD be oiled with hp1300 even though the tech sheets for the various versions of the 7s26 are all over the place on this. Some iirc recommend 9010 in the shock setting and 1300 in the lower jewel. One says 9010 on both. One wants you to use grease on the bottom jewel, it's strange.. So unless you want to get two auto oilers for the two shock settings and fill one with hp1300, what do you do? Well just save yourself 100 bucks on a pretty crappy tool imo there's a much simpler way to do it. Just take your dip oiler, put a bead of oil on the back of the setting once the shock setting has been set already, then take your wheel and poke the pivot through the jewel hole and capillary action will draw in the oil and do it slowly and precise enough you get that perfect bubble every time. I don't know if this insanely easy technique is used a lot here but nobody suggested it to me when i was starting out and i blew about 120 bucks on a tool i now realize i just don't need. Just a little psa for people that aren't aware of this insanely simple technique that requires no tools.

These are on their way to my workshop. Both are new for me anyone serviced repaired this style of clocks. Any info much appreciated ie if complicated then I will just return to the customer

Totally agree Ross. I am a noob that has become addicted to reading this forum and fascinated by how many different ways to get the job done. I can only thank you and all the other guys for helping me learn this wonderful hobby in such a friendly open forum. Thanks all!

Lighter , isopropinol and most other petrochemical product are no longer shelac friendly in ultrasonic. I bet you a whole dime , you have been loosing shelac in ultrasonic, rendering pallets loose to misalign or move, which has been causing amplitude loss. Check you pallets to find little or no shelac on them, impulse pins were shelaced back in the days, so check the shelac on them as well. Hairspring is flex so it easily vibrates in response to mild waves of ultrasonic thus wont get damaged. Check all shelaced points Ross. Clean and peg pallets and impulse pins by hand, use lighter fluid but keep shelac away from lighter fluid as best as you can. Good luck pal.

You are referring to the winder base, which can be printed to fit 1.5mm, 2.0mm, 2.5mm or 3.0mm arbors. The large center hole is to insert the arbor. The four surrounding holes are to insert the arbor hook (staple). All four holes are the same depth. Each hole is a slightly different distance away from the arbor. You would choose which hole based on best fit for your mainspring.

seeing as how were problem solving a whole bunch of watches simultaneously which I preferred not to do we need to look at the common factors of what is common? absolutely positively not. But bad cleaning procedure that's causing harm that would be a problem. when I first started watch repair the school had two separate cleaning machines both of them used ultrasonic. Everything went through the ultrasonic the balance wheel and the pallet fork. Typically other than discussion groups like this professional watchmaker's run everything through the cleaning machine. The second school I went to we were cleaning watches all day long the same watches over and over again running to the cleaning machine where the cleaning cycle have been locked at no more than four minutes. Because they're basically clean watches are being re-cleaned over and over again. Then cleaning too good well what about the $16,000 Elma vacuum assisted cleaning machine that we have at work vacuum assisted yes it does a really good job of cleaning. So I seriously doubt cleaning too well is a problem unless you're cleaning to the point where your etching the metal or something? And cleaning the balance wheel shouldn't be an issue either when I would be curious about though is if you do a before and after timing so in other words before the watch was doing this and now it's doing worse as opposed to starting with broken watches that conceivably still have issues so were any of the watches that are not running well now running before a running better before then after? yes not having a professional watch cleaning machine is definitely your problem 100% you must have a professional machine or else all blow we do know somebody recently purchased one of the Elm machines and it's not happy at all. Or what about this at home I didn't have a professional machine I did have baskets purchased on eBay and look how I'm holding my watch parts all little tiny stuff go into baskets all the big parts are strong on the wire. then here is my professional watch cleaning machine as you can see it is not actually a professional watch cleaning machine. It's a tiny ultrasonic machine with a beaker but I am using professional watch cleaning fluids and rinse. Oh and not shown in the picture the final rinse is alcohol not isopropyl alcohol because they didn't have that but I use the alcohol that dissolves shellac. It even says on the candidate will dissolves shellac it's a thinner for shellac. But all I use that for is rinsing off the final rinse and in the 15 seconds it's in there it doesn't harm anything at all. So I doubt the lack of a professional cleaning machine is your issue. I don't quite understand this? So lighter fluid in the ultrasonic not the best cleaning fluid but it will work is a lot of other people in the group using it. Then you do the isopropyl plot is still don't understand 3×2 you want to spell that out a little more clearly? then we should also talk about other common factors like lubrication I don't see any mention of it it's amazing how much amplitude you pick up if you properly lubricate your escapement for instance. Then timing machine what he using the measure the amplitude. Often times people using phone apps and that's their problem.

Welp…Seikos are lower amplitude but not in the 150s…even if we take those off the board...my accounting instincts say you’re consistent in an inconsistency somewhere. I’d start with auditing the list… …make sure your lubrication game is truly on point. Don’t run the next balance thru the ultrasonic?

Just the one set I purchased from Goodwill. The center set punch it came with appeared to have been sharpened (poorly) but does the job. I picked up a used punch off eBay with a chipped point. I now have two punches to be refinished! This damn hobby makes a tool junkie out of the best of us!

Yes. What does the balance look like after cleaning? Hairspring flat and round? Jewels? FWIW I’ve been soaking my balance wheel w/spring in hairspring dip only. Only a little agitation with a blower. Maybe lighter fluid first if the wheel is very dirty. I was worried my Pearl machine was too aggressive. I’m afraid of a hairspring in the ultrasonic so never tried…

I like Alex's videos but in this instance I would need to use a lathe or rotary drill. The punch is used to center the table on the staking tool. Yes, it's THAT punch. I would like to have it as close to perfect as possible. Any watchmakers or companies offering this service?

If it doesn't have an adjustable stud holder, then depending on the watch, I consider anything less than about 2ms OK, (and sometimes more). Every tweak risks damaging the hairspring. If it's a valuable watch, or it's impossible to get hairsprings, it's not worth the risk.

Looks like the Smiths RY- 13 ligne. Made in ‘Great Britain’ because England wouldn’t have them. I wrote one up here a while ago. There seems to be millions of those springs out there but not a barrel to be had I took a great deal of pride in propping it up…until it stopped again. Tension on that barrel wheel and no good method to adjust the height of the wheel what drives the seconds. They are indeed ‘economical’ On the upside- not many jewels to break and if you’re good at worrying half a dozen items under a single plate, the assembly goes quick…

Thanks! Indeed - Cousins are doing quite well out of me at the moment

Yes its the click. Smith's own, not sure what calibre yet, the only number is 565. The tolerances are even more loose than Russian watches.

Hi. One tip I heard of was to place a small round magnet beneath th e watch under the rotor thi is supposed to keep the rotor up right whilst the bridge is fitted. Never tried it but it sounds plausible. The magnetism won’t affect the watch as the rotor is already magnetised.

Oh for one of those tools. My procedure is the same as yours @Nucejoe. I have a very little power on the mainspring and make sure one of pallet jewels is centred on a tooth. But even doing this I'm often 1ms out - which doesn't bother me, but will the perfectionists. This from Fried

Nickelsilver Showed this tool, must be nice to have, helps adjusting hairspring to a near zero beat error. Without the tool , I put the balance less hairapring back on the watch, Impulse pin inside the fork horn. Rotate the balance clockwise while keeping an eye on the fork which moves when impulse pin hits it. Rotate the balance counter clockwise , the fork move when impulse pin hits the other horn of the fork. You see an interval within which impulse pin hits either horn, at the midpoint of this interval your balance would be in beat. On the rim of the balance wheel ink mark the point thats right in front of the stud holder arm, where the stud is fiited. Remove the balance and instal hairspring with the stud right on the point you ink marked. Your in beat, not sure if the balance complete be in beat as well. lol I don't understand why this guy is laughing. . what so funny? Rgds

That tank that's bottom center in the first photo reminds me of my favorite "dress" watch, a Zvezda: 7.75 ‴ x 12.75 ‴ License-built Lip T-18. I drive a Miata with a 6.2L V8, so I'm either all the stereotypes or none.

If it’s the punch used to centre the table I would think that would have to be done on a lathe. Tom

The globe is like a normal alarm clock, movement mounted in the base. Can be moderm one, made just looking like old. Show the movement and will be clear. The carriage one is complicated as can be - it is chimming with repeater function, alarm and calendare with moonphase.

One of the problems you're running into for the kinetics are The capacitor idea didn't work. Then the upgraded and replaced them with lithium batteries. They work much better they changed slightly how the watch works and lithium batteries have problems. he problem with lithium batteries are they do not like to be discharged to close to 0 V then their likelihood of recharging again becomes problematic. The problem with using them for watch batteries is eventually will discharge all by themselves and kinetic technology is relatively old so conceivably are purchasing old batteries.

Try my pivot technique it works so much better than an auto oiler! Also one thing a few watchmakers iv'e seen do is they get a black or red bergeon oiler and just sharpen it down to a super thin spike and use that for poking oil into those shock settings.

"You can calibrate them." Can you? Lol. Mine has two settings. 1. Flood the jewel in 1/4 of a second. 2. Flood the jewel instantly. Also interesting you use all the oilers in the set. I bought the same set and i can do everything i need to with the black one. I polished and dressed the tips and the black one is just perfectly versatile for me. If i have to use a slab of grease like on a crown gasket i will use one of the big ones at times. That said, i just made a thread with a much much better and free alternative to the auto oilers for shock settings here.

I said much the same thing a few days ago... great minds ....

All ducks have tears in their eyes when laying eggs. Yorkshire ones do, they don’t like parting with anything

The 4006 mainspring is GR2378X as shown by Cousins (which agrees with the GR database). I downloaded all the GR database PDFs from Cousins, but the spreadsheet is much easier, or go online here https://watchguy.co.uk/cgi-bin/mainsprings I can't find any reference to the alarm spring. I have two BellMatics and didn't have to change either alarm spring, so didn't measure them. Just use your measurements (are you sure about your thickness, it doesn't agree with the GR database?). As it's only ringing the alarm you don't need to be an exact match. People have listed various springs to use for 7S26. My last one, I used GR2377X

Well if we can figure it out it'll be here to help others. That said cousins actually lists that one i linked to earlier as the specific one for the 4006. GR2378X Might be worth it to update your fantastic little database!

Try the files below, I had to trick the system into thinking they were pdfs to upload it so just delete the .pdf and leave it ending .xlsx The first lets you find the GR reference from the watch movement information and the second lets you calculate the spring dimensions from the barrel information, based on the youtube from Watch Repair Tutorials hopefully they are useful Mainspring GR Data.xlsx.pdf New Spring Sizer.xlsx.pdf

VWatchie, I have done numerous by hand only pocket watches though and it takes focus, I just want the tool for doing this its a me thing.

I feel your pain, I pretty much always hand wind Seiko springs as the odds of getting it back in the barrel are much greater. For new springs here I what I use: 7009, 7S26/36 and NH35/36 I use the below from Ali Express, I was a little skeptical at first, but I an now very happy with them. For the 6309 I use an ETA 2892a2 (see pdf attached for CousinsUK reference material), there other equivalents I have tried but they have too large a center coil and the arbor cannot hook it, but these work well (as long as you install them the right way around). Equivalent Mainspring ETA 2892a2.pdf

Yes, that is correct. It should be 2.5mm/3.0mm for the large base. I'll fix the documentation. It wont be necessary to shorten it to 18.0mm. 20mm will work just fine.

Thank you for your introduction and welcome to this friendly forum. We all look forward to your contributions and continued involvement. If you are fitting a new mainspring you do not need mainspring winders. They are packaged in such a way they are press fit.

Joe at the Nekkid Watchmaker often does this. Here's one of his :

Out of curiosity where you going to order these mainspring winders from? What about the other issue if you purchase modern mainspring winders they may or may not work at least as the handles will have issues. Specifically modern handles are designed for modern Springs and vintage watches seem to have a lot of variations unfortunately it's not that simple usually end up on some occasions you end up having to use multiple sets of handles and/or winders to find something that fits. Then I would probably have to sit down and measure as to whether there actually is sort of a? This post is a compromise to the question you have I have a picture below. The mainspring winder on the very left-hand salad does exist and I'm not a big fan. The center winder is the standard one that I use 90% of the time so I could get to the diameters of those and that would cover almost everything. At least as far as the diameters go. Then the set on the right-hand side would work if you can afford it because it tends to be pricey unless you're just lucky purchasing it like I was and then there is the handle issue which I brought up the a get you some pictures of that. For the center set this is what the handle looks like it's interesting in that it actually has two separate books because the center part can move in and out so when it's all the way out like it is now would be for a bigger mainspring and you can push it in for smaller diameter Springs. No notice is just a protruding in all and that's the other little problem a lot of the mainsprings of pocket watches could be left-handed Springs like typically 18 size full plate watches could be left-handed and there are few others it could be. So this is why this set is so nice to go in either direction Then in the modern set is we will call it on the right-hand side the handles themselves common three configurations basically the image below is the vintage handle this is for all the blued steel Springs or for Springs that are diameters that your handle may not fit as I said this seems you a lot of diameter differences of the center part of the spring and you may not actually have a handle of the modern type which will show what a moment that's going to fit and for blued steel or older Springs this is the Handle which by the way I don't think they sell anymore. It's what the older sets used to have Then this is what the newer handles look like because of the design of the mainspring and how tight it goes on the arbor and its sizing the book is ground into the metal and doesn't actually protrude out which is why it's a problem on vintage or odd size Springs.

I have found that half strokes are frowned upon in most situations.

Evening everyone, I thought I'd start the year off easy with a bit of a quartz-a-thon. I needed to do something with the growing pile of '404' (or less) quartz watches I've acquired (along for the ride with the mechanical ones) over the last few years. I guess I'm not the only one with this sort of issue? After a couple of nights work I've this lot. The ones that were too far gone I've scrapped/salvaged usable parts. It's been an education in terms of modules and materials used. Who knows what sort of metal the cases/straps were made of the ones that I scrapped...... I'm planning to offer them to my local charity shop, to give them another life. I'm sure some else will enjoy them more rather than leave them to fester in a biscuit tin.

Managed to rescue this Seiko 7009A (August 1978), it needed a new crystal and date change return spring (the huge banana shaped one), the bracelet needed some TLC on the bufing machine and re-shape some of the bent links, and the rest is original. I had to do a lot of gluing on the dial to replace all those markers, fortunately they were all still there , then re-lumed the hands, Before, lots of : After: 250 degrees amplitude and 0.0 beat error + 5 seconds/day face up and -5 seconds/day face down so very respectable for this old timer.

Seems like ages since I last posted on 404, here is a ladies Seiko 2906A I picked up from Ramon in the Philippines as part of a job lot, so worked out to be $1.60. I did require a new crystal (£10.12) because the original shattered when I tried to remove it and it also needed a new winding stem (£2.00) and crown (from my spares) as it arrived without these, all of the screws for the automatic works were floating around inside the movement and the pawl lever for the auto works had one arm completely broken off so needed replaced (I had one from a donor) but apart from that it's all original. Here are the before and after pictures: Here is how it looked when I first opened the back...... and you get that "it gonna be one of those watches..." feeling And here is the finished watch: